A tablespoon of water to eke out the last little bit before the onions & peppers get sliced and added. Mid-conversation, mid-instructions to my father, she sidesteps from island to flame, scraping the pasty earthiness into the pan.
Decades & generations of family later, everything she creates is always just right. The pepper pops under her strong loving hand, leaning her whole body into the rotating motion–deep from her shoulder through the palm of her hand, willing the pieces unmeasured into perfect proportion. Maybe a sharp corner of anise or an eyelash-thin thread of a garlic peel. Look close & I’d swear you can see remnants that can never be ground or washed out. On the kitchen island, a squat rough small volcanic thing. An island of food in the ocean of family, an island of fecundity & fellowship.) This spot that isn’t the fire, isn’t the water of the kitchen. I don’t know what they call it in other languages in other homes. (What a lovely word for this space in our homes– island. People walk by the molcajete there on the kitchen island. I’m not going to call it that–we never did, never will. We call it a molcajete, although technically it’s supposed to be called a molcajete (the bowl) and a tecolote (the grinder).
Generations along those dusty Starr County streets.īoutique kitchen shops sell the smooth white marble variety, a device better suited to a medieval apothecary than a Mexican kitchen. Work the town depended on, where everyone knew everyone by first name. Lives of honest work with their hands, with these tools.
Two men, fifteen miles apart their entire lives. Miles of fabric have burnished the metal guide brackets to a crisp silver gleam. Under the bar connecting the kitchen to the living room, an iron & smoothed wood sewing machine with a still working foot pedal from the 30s, a real conversation piece. On a shelf in their study, an official US Post Office scale from the 40s, its elegant detailed dial stilled after decades of bearing & measuring the heft of countless packages, ounce by ounce. There are certain items in my parents’ house that are downright totemic.
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