The story of abuelita

There were a number of shows going on at the Center for Documentary Studies the other day when Mary's was opening. I could have done a better job perusing them, but was caught up with a combination of hosting/talking to friends who showed up (thanks to all of you!) and also reverting to my graduate school days and feasting on the food that was brought. Somehow even after all these years away from grad school the economizer in me cannot resist the clarion call of free food, particularly when it includes a rather serviceable (if surprising) mac and cheese, as Thursday night's spread did.

In the kitchen there was an installation called "my grandmother's kitchen." A very nice young Latina (she preferred Latina with an a to Latinx) woman had decked the kitchen out with a wide range of decorations and foodstuffs to recreate the atmosphere of her grandmother's kitchen back in Texas. We talked for a while about a range of stuff, including baked goods. I told her I had never settled on a preferred item in Mexican bakeries (my polite way of saying I had never been impressed with anything in them) and asked her what her go-to was. She indicated a cinnamony brown item and said it was particularly good with coffee with a little whiskey in it. I took one of those home and toasted it for breakfast the next day. It was fine with a little butter on it.

After most everyone had left, Mary went in and talked to her. In short order Mary heard the story of her grandmother or perhaps great-grandmother, whose picture was on the fridge. Apparently she had been abducted by a white guy and forced to bear his children. When she learned that this wasn't the first time he had done this, and that he had killed her predecessors, she was fortunate to get away.

It seems to me that the moral to my story here is that, instead of pumping her for info about baked goods and snacks (she told me other stuff) I might have asked her about her installation as a whole, or noticed the pictures of the family members on the fridge and asked about them. Then she might have told her story.