In our English class, we were challenge to write a lyrical essay. For this assignment I gave myself the opportunity to explore a little bit of my family’s story, specifically my great-grandmother’s. This is what I came up with in my final piece…
The Taste of Soup
There is a warm welcome hinted at the smell of the spices and tomato bouquet, the clouds of flavor seem to embrace you as you step into the kitchen. A lady adorned in a bright red apron stands by the stove as she begins to pour the tortilla bits into her clay casserole. She’s got a round face the type from characters in your black and white cartoons, her hair is short but it curls endlessly through her head. She’s tall enough to reach all the things you can’t in the pantry and she’s got arms that could wrap around you and provide enough warmth in the coldest winter. She notices you standing there and her face washes in a bright smile.
“come in mija, la sopa de tortilla ya casi esta lista”
This was only one of her many ways to show you how much she loves you, when she pours the soup into a bowl, you know she’s also pouring her heart for you.
Remember that time you and your sibling had chickenpox? It lasted a whole week, and she was there to tend and take care of you each day. You were still a kid, you didn’t know how many risks she was taking. Remember Christmas? She’d have you and your siblings line up at her bedroom doorstep as she’d take the key to her wardrobe, when she’d open it you saw the rows of boxes of the same doll stacked up over the car toys. When your turn came you’d get your doll and a pair of new socks. Despite your dislike for the same toy year after year, you didn’t know she had saved up the money to give you something to make that Christmas special.
You heard her stories from your mother.
“She was on her own with 7 children
Rodolfo, Maria, Marina, Luis, Adriana, Susana, Rafael,
she moved away from home and came to Tulpetlac,
she built a new life of what she could afford,
which wasn’t so much… “
More often than you were to know, she’d make up the money she didn’t have with her goofiness, her jokes, and her laughter that filled the room in an instant. She was a hard worker and entrepreneur, as a single mother, she refused to be anything less.
Upon her arrival, she changed so much. The very idea of a bathroom with pipelines in Tulpetlac had not even been considered before her. People started placing big rocks outside of their homes to sit and watch others walk by, a tradition from the birth town she had introduced as well. In her attempts to make money she had bought a TV. In the afternoons when kids left school, she asked for “5 pesos” for an entry to her house and to watch cartoons, which in the town she lived in was considered a luxury. Then when color television was introduced, she didn’t have the money to afford another new tv, so as resourceful as she was, she bought transparent color paper and taped it to her tv. Each day those kids saw tv with a variety of colors like no one else.
Years later you’d find yourself moving from her house, 2 hours of distance between the two of you. Your birthday would be around the corner and you’d have no hopes of seeing her. She’s been really ill, she’s had to walk with oxygen tanks and a trip to your birthday doesn’t seem like what should be her priority.
Yet she makes it just in time before you start with the cake. She gives you 100 pesos as a gift and you can feel her hands shaking as she holds yours, they’re frail as if the very gentle touch would evaporate.
Why did she come? You feel guilt running through your body with constant chills. She didn’t have to, but she chose to take the trip for you.
She loves you.
You remember her soup, the smell, the taste, and the millions of colors that partied in your mind as you ate it. You know you can never replicate the taste, no matter if the ingredients are the same, and you have the timing just right to heat and pour the ingredients. Your Abuela’s soup. The one you’ll never taste again. You continue to repeat her recipe nonetheless, knowing this is one of your ways to honor and remember her. Sopa de tortilla. It was her specialty . . . or so I was told. I never met my great grandmother. Gloria.
The stories seem endless and with each passing year, I learn more about her just as if I’d known her my entire life.
“Our ancestors don’t die as long as we remember them”
Annotated Bibliography
Personal Interview [Mitzi Arellano] (2020 November)
I interviewed my mother about some of the memories she’d remembered most of my great grandma. Before this interview, I’d remembered one of those memories she’d told me about the most. Whenever she made my great grandmother’s soup she’d say she couldn’t get it to taste the same way. During quarantine she wanted to pick up knitting, because she’d seen her doing it before. She’d told me she was the best grandma ever, adn each time she’d tell me all those things, I wanted so badly to have met her, as I interviewed her, I only became more eager for that wish to come true which gave me a lot of inspiration to retell those stories.
Neighborhood Change [Phone Interview with Mildret Arellano]. (2020 November 15)
In addition I also interviewed one of my aunts to get more insight upon my great grandmother’s life with someone else’s perspective although she did share some of the same memories my mother did, she gave me more distinct memories of her time on her as she affected the lives of others outside of her family. When she had moved she began finding ways quickly to rebuild her life for her and her family and in the midst of doing that she created an impact on the lives of people in that same small town. This interview was really helpful in terms of providing a different sense of fond memories about her that though are linked to her family also present her as the hardworking individual she was.
Photo Album (2020 November). [Gloria Menchaca Portrait]. Retrieved November 15, 2020
I got this picture from a family photo album and it is the very same image my family and I use in our ofrenda each year. I thought it would be a good fit to use this same photo at the end of this essay, although it was partly intentional to allow the reader to imagine this grandma character. I did want to put a face to the character at the end as a way to introduce her.
Intention Statement
The taste of soup is a fraction of my great grandmother’s life as seen through my mother’s eyes and memories from my aunt. At the beginning of this essay, my idea was to talk a bit of my deceased great grandma and the importance of remembering loved ones who have passed away with the traditions of Dia de Muertos, and though this is still true to the intention of my essay, I chose to elaborate more on the life Gloria had lived, sort of like a show and tell. Each year in Dia de los Muertos my mother has shared with me stories from the people we put up in our ofrendas and each year my great grandmother’s portrait (as seen at the end of the essay) is placed on the very top center spot in our ofrenda and the stories my mother shares with me about her are the ones I can tell she remembers most fondly. During the interview with my mother (Mitzi Arellano) I was able to gather fractions of memories and moments in her life she shared with Gloria, shed witnessed her utter love for her family and her dedication to help her family first hand and as she shared those same memories with me I was able to share be part of those memories of her just as if I’d been there. I wanted the reader to feel the same way and while empathizing to the feeling of love and warmth of a grandma they’d be able to see why it is we celebrate dia de los muertos, because instead of mourning for the time we don’t have with those who left, we have their fractions of memories with us and we celebrate them and their time on earth.I really never met her but hearing all of her stories, it truly feels like I did and I know we reunite when dia de los muertos passes by. At the end of this essay I wanted to wrap it up with the same soup I had started with, upon one of my personal memories of my mother preparing this same soup, she commented more than once it didn’t taste the same but she knew her grandmother would still be proud to have her soup passed down to me.