Wordless Wednesday: Exprimidor

I recall my grandmother having one of these--or many of these as the years wore on. On a whim last spring, I set out to make my own fresh-squeezed lemonade so I bought a handheld juicer from a local store. It was a pretty red and smooth and had a good handle, but when I got it home I realized it was actually too bulky for me to be able to juice properly and didn't juice well either. So the next time I went to the mercado, I bought me one of these, un exprimidor de limones (lime juicer). 

It's easier to handle, juices much better, and was a fraction of the cost I paid for the one I got at the store. More importantly, it's just like the one my grandmother had and reminds me of her. And as I note, I found that I like limonada made with limes and not lemons . . . I'll have to remember to post that recipe when it gets hot again.

Throwback Thursday: The Front Porch

Ah, time for me to blog . . . as in it's been forever since I blogged and I actually have time to sit down and write.

Time is a funny thing; it can go by quicker than you realize and then another day, time just drags by as the minutes slowly click off the clock. You're young one day and the next day you wake up and you're forty, but it feels like you're still twenty-eight.
- - - - -

I suspect like many families during a different time and place, my grandmother's front porch was a special place during the afternoons, evenings, and well into the darkness of most any night.

I remember as a child sitting on the edge of the porch, watching my feet dangle without touching the ground. Of course, I was relegated to a seat on the ground because there were only four, sometimes six, chairs on the front porch, two on each side of the front door on opposite sides of the porch and occasionally one or two in front of the window facing the street.

I recall my grandmother always sitting on the left-hand side of the porch (where, if you weren't careful, you could hit the person sitting next to her with the screen door). Maybe she sat in that somewhat-precarious spot because you could see all the people coming over the railroad tracks and down the street toward the house. And if they saw her sitting there, they'd stop by and visit for a while.

There were so many times I recall that everyone sat outside, visiting, feeling the breeze sweep across our faces while the younger-than-me kids ran around from the backyard to the front yard, playing chase games.

There were the Fourth of July festivities that we gathered for at my grandmother's house. Her house was perfectly situated to see the fireworks that they'd launch from Amigoland Mall, which was just a hop, skip, and drive over the old bridge to Matamoros. And there was that one Fourth of July (or maybe there were more) that my mother and her brothers (as adults) decided to launch fireworks from the empty lot across the street. Luckily no one burned anything down or got hurt in the process, but it does make me wonder the crazy stuff they did as children.

The kids would get sparklers, and we'd write our names in the sky with those. And then there was the watermelon. Grandma could cut (gut?) a watermelon like no one I've ever seen before or since. We'd all end up with these huge wedges of watermelon out of just one melon. How she did it, I don't know, and I still wonder in amazement (and shiver in fright) at her skill with a knife.

We'd all take our wedges of watermelon out on the front porch where we'd sit around the edge and spit the seeds out into the yard, waiting for the fireworks to start.

But what I remember most about her front porch--other than all the neighborhood and family gossip and meeting all kinds of family I'd never met before on that front porch for the first time--were the chairs. From year to year and season to season that woman only seemed to want a certain kind of chair on her front porch, replacing them only when they'd finally rust out.

I ran across similar chairs just this past week, and I was instantly taken back to sitting on grandma's front porch listening to the adults talk while I sat there and tried to piece together what they were saying.

I miss those days on the front porch . . . and how in my younger days and naivete thought there'd always be another visit on the front porch with grandma and my aunts and uncles.

And now all I have are memories and pictures of similar chairs . . .

Wordless Wednesday

I saw this the other day . . . who can resist a t-shirt mentioning the time-honored tradition of grandmas the world over (or at least my grandma)! 

Return & Retread . . .

Hiatus has lasted longer than I expected, sorry about that. And blogging may still be a little more sporadic than I planned (Tues, Wed, Thurs) when I set out to first do this, BUT I am still alive.

Today's post is one that I wrote several years ago, I've modified it only a little. I know some of you may wonder why I usually only mention my grandmother or my grandparents together and hardly, if ever, my grandfather, maybe this will help explain some.

- - - 
The day I got the phone call saying that my grandfather died was bittersweet, because the truth be told, I had lost him years before that day in May 1995.

In my mind, he will always be the man I remember as a child and a teenager. You know when you're younger, things around you aren't always what they seem or what you understand them to be. I remember being three or four years old and visiting my grandparents house, and my grandfather would walk my sister and me down to the little neighborhood tienda (store) a few blocks away to get a treat. As we walked in, everyone would greet my grandfather, come and shake his hand, and "talk his ears off." My grandfather, unbeknownst to me at the time, was somebody--a somebody that had a life before he was my grandfather.

Me (left), my grandpa, and my sister (right), 1975.

As a young man, mantequilla (butter), as he was known, was a pitcher for a local baseball team. Mantequilla because his pitches were smooth, like butter. He played baseball for several years, often traveling to different cities in both the United States and Mexico for games. And you might can imagine my surprise, when I began researching and I found his name in various newspaper scoreboards . . . he was a good baseball player.

As an older man he was a delivery driver . . . and perhaps it was his baseball "fame" or just that he had grown up in the same neighborhood he lived in all of his life, that everywhere he went, people greeted him and talked talked his ears off.

Perhaps, it was his keen sense of humor that drew people in. In his sixties, he took his first ever plane ride for a visit he and my grandmother made to see my aunt and her family in southern California and my mother and our family in central California. I remember one afternoon he was teaching my brother and me how to play "dice" (I imagine he'd played it a time or two for money); the radio was playing in the background and then that song from Footloose, "Almost Paradise" came on. He turned to us with the dice shaking in his hand and a twinkle in his eyes, "Almost pair-of-dice, get it? Pair-of-dice?"

So many memories flood my brain when I think of my grandfather, and I only wish that as he neared the end of his life he could have remembered those and so many more.

My grandfather, like many older Americans, suffered from Alzheimer disease. My family and I watched as the simple, Sundowners Syndrome (his hallucinations began when the sun went down) developed into full-blown Alzheimer disease that required constant nursing attention. The vibrant, often witty man, with his own brand of humor disappeared slowly at first, and then more rapidly, in front of our eyes. He was replaced by a man who did not always recognize his wife, his children, or his grandchildren and was unable to care for himself, eventually dying from complications of that disease.

- - - 

In the end, it’s about remembering the people around us, our own strengths and abilities, and a lifetime of memories.

Hiatus

As a result of some scheduling issues, there will be no new blogs until May 28th (date subject to change). 

Throwback Thursday: Toast at Grandma's

This morning started out earlier than normal with a kiddo climbing into bed with me because of a bad dream. And then said kiddo proceeded to ask me if it was time for breakfast yet. . . . finally, I relented and got up.

When we made our way to the kitchen, I asked what was for breakfast. The reply, "toast." I congratulated myself because I had obviously come across as a woman who requested a no-hassle breakfast request. 

And as I put the bread in the toaster I was suddenly reminded of my grandmother. A morning, as I recall, that my sister and I were at her house when my parents went out of town (which happened like once in my childhood). I was maybe four years old. I woke up, got dressed and cleaned up, and went into the kitchen. Now, in my kitchen, walk in and make yourself some coffee (which I don't drink), tea (which I sometimes drink), or breakfast (which I usually don't make or eat), but in my grandmother's kitchen, you just didn't walk in and do anything.

Me, about three, on swing set

So she was tending to my breakfast. She might have asked me what I wanted (I was one of her favorites) or it's entirely possible that she  decided what I was going to eat. She had already decided what I was going to drink, café (coffee). OH yes, my grandmother was that grandmother--the one who doesn't listen when the mother asks to please refrain from serving her child coffee and the like. Yeah, my grandmother pretty well did what she wanted, especially in her own kitchen. 

This morning I was having toast. I recall sitting at the table (covered in plastic, by the way) with my sister as I waited for my bread to toast. It was bright in the kitchen; the sunlight was streaming in through the window above the sink and the window over by the stove, and the back door was open. And then in a flash, the toaster buzzed and out shot the toast. I don't mean a little bit, but literally flew in the air as if it had been shot from a rocket. It was the craziest thing and scared us silly. But we all had a good chuckle about it.

And so when I pushed the lever down on the toaster this morning, I couldn't but help smile a just little at the memory of toast at my grandmother's house. . . . 

¡Hasta la proxíma vez!

Wordless Wednesday

This muñeca (doll) is one of the many kinds of dolls I remember from my earliest trips into Mexico (at that point, only Matamoros) when I was a child. The dolls are so simple, and yet they are played with for hours.