The Suffering of Change and Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918

The household has slowly dwindled in number. The daughters of Mariherminia have returned to their stations, Lea to Miami, Francesca to Caracas, Laura to Tabay, and I have had my first taste of living alone in Mérida with my grandmother’s cousin. Our first moment was a bit cliché like the overwrought moment in a poorly made romantic comedy when the unlikely couple sense the first intimations of their future as they touch hands reaching for the last french-fry. Our moment took place some days ago. We were alone, for Lea was not home (likely at the clinic next door getting a shot of Vitamin B complex in her buttocks).  The house was quite and with very little conversation, Mariherminia and I prepared dinner. I made a salad with a dressing made from French Dijon mustard, a fact that Mariherminia wasted no time in reminding me made it very expensive. She heated up a pot of lentils. We worked with our backs to one another. I focused on my task, while she focused on hers. Suddenly, we finished preparing and sat down at the table, blinking dumbly as the light over the kitchen table wobbled innocently from side to side. Our solitude had caught us both by surprise, and we each paused before eating to peer at the other. In this moment, we judged and measured each other. She wondered how she had found herself with an American man eating at a table that had been hers alone for more than a decade. “Dear me.” I could see her brain working, “How often will I need to place down the toilet seat? What will happen when he eats all the food? How many years will this rapscallionacious youngster take off my life? Will I have to teach him how to use the bidet?”  In the dim light, she took her first timid bite of lentil soup and emitted the faintest of giggles. “I believe we are going to develop a very good friendship.” She said.

In our Casablanca-esque moment, I would have run around screaming with joy, if I had not expected a reproach for doing so. In the nakedness of being alone with Mariherminia, I realized I must, once again build a lifestyle subject to scrutiny, and she too saw our lives beginning to intertwine and the inevitability of our knowing more about the other than we had thought. Though apprehensive of what might come, Mariherminia, the woman that asks me daily if I could please not forget to put on deodorant and who considers improperly washed dishes a sin against god, threw caution to the wind and nodded her approval as we sat below the wobbling kitchen light timidly eating lentil soup. 

  

Frase Del Día: No le para bola
It took a few days for me to learn this phrase that I had initially believed to mean something that is used to augment the size of a man's penis. The saying actually means, “ pay no attention to him.” It was finally engrained properly when Lea and I were driving through El Centro of Mérida, and she laughed loudly with no reason. I asked what had induced her sudden outburst of mirth and she replied that a man on the street had said “no para bola  tu papa nunca”, or “Pay no heed to your papa". I silently agreed, yet continued to wonder what point had the man reached in his conversation that called for such a statement: “Why wouldn’t you want to place a rat and a lobster in a closed box and see what happens? After all, you should never listen to what your papa would say.”