Pass the Umbrella

I have a photo, burned to the back of my eyeballs, recorded in my heart and in these words...

I came home from afternoon class and running errands in the fog to find my host mom making chile rellenos. Her sobrina (niece) was helping and the entire house was just alive with movement. I started to watch telenovelas (soap operas) with the sisters..

maybe i should pause here to say that the first night, as siblings kept popping up out of the blue, that my host mom tells me ¨we are 9... 10 with you¨. however, that doesn´t count sisters, grandmothers, etc, etc, that are there more often than not.

i should also take this time to tell you that i may or may not be capitalizing anymore, and will use my own form of punctuation, as it comes more naturally to me...and i can´t really figure out this keyboard. but i will be cured of overusing smiley faces by the time i leave, i believe... mostly because i can´t find the colon mark.

so, i´m watching telenovelas--and they are wonderful--but i decide that i probably should be learning to make chile rellenos. The common area of our house is open-air there is a small grill where the fire was going. As I emerge from the girls room, it´s getting dark and I see that abuela (grandmother) is holding a candle so that her daughter can keep working on the chiles. Then it starts to sprinkle, so now abuela is holding a candle and an umbrella. Sobrina brings the batter and stands on the other side of mom. At this point I´m kind of ´pink'panthering´about them and asking the occasional question to try to learn. This is also about where my urge to take a picture sneaks in...but i resisted. (whew!) It starts to rain more, so the platter to which they are depositing the delicious stuffed chiles gets moved under cover. (This is where I come in). The next time sobrina takes off to get the platter, I tell them I´ll get it. So now, I am running back and forth, waiting for the order from mom, serving as protector of the completed chiles. THEN (oh yes) 3 year old grand-daughter comes home and wants to help, but the oil is splattering occasionally. So her dad comes and picks her up so that she can safely see, takes the umbrella from grandmother...and i stand back, soaking it in thinking ´this is family´.

Lovely. and delicious.