Suffering to Celebrate
HAVANA TIMES – My grandmother’s birthday is approaching, perhaps her last, and my mother is pulling out her savings. From her smile, it seems as if the small bundle in her hands is made of thousand-peso notes. But they are bills of 1 and 5 pesos. Even so, she asks my grandmother what she wants as a gift, and she answers: a cake.
Years ago, we would have made the cake together, and the moment would have been one of communion: laughter and reminiscing would fill the air. My grandmother would not only enjoy a chocolate or strawberry cake, but a cake made with love.
Making a cake at home requires eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and oil, among other exquisite ingredients for baking, unimaginable for those of us who live by working. So, with my best smile, I invited my mother to the ATM, and during three hours of standing in line, we fantasized about finding a cheap cake.
Once this bitter and sweaty moment was over, we set out to do the math: my mother’s pension of 1600 ($5 USD), plus my salary of 5000 ($17 USD), both for the entire month. The result at the end of the balance was an amount of 2000 pesos allocated for the cake. My mother’s sadness was like a bullet to me. I hugged her, promised that we would do wonders with the rest of the money throughout the month, and we bought a cake for 2700, a little bigger.
Nowadays, buying a cake to celebrate a family member is an act that requires a great deal of sacrifice and self-denial. It’s about defending a way of life that has been taken from us. The misery of the majority in service to a minority.
The questions abound: Why can’t I decide how I want to live? Do we always have to give up something to get something else in return? Do working people, those who tan their skin under the open sky, those who wear patched clothes, have to give up not only eating decently and healthily but also their customs? Do we really have to endure the loss of ways and traditions handed down by those who came before us?