Less Than 48 Hours in Mexico City

Friday, Feb. 26th, 2016

1 p.m. Arrive from Chicago to Mexico City Airport. Waiting in customs line.

3 p.m. After a frustrating 2 hours of trying to get my phone to work, finally connected with cousin Christian who picks me up from airport and off we go driving through city streets to funeral parlor. Suitcase in trunk.

4 p.m. Arrive at funeral parlor amidst a gigantic celebration pilgrimage to the Basilica de Guadalupe. Thousands of people walking around, firecrackers going off that make you jump every other minute. An explosion of noise, colors and smells.

Once inside, I see relatives I haven’t seen in 40 years, 20 years, and a few months. We embrace and kiss each other on the cheeks. I walk into the parlor where Tia Chica is laying. She is wearing her coat and clutching her rosary and looks at peace. Her hair is still speckled black and white – just like the last time I saw her. Floral fragrances penetrate the air. We wait for the priest for what seems like hours and finally he arrives. He proceeds to give a full mass in spanish. I am glad that my parents made me go to mass in spanish a few times as a child but it is still not enough. All of us American mexicanas are completely lost. My sisters and I walk up to the casket together and cry and pray and embrace. Everyone cries as they weep their final goodbye and we console one another. We are united in our mourning. Dad goes with her body to the crematorium and we don’t see him again for hours.

6 p.m. Cousin Christian drives us back through the city so that we can check into the hotel and clean up before dinner. None of us have eaten anything in over 12 hours. We laugh and cry so hard we almost pee our pants. We fall back into our sisterly roles and pick on one another- taunting and teasing and loving each other only the ways that sisters can. We feel sorry for Christian for having to put up with us.

8 p.m. We are on fumes but refuse to eat hotel food and lay in bed. Christian takes us to La Casa de los Abuelos for dinner. Mom asks for a drink and I’m thinking that’s a great idea, I could really use a good drink. The waiter says they don’t serve alcoholic beverages at La Casa de los Abuelos. Somehow this leaves us in hysterics. Poor waiter. We inhale our food. Meet up with Dad after dinner back at the hotel and yell at him for not eating anything (he is diabetic). Around 1:30 in the morning, we fall asleep and I get the big bed all to myself while my sissys share one. They tease each other about eating too much dairy and what might happen as a result. Ah- good times with sisters.

Tia Chica’s Empanadas

I have a new friend. His name is Don Patricio. He’s in his mid to late 60’s and the abuelo of twin boys on I’s soccer team. He and his wife arrived in Chicago 40 years ago from Ecuador. Now they live in St. Louis, with their son and his wife, helping to raise the grandchildren.  He’s been here a year and he desperately misses Chicago and its large Latino community – I hear it in his voice and recognize it because I too share that same longing and familiarity.

He calls me La Reina Mexicana- The Mexican Queen. He is very sweet and introduces me to the other Latinos at the elementary school. He knows them all and they adore him. There are Cubanos, Ecuadorians, Argentines and Bolivians. We all have our own story of how we arrived here in middle America.

This past Friday night, the elementary school held it’s annual international culinary festival fundraiser. The gym was filled with an ethnic smorgasbord of foods- Japanese sushi rolls, green tea matcha cake, Jamaican sorrel, jerk chicken, festival, German bratwurst, Cuban tamales, and on and on. It was a huge celebration of our merging of cultures. I represented Mexico and made 40 servings of arroz con leche– Mexican rice pudding.  So it only made sense for Don Patricio and I to spend Thursday’s entire soccer practice discussing what else but food. I asked him what he was making for the festival- I knew it was going to be something yummy. He told me his wife was going to make ham empanadas. That one word alone took me back about 30 years to Tia Chica’s empanadas.