| Tomas Morato, Quezon City |

I turned forty when even a simple celebration was taboo. The world was mourning then, with the dead in phalanx across the once noisy streets and the alive, even the most rapacious ones, in dead silence in the corner most part, begging only for one thing – to wake up the following day, nothing more, nothing less.

In our place, paranoia was as haunting as the howls of the neighbors’ dogs at night. It was palpable; it damped down the spirit that the Christmas lights at every window tried to jazz up. But that did not stop me from having a decent party. Not with my life-of-the-party soul sister Mitch, the only person I knew of exempted from the strict imposition of curfew and other spurious policies made out of iffy grounds, gracing my about-to-get-boring event with his Christmassy presence.

When all were at wit’s end, being with someone you immensely enjoyed chatting with was in itself a present. It was a comforting hug after months of mourning, filling up the longing of somebody like me who had nobody to talk to for more than eight months but coffee and ciggies.

And so, the show went on, backdropped by the curtain of smoke from the coffee, ciggies, and recently-delivered food. The rest of the team I handled joined the event virtually, doing what they do best – trading banter, generating a euphony of laughter that supplanted the hiss of homesickness hovering over my place. In times like this, laughter was not only the best medicine; it was one essential key to survival.

I had my most unusual birthday, and it was not bad. At the very least, I had a good laugh that was so elusive the past days. That virtual space, in its expanse, provided the venue for a get-together to laugh our asses off. To be human again. True, some elements were missing, and I would still prefer face-to-face, but if only for laughter, which I live for to keep a tab on the dwindling mental health, it served its purpose.

The world was weeping, but it did not forbid its children from celebrating life. Laugh to survive, embrace change to pull through, persist in these trying times.

Live for the moment. I turned forty with a decent party.

Image from:

www.physicsworld.com