THE NARRATIVE ARC

Tortillas, Trauma, and the Ties That Bind

A culinary voyage through heritage, healing, and the heart of my grandmother’s kitchen

Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

I warm one of yesterday’s homemade tortillas over the open flame on the stovetop. My French Bulldog, Bert, who could easily be mistaken for a russet potato with legs, waddles in as if on cue. He stations himself like a sentinel between me and the stove, a lovable but obstructive mass of drool and errant gas. I don’t have the heart to banish him; I’m equally spellbound by the smell filling my kitchen.

The surface of the tortilla begins to bubble, and it slowly expands as if taking a deep, full breath. Golden brown freckles infiltrate the pale exterior, and the first tendril of smoke beckons me close as the scent of charred tortilla permeates the room. This deliciously unmatched smell of my childhood acts as a time machine. Suddenly, I’m not in my kitchen in Tomar, Portugal; I’m 4,582 miles and 46 years away, standing beside my grandmother as a wide-eyed five-year-old in 1978.

At the tender age of five, I’d already grasped that being a brown-skinned, doll-loving, girly boy was not just risky but perilously dangerous in our small, conservative, predominantly white Nebraska town. It seemed my very existence offended the community…