Sin Zapato

A pile of fries

As the 9th day of my hiatus from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads comes to a close, I continue to notice how quiet things are inside my head. And how bone-tired I am.

Maybe it’s built-up fatigue.

In today’s adventure, I managed to get my 92-year-old out for a trip to the supermarket. A slow saunter with a shopping cart (that she drags to the right) up and down those aisles is always so good for her. What’s more, she had a sweet moment with a young man in the supermarket parking lot, whose car karaoke reggae was so irresistible it made her dance, which then prompted the young man to sing to her, one hand on his heart, the other out his car window.

My Cuban mom…serenaded by a Jamaican young man…in a New Jersey parking lot.

I wonder if either of them knew they once faced different sides of the same sea.

As we packed ourselves back into the car, I remembered that Mami had mentioned McDonald’s fries a couple of days ago.

“Como esas papitas fritas, nada.”

No lies told. And so, before we headed home I made a quick stop for two large orders. We didn’t wait to get home to eat them, of course. No sooner did we have that brown bag of hot, crispy, salty gold in hand, we dove into like it was our last day on the planet.

Here’s what was left when we got home. As I unloaded our groceries from the car, Mami poured them into a ceramic plate, heated them up, and kept nibbling at them while we put things away.

She shared stories of when I was a little kid, how every now and again my Tia Cari would ask for permission to take me and her kids, my primos-hermanos, to the McD’s on 181st Street, just a few blocks away in our Washington Heights neighborhood.

I remember.

And I remember that later, during my high school years, my endless bus ride from Cardinal Spellman in the Bronx to Washington Heights often ended at that very same McD’s on 181st. The handful of us Spellman kids who lived in the Hood would often hop off the bus on that corner, head inside, slide into one of those bright orange booths, and stay in each other’s company a little while longer.

There was no plan. We just poured ourselves into the moment.

Poured our bodies out of the M100 and into the McDonald’s booth. Poured our collected change onto the cashier’s station in exchange for as many orders of fries at it would buy. And then poured all those single bags into one pile in the center of our tray.

(It was in those years that I perfected the personal art of garnishing each singular fry with a fine line of ketchup directly from the packet. Because that’s how a young Virgo rolls.)

We didn’t keep tabs on who’d given a dime or a dollar. Didn’t notice who’d pitched in or passed. The luxurious pile was open to everyone. Including visitors.

We’d sit in those hard plastic booths for endless stretches, delaying the serious business of homework and homecooked meals and chores for as long as we could without getting into trouble. We ate and laughed and befriended other neighborhood crazies we never would have talked to had we not been exactly where we were, exactly as we were, eyes and ears tuned into our surroundings and each other for the next ridiculously funny look, face, sound, word…

I love that memory. And wonder if it would have happened had I been a kid with a smart phone.

S