Happy 100th birthday son

Today is a very special day. My youngest son is turning one hundred years old. When he was born, if someone told me that I was going to live to see this day, I’m sure that I wouldn’t have believed it.

This is not only a special day but also a special place. We are all healthy, seeing our great-great-great-grandchildren grow. It amazes me that only two people can be the source of life for more than fifty descendants.

No wonder why we should die, the older ones are not freeing space. I know we should have controlled ourselves, but it was unbelievable that we were going to live this long. None of us took it seriously until I reached one hundred years myself, the first one to get that old. Since I moved here, with three other families, I can’t recall when was the last time I got a cold or flu.

We are on an island; therefore, resources and space are limited. We can still die from hunger and thirst; however, sickness is not among our problems. Unless you have a congenital illness, you can continue seeing sunsets as long as you’re still kicking.

The origin of our cursed-blessing is a strange woman. She came to me one day claiming she had a special place where people could live for one hundred years guaranteed. What she didn’t mention is that afterward, we wouldn’t age another day, so, forever old. Well, it is an exaggeration, we are not immortals, as I have already implied.

Everything she promised looked great, despite my disbelieve, my wife and I decided to give it a try, together with our three children. When we arrived at the island, we met the other two families with three children as well. Our motives were different, but we were approached in similar ways. I should have known that there was a catch.

Even though our sickness-proof condition, none of us was out of trouble with aging degradation. Arthritis, bigger ears, and nose, the effects of gravity to whatever hangs, swelling hands and feet, forgetting things more often, all of that is guaranteed too. It is a good thing that most of us have their thirty-two pieces in our mouths, as we couldn’t get cavities even if we sleep with a mouthful of cake or pure sugar.

I cannot longer run or jump, my knees don’t like that, but I try to stay in shape, fighting against muscle loss.

During the last thirty-five years, we’ve been struggling to keep supplies up with consumption, yet no one in their reproductive years stopped multiplying. At this point, the younger are all related: cousins. They have been replicating what they have seen: growing up, falling in love, and having children, with no other concerns but their satisfaction. However, it’s not the endogamy that worries me.

When we arrived, the place was paradise. There were fruit trees: coconuts, papaya, orange, mangoes. We enjoyed the shadow of trees during a sunny day, the clean air, the freshwater, abundant fishes, the ground was fertile, anything could grow. Our wishes had come true.

Now, we are running out of resources, space, and there is contamination caused by our doings.

The future doesn’t look good. What if we deplete this island, even the fishes are getting hard to catch. The world around us is not frozen like we are; they cannot trespass the invisible separation that makes us inexistent to them, but our sea is affected.

Here, we are more than two hundred people, surviving. Our feces can no longer be ignored every time the north-east wind blows. As a result of years and years of filling up a big hole with them, together with all organic disposals thrown there, the stinkiness and pollution are reaching record levels. Our ignorance and indifference made us pay no attention to doing things right.

Any outsider would have foreseen what was coming. We haven’t produced artificial contamination, there are no factories here, yet there was garbage that usually spread along the east coast brought by the tides, at least we are not to blame for that. From that garbage, we took what seemed useful, but we also took what we needed from the island without thinking, like there was no tomorrow.

As we were not allowed to bring anything else but the stuff with which we arrived, after some years of adding people to our population, there was not enough clothing for all. We, the centennials, have given up all our clothes, except for the minimum to remain decent. The little ones are all naked. Girls and women have opted for topless fashion, so, when I said decent, I meant with our lower parts covered. A few of us still have shoes, but they are only worn for specific purposes. Barefoot is the regular thing on the island.

Soon the trees couldn’t keep up with our cutting rate, to build new houses. The availability of food lowered as a consequence, also because no animal at our reaching distance had survived.

Our island was green from every direction; now only the green mountain, in the center of the island, is green. We turned green to brown, clear to blurry, and fresh to stinky.

We have entered a downward spiral. My son was the last one to turn one hundred of the ones who came originally here. Now both of us look like siblings, almost like twins. From today on, we are the same physical age. We don’t know if the next one reaching one hundred in fifteen years will have the means at his disposal to survive.

Will we all end up as cannibals? I wonder.  I shouldn’t think about this right now; we must celebrate my son’s birthday.

I told our teens to gather food, to collect branches, to boil some water, to kill the last monkey while the kids decorate the place around, using shells and stones.

When I was younger, I thought that the future was in the hands of our descendants, mainly because I was certain that I would be dead for when their turn came. However, this didn’t turn out the way I expected it to be. I’m living my consequences.  

Our children have copied what they learned from us. Although, there is always a “mutant” who sees things differently, that one who warned the older to stop. That one that we didn’t listen.

Here I am, at a birthday party, eating the last monkey in a soup. My great-great-grandchildren are building a new house with a tree they recently cut. My “mutant” great-great-granddaughter, who decided not to bear a child (ever) is playing with her nieces and nephews. She is trapped here like the rest of us; even when she has tried to guide us, to make us change, to be more intelligent, she will have our fate as hers. She wanted children, but thanks to her sacrifice, the rest will have the portion of food and space she would have consumed if she had followed our ways.

We are too many. We should have stopped. We need to stop, to find the balance.

Happy 100^th birthday dear son. I hope you are not the last centennial. Maybe my flesh will have another purpose to feed my own before the worms.