MARMELODIAN: Blog/Diary

Sultry Summer Day: Brownsville, Texas, circa 1959

Waking up in the early morning, to the sound of doves. Lying quietly in the attic bedroom, watching dust motes float through the air on the slanted rays of the new day, under the wings of model airplanes, dipping and diving from the ceiling, beautiful airplanes meticulously crafted and painted by my father and his brothers in the 1920s.

A small breath of wind off the Gulf of Mexico lifts the curtains. Waiting....waiting for my mother and sister to wake up, waiting for the sound of Papa Tello's footsteps on the porch and the squeak of rusty springs on the back door. His footsteps signaled that breakfast was waiting on the dining room table, two big brown paper sacks of sweet rolls and pan semita from Vanny Tilden's bakery.

After breakfast, a little walk out to the garden. Mama Maria's garden behind the wall, paved with gray stone, bordered by raised beds throughout. Fig trees, grapes, pappers, and herbs. A few messy ducks waddling around, ducks that belonged to my cousins Steve and Eddie Mac. I loved to stand out under the arbor and eat grapes right off the vine. My grandmother brought the cutting for that vine when she and my grandfather fled Mexico during the Revolution in 1911.

Soon Romana would arrive from across the river in Matamoros. Romana, the tiny little Indian woman with gold hoops in her ears and the sweet eyes and smile. Romana, who patted out tortillas by hand all morning. It takes a lot of tortillas to feed the twenty or so people who sat down at the long dining table every day for lunch.

The lunch menu almost never varied. Rice, beans, tortillas, steak, salad, milk from the Hygeia dairy and for dessert, either orange sherbert or fruit cups. Every once in a while, my grandmother would make flan, sprinked liberally with nutmeg.

Long sleepy afternoons....the drone of ceiling fans, snores from bedrooms, the children played quietly on the screened porch, mostly card games. Endless games of war, go fishing and canasta. Thumb through books from my grandfather's vast library. Walk to the end of Elizabeth Street to St. Joseph's academy to swing and slide on the playground. Tentatively creep into the back of the church, and marvel at the stained glass windows, the statutary and all the plaster curlicues painted like Easter eggs.

Back home by early evening, to catch a few episodes of the Mexican soap operas broadcast from the TV station in Matamoros. Poke around and investigate the secret places in the old house, on the look out for the forgotten treasures left behind by those nine boys and the one little girl who lived there so long ago: marbles, match books, odd and ends of bottle caps and string stashed in cubby holes and drawers.

After dark, we spent hours outside sitting on benches and chairs out front or on the porch. My grandfather and his grown sons walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the house, talking and smoking. My grandmother and aunts sat, fanned and quietly talked. And the children piddled and diddled as children do, running, jumping and playing with the odd cat or dog, or in our case, ducks. Until finally, very late, we'd congregate in the garden to cut watermelons and spit seeds before saying goodnight. And then the reluctant climb up the old wooden stairs to the hot bedrooms in the attic to nod off on the high iron beds, to the droning sound of insects, under the wings of model airplanes dipping and diving from the ceiling, beautiful airplanes, meticulously crafted and painted by my father and his brothers in the 1920s.

I wonder where those air planes are. Could they have out survived the nine boys, who became the nine men who were my father and uncles, who are now all gone? 

As I wrote my new song, Sultry Summer Day, the images that came to mind were of those hot summer days in Brownsville, Texas when I was a little girl. You can hear "Sultry Summer Day" at my website, www.marmelodian.com  

Be Well and Good Luck. Martha Maria