My Traditions

 

I left like a turtle

home on my back.

Remembering my traditions, they were simple

tortillas y tamales

are what I remember the most

without my grandma they aren't the same

My grandmother didn't come out of a fairy tale storybook

Her eyes deep

her hands always caressed with the scent of Oil of Olay

she didn't sit in a rocking chair

her house didn't smell like roses

it was more like mothballs, that as a child fascinated me

The roses were outside

a patch of strawberries and fallen apricots from a neighbor's tree accompanied them

I can still remember the Moses Lake chill awakening my bones

running from the old Cadillac to my grandmother's kitchen

in the dead of night

she always had a plate of something

good to fill my tummy with

and a flour tortilla

 

In the mornings after my grandpa's cup of coffee

feeding the chickens and a dirty dog named Fido

I would help my grandma with the tortillas

I would watch her knead all her love into her big mix in the white ceramic bowl

cover it with a tollita

and wait for it to rise

we would sit and pick through the good and the bad beans

until she would take her fat islands of dough and place them on a burnt comal

Her house filled with Tejanos mixed with noise

a bottle of R-n-R and a game of Thirty-One

the kids sat at the little table to play Loteria

with my grandma's bucket of pennies

There always seemed to be a thousand and one kids leaving the door open

my grandpa yelling after them

Christmas time came with a table filled with my tias

spreading the masa

and my grandma cooking the meat

it wasn't the same without my grandma

because mis tias with all my love

wouldn't make the tamales right

one year uncooked

another without salt

 

I had nicknames like toothpick or flacita

mainly because I was picky eater

except for when it came to chile con carne and a tortilla

from my grandma's cocina

in those meals was her expressions of all her love

all of her stories

that I have grown to understand

closing my eyes and breathing in the memory

will always bring me home

I remember my traditions

I remember my grandma's tortillas y tamales