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Growing up, we were very far away from our family; there were very few times a year when we could go to see them or they came to our house to visit us, this could be for a weekend or for a single day, it was uncertain.

My dad's family was always physically farther away from us and my mom's family was always closer, but we still weren't always together but when we were we were able to get together with our cousins and spend time with them.

One of the events we looked forward to most every year was summer vacation, where we could go away for months at a time to visit our cousins and spend the time we didn't get to spend together during school. On those vacations, most of the birthdays in my paternal family were celebrated and that is the fondest memory I have of my family.

Since we were very young, we would celebrate those birthdays together as a family, we would all gather at grandma's house and celebrate a birthday or several birthdays at the same time. We would play, eat, dance and talk for hours; we would share not only with our cousins but also with our uncles and aunts, whom we could not see much either, even on vacations, because of their jobs.

Celebrating those birthdays was the perfect excuse to get together as a family and spend time with each other. There was never a shortage of cameras, let alone video cameras to document everything that happened there; the dances, the speeches, the birthday games, the singing of "happy birthday" and the moment when we made a wish and blew out the candles.

It was a moment of family intimacy in which we could rest from the day to day and celebrate the birthdays of those who had had a birthday and we could not be with them and those who were really having a birthday at that moment; it was like a big birthday party for the whole family.

Over the years, as all of us cousins grew older, little by little we stopped celebrating those birthdays as a family; we all had busy schedules and our priorities began to change and we left behind those moments of celebrating birthdays as a family at grandma's house.

Now, many of my cousins are living out of the country, married, working, living their adult lives and that is incredible. But I still pleasantly remember those great birthdays we celebrated as a family when we were kids, I carry them in my memory and I thank all of them who were there to celebrate with my family, one more year of life.

Happy Weekend Y'all!

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