Abuela: A Memoir by Arlinda López Rodríguez
- upragenglishpublic
- 14 hours ago
- 2 min read
In my bedroom I have a mirror that is nothing special. It is a typical mirror, but I have arranged pictures on it by tucking them against the edge of the mirror. There are pictures of people I love. I have pictures of my family, friends and those I can only see in pictures. One picture is very precious to me. When I look at this picture a flood of memories come back to me. It is a photo of my father’s mother, Abuela or Vieja, how I used to call her.
She was a strong woman who taught me a lot of things. Abuela was dynamic and hard-working. She was a seamstress and sewed for the barrio. She loved to cook and always had something good to eat, either on the stove or on the fogón. She would take all her grandchildren to the beach and sit in a yola to watch the towels and wait for the fisherman to arrive with the daily catch. Afterwards, we’d go home, and she would make fresh fish for everyone, and we would talk about the day.
She would pull out a trunk full of telas and ask me, “¿qué quieres que te cosa primero, dime una falda, traje o blusa?” She would cut and sew, and I’d have something new to wear the next day. I guess all this was great fun but what I really miss are her talks and laughter. She was funny and always showed me how much she loved me. We would lie in bed at night, and she would tell me jokes and talk about life and how it was. She always told me that a women had to be strong and know what she wanted from life because we guided the family. “Me decía, los hombres siempre están perdidos sin nosotras.”
I miss her greatly and remember her every day. I cared for her when she fell sick and was the last person she spoke to before dying. She said, “gracias por quererme tanto Linda, siempre fuiste mía.”
