Right now a thunderstorm is whipping rain down from the sky in every direction.
It’s the kind of rain that is so loud it makes the house quiet.
And here I am, remembering a much gentler rain from thirty years ago, the one time Granddaddy took me fishing on his small aluminum boat. We woke up early to catch the fishies. Mom packed my lunch; Nana packed his. This memory comes from the year we lived with them, also known as: the year after my father died.
We sat on a cold boat in the middle of a lake. Although he was quite the joktser, I remember it being very quiet. Maybe it was too early. The fish weren’t biting, so we ate our lunches. Mom had packed my lunch which meant nothing good, also known as: everything healthy. Nana packed his, so it was damn good. He even had a dessert: a piece of lemon cake wrapped in tin foil. That was the only part of his lunch he shared with me.
We ate it with our fingers as it started to rain.
This is the kind of memory that makes me sad Andres and I can’t give our sons a Granddaddy, a Grandpa or an Abuelo. Those people passed away before our love story began.
But this kind of sadness doesn’t make me want to cry. Like all forms of love, it is bittersweet, filling then leaving my heart larger.
This is the kind of sadness that makes me want to bake a lemon cake.
And so I am. My house is full of its warm smell and the sound of pounding rain falling all around us,
yet leaving my children and me, deeply protected.
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