In defense of our desktop
Carmen is discouraged: her last date Tinder has ghosted him. She tells her cousin Lorena de ella at one end of the table while she listens to her stirring the glass of gin tonic with the attitude of someone who knows how to make voodoo dolls: “go to her house to tell her that he is unpresentable”. Pepa interrupts the secret talk between cousins: The neighbor from the fifth is pregnant! Across the table, Paco smokes a pure and his father, who kneels with the last shot of lavender remember that day in 1964 when they saw small sharks in the beaches of Elche.
Who wants a game chinchón ?, José proposes after returning from the kitchen. One more glass of brandy , and me from Bailey's ! Conversations about bitcoins, how to make tay day t-shirts and Netflix series float around. A Rauw Alejandro song is also playing and the grandmother asks the teenage grandson to change it for one of Antonio Machin . The card game begins, but one player is missing. The snoring from the sofa they give away Gustavo taking a nap in front of the news.
We could be talking about a vignette of Francisco Ibanez or the Spanish version of Hannah and her sisters by Woody Allen, but surely many of you recognize that scene with other names and jokes. The desktop it's a intangible heritage which globalization could never tame, as necessary, as ours as the twelve grapes, the mantillas or the blinds. Stories within others, like a castiza matryoshka that today explodes after months of Zoom talks and the desire to share a Pacharán without a mask.
The desktop (and the wine)
**WE CALL IT 'SOBREMESA'
In Galicia La Rianxeira is sung when things get high and in Levante the donuts are sprinkled with mistela. In Huelva someone takes out the sweet wine from Condado and in the Canary Islands the remains of bienmesabe are devoured. Geographic nuances around a innate exercise as it is to dedicate one, two or whatever hours arise to catch up, exchange opinions and feel that time stops between laughs, jokes and yes, that last coti filed in the hairdresser.
Although it is thought that the first referent of the desktop was invoked by Jesus Christ himself during a dinner in Canaan (Palestine) , his imprint would be enhanced by the roman emperors , accustomed to paroxysmal feasts that centuries later inspired families like the Medici. a community feeling born in the mediterranean to settle into our lives more as a spontaneous act than as a premeditated encounter. Plans are born over table talk that could dominate the planet, conversations that define lives, but also banalities more liberating than a pilates class.
First, let's talk about the members: the tabletops can range from several generations around the same table, to a meeting of two with intense dyes. Mother and son finishing the bottle while opening Photo albums that don't make you miss Instagram. Grandparents who contemplate the miracle of life with a smile as they fill their empty glasses. The friends taking photos of Sandra, asleep in that kiwi float, while someone takes out the candy bowls to accompany the digestifs.
In addition, there are always several profiles: the person with good storytelling who knows how to give suspense until an appointment with the podiatrist; the nostalgic one and his childhood stories; the “antenna”, aka that person who looks at the cell phone or remains silent and only participates when she has to; the modern one who proposes to make a family tiktok or, the most feared, who takes advantage of any excuse to start a political debate.
Another factor is the search for a space for which we are never demanding. may well be the family home , the corner bar or the grandparents garden where a huge vine sighs, swollen with stories. The little balcony wrapped in tropical plants, the living room with poufs or that narrow kitchen where you can put in the background the songs that your father danced in the parties.
Of course, desktops are spaces for let go and forget about the diet . The matcha tea here is a simple exoticism, in the middle of a card game someone comes back with two plates of lasagna and the keto diet can wait until tomorrow. The after-dinner symphony is governed by disinhibition, by returning to warmth through the senses and the looks, of that hand that makes its way between the glasses to look for another, or fall into the irresistible topic of blowing out the candles of a cake to the rhythm of Parcheesi.
after months locked up at home and without the possibility of meeting with our loved ones , today we realize how much we have missed the desktop. A reward that these weeks we even extend more than necessary while we toast to compensate for lost time. We carry in our backpack so many pending anecdotes , so many "me that March 14 was in...", so many hugs and laughs, playlists and reflections of brothers-in-law, that we even forget that other tradition that is the siesta.
In fact, at end of the table , the grandfather has ended up keeping his son-in-law company on the sofa. Now they sound bee gees and Carmen's chair is empty, but her cousin keeps her secret: she has finally gone home from her match to tell her that she is unpresentable.