Digressions: My Life in 500 Words or Less

Some things can evoke a spirit of another era so strongly they transform and transport you.

Such was the case recently in our home.

But let me back this up a couple of weeks. That was when Rebecca decided what country our Christmas dinner would be based on: Mexico. You see, for some years now we have celebrated the holiday in a non-traditional way. Rebecca selects a country, and our Christmas meal is based on that country’s traditional cuisine. In the past few years, our Christmas meals have represented countries around the globe, including Russia, Australia, China and Indonesia.

This year’s Christmas dinner has special significance, though. In part, Rebecca felt the spirits of my parents and ancestors inspired her decision. She chose homemade tamales as the featured dish. Mom used to make them.

Homemade tamales are notoriously a lot of work. The meat is slow cooked. For each tamale, the masa, or dough, is patted by hand into a corn husk and filled with meat. Traditionally tamales are a holiday food in Mexico, specifically during Christmas.

Rebecca was not deterred by the challenge, though she admitted she was a bit nervous.

I suggested she try a test run, and she thought that was a good idea. So, after she gathered the ingredients and found the corn husks (at a Mexican restaurant where she was told making tamales was a lot of work), she gave it a try.

The amazing thing wasn’t the outcome. It was the process.

Mind you, the outcome turned out great. The tamales were a success.

But the real reward was the process.

You see, making tamales by hand turned out to be a somewhat magical experience. Rebecca tried to relate to me how she felt as her fingers worked the masa onto the corn husk and spread the meat onto it, how the earthy smell of the masa evoked a connection to a land and time. She could not quite describe it, but, in essence, she felt the spirit of a culture’s ancestry.

I understand this. The process looks almost ceremonial, like a ritual of rhythm and movement.

I remember watching Mom make tamales. In my mind’s eye, I see her in the kitchen of our family home, sitting on a low bench in front of a speckled granite roasting pan, her fingers pushing and shaping the masa onto the stiff, curling corn husks, I can envision the activity performed under various conditions for generations.

During Rebecca’s test run making tamales, I took the opportunity to try my hand at it. It all felt simultaneously familiar and mysterious. In some unfathomable way, I felt as if I was not — at that moment — completely in my own place and time, as if I had dipped a toe in a pool of infinite historic timelines.

Never has it been so obvious to me how much one generation can merge into the consciousness of another.

Never have I been so grateful to be made aware of it, either.