Yesterday, Sunday, March 11, was in Venezuela, as in many countries, Mother's Day. Yesterday, as we have for a long time, my sisters and I gathered at home to celebrate the most wonderful, incredible and brave being I know: my mother.

Also, as usual, we gave her gifts very early in the morning, which she opens, visibly excited, but immediately afterwards she keeps them, supposedly, to use when there is a special moment. No lie: my mother's closet, at 70 years old, is full of clothes, shoes, objects, waiting for an ideal moment.

In a previous publication I commented that many of us are living the second half of this game called life and although it is hard for us to admit it, it is more the time we have lived than the time we have left to live. That is to say, we are more full of the past than of the future and the only certainty we have at this moment is the present, today, that is why we cannot leave anything for tomorrow.

I remember that when we were little girls, my sisters and I, our parents would buy us things meant for “special occasions” and those special occasions never came, so we never had the chance to wear that pretty dress or those shiny shoes. The example I remember most was my dolls. We had the toys we played with on a daily basis, but we also had expensive dolls that my mother would hang on the walls of our room that we could only take down when it was a special day. Then childhood gave way to adolescence and the dolls remained in their boxes, unopened, untouched, because we could never play with them, because we believed that childhood would last forever.

Yesterday, while my mother was putting away her presents, my sisters, who are also mothers, were putting on the blouse, pajamas and shoes we had given them:

_The special moment is this - said my youngest sister who a year ago lost her son, my youngest nephew, 18 years old.

So, the invitation is for us not to put off until tomorrow the clothes we can wear today. Nor should we postpone for later the kisses, the demonstrations of affection, a meeting or a desired trip, that dream you always had. Today we are here, tomorrow we don't know. Life must be used, taken out of the box, not kept as decoration, just like the dolls of my childhood. Life is not eternal and when it is our turn to leave, we will only take with us what we have lived. As my sister used to say: “the special occasion is today”.