The tortilla was not going to make it

Carmen came over this afternoon under the official pretense of helping me go through the next round of archive coordination materials — I’ve been slowly working through the follow-up calls from the family contacts Margaret introduced me to, and honestly, the emotional weight of that project has been sitting heavy. Carmen said she’d bring snacks. What she actually brought was the energy of someone who had no intention of doing anything serious.

The tortilla was not going to make it

Somewhere between sorting through a folder of mid-century baptism records and me mentioning that Abuela Rosa always said the secret to a good tortilla was ‘knowing when to stop,’ Carmen decided we needed to attempt one. Right now. With what was available in the kitchen. This was, in retrospect, optimistic. The rolling pin situation was fine. The dough situation was technically fine. What emerged from the pan was — and I want to be precise here — not a tortilla. It was more of a concept. A suggestion. It had one very thick edge and one edge that had basically ceased to exist. Carmen pointed at it and said ‘that’s a taco bowl that gave up,’ and I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the kitchen floor.

the tortilla that started a twenty-minute spiral

We made zero progress on the archive materials. Ate the failed tortilla anyway — it actually tasted fine, which somehow made it funnier. Pre-Fourth of July week, summer heat pressing in through the window, flour on the counter, Carmen still laughing about the shape of that thing twenty minutes later. Some afternoons are just exactly what they need to be.