Posole

TS:  So tell me of this memory you have. The one that has no obvious connection to the remainder of your life?  You mentioned it briefly to me the other day when we were eating at Baja Fuentes. You said you had this weird experience in Mexico.  You said it was too loud in the restaurant and that the loudness would only frustrate you in trying to tell the story, but that you would share it another day when it was more appropriately quiet. It is quite quiet now.  I would love to hear the story.  It was the story you said was entirely detached from other memories of your youth. You mentioned that there was no comparable or obviously adjacent memory. You said it was tied to Mexico.  

VS: Sure. Sure. OK. OK.  I can tell that story now. Sigh. 

Once when I was ten my dad dropped me off with strangers. In Mexico. He simply left me with people I did not know.  That had never happened to me before as far as I can remember.  I don’t even recollect ever being dropped off at friends or relatives for that matter.  My relatives lived to distant to visit by car.  And my friends and I visited each other’s houses, but we were not “left” there.  

And for certain it never occurred again. My father left me in a small village in Mexico… at some casita I had never seen before. And he left me with people I had never seen before. Or since. Don’t ask which village as my father never stated the name of the village.  He never said anything about the people he left me with. Before or after. And since I was unaware that we were going to Mexico that day, let alone any village in Mexico, I did not, obviously, think to ask in advance. In my ten year old brain, the one that experienced this moment, I was simply left alone with strangers some where in Mexico. 

TS: Why not after?

VS: What? 

TS: Why not after this incident?  Why did you not ask your father after the incident as to why he left you with people you did not know at a place you did not know?

VS: At the time it was too traumatic and I wanted to simply forget about the experience. I spent an entire day completely afraid and I wished to have as much distance from those events as I could possibly have.  And I successfully managed to do so for several years. 

Years later, when I did recollect the event, it became simply too awkward to bring up given other aspects of the relationship I had with my father.  By the time I would have had the resolve to pose him this question directly, he had passed.

TS: I see… OK. OK. How did you know you were in Mexico?

VS: Because I do remember coming back home through border patrol.  I remember this because I also remember the immense sigh of relief I felt when I saw men in uniform with guns and that some how provided me a sense of safety.  Safety from what, I do not know.  As I was never really in any danger.  Not obviously present or imminent danger anyways. 

That said, I don’t recall actually going through border control on the way to the village where my father abandoned me for several hours.  Who knows why?  Probably because I wasn’t paying attention to detail as I was ten and had no idea I was going to be left alone with strangers in Mexico for an entire fucking day. 

Anyhow, I, as you know, was born in Yuma Arizona. We lived there until I was in my early teens.  So I was quite familiar with Mexicans given our proximity of the border.  In fact many of my classmates were Mexican or are of Mexican descent.  But I am not.  I mean, duh, with my red hair and pale complexion, I am entirely not Mexican and about as stereotypically of Irish descent as you can get. 

I didn’t speak Spanish back then. Back then we did not have an option to take Spanish until High School.  Nor was speaking Spanish encouraged. Not that it was discouraged. For what it is worth I never heard my dad speak Spanish. In fact I have never heard either of my parents speak Spanish. But many people in the community did speak Spanish and it was common to do so.

TS: Did you find that weird?  That you lived amongst people who spoke Spanish yet didn’t speak Spanish?

VS: Hell no.  Not at all.  That was normal in those times.  

Yet, as far as I can tell from what I remember, the family he left me with was nice. I wasn’t beaten or molested or raped.  In actuality, nothing at all bad happened that day.  Objectively speaking, absent being seemingly abandoned by my parent for an entire day and left with complete strangers I had never seen before or have seen since, it had all the makings of a peaceful, pleasant day.  It was the type of day that we romanticize about as adults. Hell, I had the type of experience that unimaginative affluent people pay thousands of dollars to have as they grotesquely wish observe an idealized rustic simple lifestyle and then pass the experience off as though they themselves have lived such a idealized rustic lifestyle. 

But in the moment in which I was experiencing this I was simply a disconsolate, terrified child abandoned by my parent into the hands of complete strangers made worse by the fact that I could not understand what their language.  I was irrevocably sad.  And very scared. 

Imagine this: My dad drove me at age ten to a remote village in Mexico.  We parked.  We got out. I have no idea if he said anything to the people as I was petting a dog that had wandered up to me.  My dad then said “Bye kiddo”, got in the truck, started the truck, backed out without further acknowledging me and left me there.  

TS: That does sound extremely terrifying. How could your dad drop you off like that? Wasn’t it weird that he didn’t say anything?

VS:In some ways yes.  He left me in an unfamiliar place with people I did not know. In some ways no.  My dad was always a man of few words.

TS: What did you do?

What would most ten year olds do in that case? I stayed only on the porch. I tried to shrink into something small and unnoticeable hoping that doing so would mean no harm would come to me. Soon after he left, I began to cry, though, and I despaired if my father would return for me.  I started to shake uncontrollably from fear. 

While my father was a always a bit odd, it seemed unlikely he would just leave me forever. But nor had he ever left me with strangers in a place I did not know. What could I do?  I couldn’t run away or run back home.  I had no idea where I was.  I wouldn't leave the porch as I had no idea where I would go.

Eventually, an old lady brought me food.  One thing she brought me ws something I later learned was called posole. And she also brought me fresh tortillas. At least I remember it as posole.  It may very well be that my latent racism misremembers it as posole.  It may be something like posole, but wasn’t actually posole.  I’ve had posole many times in my life since that time, but none of this has ever quite matched my recollections of the broth I had that day. So who knows? We fill in the gaps of our inaccurate experiences the best we can. But those gaps are heavily populated by our innate bias. Best I can tell I had some version of posole.

But I definitely know she gave me fresh tortillas. I mean, for fuck sakes, I knew what a god damn tortilla was even then given we lived mostly on taco bell for several years. The old lady would wave me to come over to her from the porch, but i was resolved and would aggressively look away from her when she did so. When I wouldn’t relent the old lady would waddle over and hand me this food. The tortillas were magnificent.  Fresh. Indescribable.

Absent that, the entire day dragged on forever.  It was hot. The sun baked the porch. I became slightly sun burned. I was given water as well as some other drink that I never clearly understood but was somewhat sweet and refreshing.  In every way the people who came and went through out the day were people that in hindsight treating me most kindly. People when entering the house would walk by me and say what was likely “hello, how are you?” In Spanish. I can only guess this in hindsight. Regardless I was never treated ill or looked at in a menacing manner.   Only smiles and nonthreatening eye contact.

That evening, when the oppressive sun set and the temperature cooled, some older men gathered and played music under a single incandescent bulb.  Today decades alter, I see them clearly under the lightbulb with their earth toned guitars. 

I can recall feeling the melodies of music they played, though not the words. Even at my young age I felt the songs tended to feel melancholic veering towards sad. Obviously, as a ten year old I didn’t know the word melancholic, but I did feel what I later would come to understand was labeled melancholia.  Oddly, even when the songs bordered on a raucous and celebratory energy they had a feeling of melancholia.  The simultaneous expressions of longing and  resignation sung by melancholic voices. 

That portion of my memory has stayed with me most acutely.  Anytime I have felt melancholia as an adult I think of these older men playing their songs of melancholia.  It is funny how song can transcend the obstacles of language.

Anyhow, I never learned who these people were or how or why my dad came to leave me with these people.  He came back long after it was dark and the  men had stopped playing. I wordlessly got into the truck and we left in silence other than his truck rattling along the road and his shovel banging around in the pick up bed. Him? He said not one thing.  Other than smelling of dirt and soil and sweat, he was entirely as he was when he had left me. And I never saw those people again. 

But damn do I remember them vividly.

TS: And yet you forgot it for many years.  What prompted you to remember it?

VS:  Years later I was in northern Mexico with a boyfriend at the time.  He was an archaeologist, I was a college undergrad, and I travelled with him to an indigenous site he was studying. We happened upon a small cantina that served food and there were musicians playing on a porch.  Something about the time of day, the food, the songs switched the memory on like a light bulb.  Funny, thinking about it, I recall the incandescence light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. I’m sure something about them also prompted my recollection.

TS: Very interesting.

VS: I look back at that memory with complex emotions.  One is the pure feeling of thrill of surviving an uncertain situation in an entirely unfamiliar environment. Another portion ambrosia recollection of senses heightened by fear: the taste of food, the sound of music, the sixth sense tingling of knowing the old woman bringing me food was being kind.  Another is the intense feeling of frustration of feeling entirely helpless.  

But the emotion that over rides them all, the one that engrained those adjacent emotions is the always the sheer feeling of horror from being a small child left with no explanation.  

Yes, I have recollections that recall a certain nostalgia for an experience with music and food that I have never quite experienced in the same manner since that time. But it is always moored to this perpetual feeling of uncertainty in how others I trust value me that has never really left me since that time.