Christmas found
I used to covet my photographs, snapshots of my past, reminders of static moments in time. I hid them away most of the year, encountering them in shoe boxes in closets and under beds while looking for things that I really didn’t need. I relied on my pictures as a city to a levee, believing they would always be there, relieving my brain of the need to recall moments. I remember the colors, long washed away in a storm, diluted and running down my heart like a melting candle; swirling images of blended moments — Halloween, birthdays, graduations — all now blended together by time and salt water. Having these visual aids washed away, relieved my eyes of the burden of carrying the memories, instead sharing the task with my other senses; unrealized input sources stronger than my eyes.
My brain embellishes the memories that a photograph wouldn’t always allow, adding a few more hues as time goes on…hues of smells and happiness and belonging. What once started as an average, Christmas holiday scene— grandmother cooking, cousins opening gifts, the wood paneling of the walls and plywood ceilings — now blooms into a spectrum of smells, sounds, tastes and feelings, painting a picture for my now blind heart.
The smells of Christmas for me are those of seafood, canela, burnt tortillas, fake pine spray, as well as the burning of the dust whenever we needed the furnace, coffee wafting from the Folgers plant, and the smells of 5 adults smoking cigarettes like a train in a small house.
I can still hear my grandparents’ television, tuned into Univision en español obviamente, volume turned so loud you’d have to scream to each other to communicate, which just made them turn it louder. You’d look across the room every few minutes and start laughing hysterically at just how loud it was. Across the room, I can hear my cousins’ excited voices as they pointed to large gifts with their names on it, and the arguments of the married couples that they thought the kids couldn’t hear.
Man…oh, man…the tastes! Cajun and Tejano, piled onto my plates spread across two houses. Empanadas de camote, shrimp étoufée, meatballs and cocktail weenies in BBQ sauce, warm tortillas and butter, seafood gumbo — hundreds of years of my family tree stuffed into my mouth. Try as I might, I have rarely found the equivalent of these tastes.
The hardest feeling…is just that…the lack of touch. I’ve struggled to find a way to feel my lost pictures. I’ve tried drawing them — I’m no painter. I’ve tried warming my hands over the stove — I wouldn’t suggest it. The truth is, I was doing it all wrong. I was using my heart to store these memories, all piled up as smells, tastes, basic snapshots…but avoiding the way I actually feel on the inside; so how do I get it out? I had been using my memories to give me feelings, but never thought about giving my memories feelings. As I write these memories for you to read, I can feel the keys of my keyboard, the cold on my hands and feet, the hunger in my stomach for those holiday meals, the deafening silence of absence, and the longing for those very merry Christmas times.
Merry CHRIStmas! Feliz Navidad!
