Back in the bread aisle, crying because I miss you
A love letter
We were three beers deep and I was starting to feel tipsy, my clarity blurring as I tried to follow your winding train of thought. You were describing something complex with so much conviction that if it hadn’t been you I might have considered it pompous. But you were just being you. You saw past and through everything so clearly that it sometimes felt like you had a sixth sense. You took no bullshit.
You were only 9 months older than me. We met once when we were six and not again until we were 20. But we only really got to know each other during our third meeting when we were 22, galavanting around France together during our semesters abroad. That’s when you became my dear primito and I became your favorite primita. But first, we fought. A lot. Misunderstanding and disagreement abounded because we saw the world in such radically different ways. You grew up on Colombia’s northern coast in the storied colonial city of Cartagena — the land of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and history-altering British defeat. I was born in the Andean metropolis of Bogotá but was swiftly whisked away at the age of seven to live out the rest of my childhood and adolescence in Floridian suburbia. You developed a “go with the flow” spirit where nothing is a big deal and a smile can ease any frustration. I learned that everything should be pre-scheduled and that following the plan is the only surefire path to success. Lord knows we were not meant to be travel partners. And yet, here we were in Marseilles and en route to Lyon. You were crouching in the train bathroom hiding from the ticket-puncher because you hadn’t had time to buy a seat before boarding. I was livid, you were laughing. I thought this was the fundamental difference between you and I but I was wrong. By trip’s end, you had me laughing with you.
After I moved to Bogotá and you got back from your three-month adventure in Mexico City, we met up at your favorite dive bar for what would be our last cousin hang. You told me about an exciting new Netflix collaboration you were working on. I expressed how happy I was for you and how excited I was that I was finally starting to find my place in the city. I thanked you for your advice to not put too much pressure on finding a job. You told me to just go out and do things — attend events, meet people, to live and breathe the city — you told me that’s how I would learn to love it. And you were right.
I left Bogota on March 14, 2020, unsure of when I would be able to come back. COVID-19 had been officially declared a pandemic and I thought it was best to go back to the U.S. and weather the storm with my parents. I visited you at the hospital on March 12. You were eating maizena and Ducales crackers contentedly, though your hand was shaking as you brought the spoon up to your lips. The maizena was perfect just like your mom made it when you were little, you explained. You offered me a cracker and I politely declined. I can’t accept food from a cancer patient, I thought.
It has now been a month since you went away. Your soul left your body because it was too weak to start the chemo treatments. You had picked up the flu, miraculously not COVID-19 but another variant: H1N1. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone in the family. You probably even had the wisdom to laugh about it but I’ll never know for sure. It was kind of funny until it wasn’t. Until your dad called my dad to tell him that his son had died.
As any responsible young adult daughter would, I’ve been grocery shopping for my parents during this bizarre reality that is living in pandemic times. I go to Walmart because it’s cheap, but everything about it ruthless, unapologetic coldness gnaws at me every time.
A Scottish friend of mine and her Colombian boyfriend once told me about their first experience in an American grocery store. The produce is terrible! one of them exclaimed. They asked other very valid questions I had never considered like, Why is the cereal aisle so huge? and why are so many vegetables packaged in plastic? As I walked through Walmart’s soulless aisles I couldn’t get these questions out of my head.
My vision glossed over slightly as I passed the Nabisco cracker and cookie section that took up over half of an entire aisle, then Hostess, Little Debbie, Pepperidge Farms. I wanted to know what you would say. What would you have had to say about the state of late-stage capitalism in America as experienced in a Walmart? I bet you’d have such a perfect, eloquent way of synthesizing it all into a brilliant cultural critique. You had a way of making sense of all of the ways that the world doesn’t make sense.
By the time I’d made it out of the rows and rows of processed snacks and to the bakery section to pick out some loaves of bread, the small part of my face that was visible above my mask betrayed me. I was in tears in the bread aisle deciding between Pepperidge Farms and saying “fuck it, I’ll go make bread like every other self-respecting millennial!” I decided to go with the DIY option only to discover that there was absolutely no yeast to be found.
You would have laughed. The irony! So much bread but no yeast to make your own. I rushed back to buy factory-baked bread and found myself once again back in the bread aisle, crying because I miss you.
Sometimes I have this daydream. I think about the next time I will go to France, if there ever is a next time, and I think about being in a French train station. I can hear the“dadadada” signature jingle that announces that a train is about to depart. I imagine you showing up as if on cue, turning a corner and running toward me, apologizing with a smile while struggling to catch your breath. I smile cooly and say “No big deal,” just like you taught me. We hop on the train and watch the French countryside roll by as we struggle to hold back our uncontrollable laughter. We made it. I don’t know where we’re going and frankly, I don’t care.
