Good Friday

Sitting around the kitchen table, my mom, madrina and grandmother told me stories of lent as we ate capirotada de ricos. Not all cueresma food are made alike. Evidently capirotada de los ricos is made with pan dulce, while capirotada de los pobres is made of the left over bolillos that were given away at the bakeries. I grew up eating both.

"On good Fridy we would fast til after noon...In the kitchen they would be cooking the lenten food, chile rellenos, enchiladas, camarones, capirotada. So the whole house smelled like food and we couldn't wait to eat."

Food and religion seem to be a long standing tradition in my family. As I grow into my own family I wonder, how these traditions will continue. Then, I spend time with my prima, she also keeps lent, knows how to make camarones...We share the same sense memories around religion, holidays, food, family. She wants her children to have some of our own childhood- it was that good.

Sometimes the people you expected to grow old with change. It has for me, and finding the people that are learning the ways of our past, makes me feel hopeful. Together we can carry the traditions the women before us brought with them from their homes in Aguascaliente, to their homes in Tijuana, then San Diego, and further north.

Although I have not fasted this morning, the tv is already on, the radio is on also, I won't make it to mass today either: I have made chile rellenos once, and the recipe is typed on a file in my computer called mamis recetas...I know the lessons of the Matriarchs before me are alive and well, just waiting to emerge.