This is something I wrote 10 years ago and was reminded of after a roller skating experience that I will write about later.  I consider the fact that I was able to ONE: find this file, and TWO: rescue it from the clutches of a laptop so old that it took 20 minutes to turn it on, a small miracle.  In light of my last blog post, I was also surprised to find that apparently I write a lot about Santiago, Nonno Luis, Nonna Maffi.

Here it is, unearthed and unedited:

My 90-year-old grandmother lives alone in an adobe house that is cracked here and there from resisting a century of Chile’s frequent tremors.  I was at her house last month with Desmond, my boy.  (I say “boy” because he is no longer a baby, though before I became a mom I would have considered a 17-month-old like Desmond a “baby.”)  The two of us were walking around her ancient and overgrown backyard.  I think you would be surprised to find such a yard in back of this old adobe that lays right smack dab in the middle of a gritty and dirty working class neighborhood in the heart of Santiago.  However, at that moment, I was not thinking about the incongruity of finding this greenery in the middle of the city.  I was watching Desmond intently, ready to swoop down and break his next fall—which could happen at any moment given his extremely wobbly gait.  I watched as his impossibly unsteady step stumbled over pebbles and the occasional clothespin or twig.  Once in awhile, he would reach his right arm straight up into the air and flutter his hand around.  This is the sign for, “I need your hand, mama.  I want to step over this obstacle.”  I gave him my hand, and now we were walking through a patch of dirt on the far side of the yard.  His footsteps caused little puffs of dirt to escape from under his shoe.  Each little puff carried with it the dry and pleasing smell of earth.  Puff.  Dirt.  Puff.  Dirt.  Puff.  Chicken shit.  Chicken shit?

Oh my goodness, yes.  Yes.  There were chickens here once.  And a rooster.  And a canary in a red cage that hung in the doorway.  And there was a dog!  Titan.  He bit me once.  Or was that my sister he bit?  If you were surprised to find this large, wild backyard in the middle of Santiago, then you would be even more surprised to know that it was once an Eden.  When I was a little girl, we traveled back to Chile often.  My mom and dad left the country in 1974, after the coup, but both of their families remained.  This adobe house belonged to my dad’s parents.  When my grandfather was alive, he kept chickens that laid blue eggs, trees that bore so much fruit that the branches nearly touched the ground.  Lemons.  Apples.  Peaches.  Quince.  He trained the canary to do tricks.  He died when I was twelve years old after being very sick for many years.  I think I must have been six the last time I saw this garden in its full glory.  After he passed away, my grandmother, Nonna Maffi, was too stricken by his death to maintain the huge lot behind the house.  It was not that she couldn’t, it was just that she didn’t.  It was his realm.  He created it.  Perhaps it was most appropriate to let it go with him.  So after my grandfather was gone, I was no longer woken up in the mornings to my grandmother singing a song and carrying a blue, soft-boiled egg.  I was getting too old for that anyway.  A dozen visits have passed since that time.  I forgot about it completely.  Well—not completely.

I looked down at Desmond who was now fully captivated by some sort of large, flying insect.  I get caught up, everyday, with the immediate needs of this bouncing, curious toddler.  It’s easy for me to forget what he is.  It is easy for me to forget that he is more than my son.  He is, in a way, my future.  He will go on to do and live things that I will not do or live.  It is easy to see our children as potential, as future.  But what I did not realize until the moment he kicked up the sour smell of chicken poo, is that he is my past.  He is my link to memories, and by extension, he links me to people both alive and dead.  He is a connection to my mom—a person with whom I now have a very adult relationship.  But once, long ago, she used to wear a gold, heart-shaped pendant on a thin chain made up of the smallest links I had ever seen.  I loved that necklace because it represented her, because she wore it, and because she was everything to me.  Today, I see the way Desmond marvels at the ruby on my wedding ring.  I know the look on his face.  I know what is stirring in his heart, and in my mind’s eye, I can see my mother the way he sees me now.  On that afternoon last month in my grandmother’s backyard, he let me see the garden paradise again.  I saw my grandfather scattering chicken seed, my grandmother caramelizing condensed milk over the stovetop.  I could see the way Nonna Maffi looked then—black hair streaked with grey—and now.  And though her hair is silver and her shoulders stoop, she is still the same woman.  Same eyes.  Same good and true intentions.  What a rare and unexpected gift from my boy.  What will he show me next?  What other memories will he dust off with a wave of his hand or a stomp of his foot?