Discovery

Well, I can´t take the credit for it.  It is not my discovery, but it is a fun one anyway.  On Wednesday night, we put the older kids to bed and as they drifted into peaceful slumber, we slipped on our shoes, bundled baby up and took a little excursion to a stranger´s house.  She is the friend of a friend, and though I know very little about her story, I know that we share more than just the one friend in common.  She married an "American" and left her homeland behind.  This we share with the friend that brought us together as well, so we met in her house.  We don't share a country of origin, but we share the same language.  Four of us gathered in her little living room and made acquaintances while we waited.  Two from Mexico, two from Guatemala.  We sat in her beautiful living room reflection of her life, a marriage of two cultures.  

About 20 minutes into our wait someone said:  "here he is", and on cue the four of us grabbed coats and shoes and stepped out into the cold of the night to greet our new friend of sorts:  Don Margarito.

Don Margarito has a box truck that he drives around the state.  He carries his truck full of Central American and Mexican products and delivers around the farms where such nationals work.  He caters mostly to working men, so most of his product is canned and some trinket snacks of the school recess type.  But more than the material content of his truck, his deliveries are of the emotional kind.  Who would have thought that so much of home could be felt in a conglomerate of boxes inside a truck?  Because there, in the midst of those boxes of cans, bags of chips, jars of salsa, and all that stuff, for a little bit of time I was a child in the little store around the corner of my parent´s house, and I was a girl in the little kitchen of the janitor of our school buying snacks at recess, and I was walking the central market as my mom bought the produce for the week...

After our brief encounter, I walked away with the most expensive chips I have ever desired to buy, a bag of "tostadas", two avocados, and a bag of coffee bread.  Just a little taste of home.  

 

 

And just as I have done too many times to count at my parents house, Thursday afternoon, right around 3:00 I sat down with a cup of coffee and traveled back in time...  all thanks to a friend, her friend and Don Margarito.