1 Villa Union. Grandma’s tiled house, that of my first memories, is now an Oxxo. It is two blocks from the El Cuchupetas restaurant, the main landmark of Villa Union, the town in southern Sinaloa where you were born. We were going from Culiacán on a Three Stars of Gold, that line of buses driven by poorly treated drivers. In Villa Union I went to the National cinema, which showed films by Pedro Infante and El Santo. You cried every time we had to return to Culiacán. You told me that maybe it was the last time you saw your mother, because she was sick and old.
2. The Garmendia Market. Every Monday you took me to Garmendia market. You with a bag of ixtle, me with another. At that time oranges tasted like oranges and watermelons tasted like watermelons. You always asked the prices of vegetables and meat. You did it to complain: complaining was and is one of the favorite pleasures of market customers. You told me that life was very expensive. After shopping, we went to get a smoked mullet to take away, in a restaurant that was in front of the post office. Then we got on the El Rayito truck to return home. On the way, we listened to songs by Leo Dan, Los Ángeles Negros and Los Potros on the driver’s stereo. I looked at you out of the corner of my eye: you were a beautiful woman.
3. Your splendid kitchen. Attachments are governed from the kitchen. You always come home through the kitchen. For its smells that are memories. For the hurried conversations of our mothers. Your kitchen was everything. It was a way to show love for us. You felt like it was what you could offer us the most. You tried hard to be liked, without expecting rewards. Today I see how ungrateful we are to those who offer us their food. Its secrets of life in its flavors. Why didn’t we thank you once we ate? Why didn’t we tell you enough about how we liked your stews? We devoured them without being aware of their greatness. But they are still here in our memories and will never leave us. That will be our tribute forever.
4. Your expectations. Then, and against your opinion but not your will, I had to go to study in the Federal District, now Mexico City. Cinema and books had made me grow wings and knew that there were other worlds and that I would have to look for them. It was coming and going on buses that made more than a day of journey. You waited patiently for my increasingly less frequent returns. You said: “I know that children are borrowed, and less and less come back.”
5. The drawer of memories. In a container of fine cookies, you kept your secrets. Those earrings for special occasions, that you never wore even on special occasions. The Escamilla studio photograph of each of us with a fake cake. Strands of hair. Cards. You didn’t have a photograph of your mother there, since she never let herself be photographed, but you did have newspaper clippings of who knows what. Some old coins and a photograph of you, me and my father on high school graduation day.
6. Our silences. I would eat up to twice a week at paternal house. You and my father ate very early. I left work at three. You served me your dishes of the day and one or another reheated. Age had already come back to you. While I ate, you accompanied me and we watched TV. We hardly spoke. It wasn’t necessary: You felt happy and I wanted you to last forever.
7. Your departure. You left without saying goodbye one morning. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything we experienced and the great love you gave us. I wondered what a good son he had been. If he had lived up to your affection. I answered yes. All our memories were there. Our conversations and all those words we didn’t say to each other. Silences also say loving things. I knew then that even if you were gone, and wherever you were, I would never leave your arms.
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