Loving relentlessly amidst gathering clouds
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- February 9, 2025
- 1422
I sit in a kitchen filled with mismatched chairs and a table covered in oil cloth. It’s easier to clean, I mentally note. Small shakers of salt and napkin holders sit in tandem with spicy condiments, awaiting the arrival of handheld delights. The smells of cooking food are indescribably delicious.
I look at my husband and see his face gently relax, his mouth speaking the words of his birthplace. The gentle hum of Spanish fills me as I sip my café de olla. For a minute, every recent care drops away.
This is what he gives me after so many years together, time. Sometimes I mourn the fact he will never buy me some gadget I’ve mentioned in passing. The information is fleeting and doesn’t stick. The horrors of his childhood mean he didn’t know how to give love. It was something he had to learn.
He can only now receive love after never having had it and how can I expect him to know the most complicated sides of me? I receive what he gives me with a hunger.
The waitress brings to the table a fragrant bowl of menudo for him and two gorditas dorados for me. Inside a thick handmade corn tortilla that has been slit for stuffing and dried to a crunchy perfection is a filling of picadillo. For the uninitiated, this particular mix is ground beef, onion, potato and carrots. It is stuffed inside the shell and topped with lettuce and queso fresco. In front of me is two homemade salsas, verde and rojo. I alternate dripping each one every other bite. My face starts to sweat, and the burn of a good salsa begins to do its work.
George has squeezed two lime wedges into his menudo with a healthy spoonful of cilantro. He tucks into the soup, the rich broth making his face a round circle of delight.
He slurps. I crunch. We sigh in rapture.
Around us are tables that, while empty when we entered, have slowly filled with others seeking morning sustenance. Conversations on the president and ICE raids ensue, and opinions fly around the cozy room like a hummingbird seeking a place to land. I listen carefully, making notes in my ever-expanding file of words. I expand myself so I can learn.
I understand — now — something I never did before. George has given me a multi-culturally diverse world, one which has exposed me to things that mean love to me. I’m not as complicated as I once thought, or maybe I’ve misjudged what my world is because of him. He knows me thoroughly.
We sit and work through our food, ordering just one more gordita and several tamales verdes to go. Supper will be just as exquisite. I finish off my cafe de olla, and we shrug on our coats and say, “Provecho!” to those still eating. I see a vat of carnitas bubbling as we walk out the door. The warm space always welcomes me, and to feel that is to know love.
Welcome. Bienvenida.
We drive through empty Sunday morning streets, looking at houses and architecture and rundown spaces we might fix. We look at each other and know that love exists in the smallest of spaces; to have it is luck. And like Diana Butler Bass, author and American historian of Christianity, said, we will choose to “love relentlessly” amidst the gathering clouds.
Melissa Herrera is a reflective writer who captures the beauty and sorrow of change. With a career spanning 14 years as an opinion columnist and the publication of two books, she resides in Stark County with her husband and four cats. She writes to preserve memories. You can reach her at junkbabe68@gmail.com.