"Yes, I Will Try"

Tacos are

the recipe that inducted me into the cooking hall of fame--in the corridors of my imagination, at least.

I was reminded of this when I recently heard, for the first time, a story of an "aha" moment in my Grandma Rosa's life, a moment related to her "fame" in the annals of her cooking history, too.

In the late fifties, it wouldn't have been called such a thing, but oh YES, an aha moment it was.

It started with my grandma's widowhood. A young mother of four children, she lost our grandpa to an automobile accident when he was just thirty years old. Grandma was just thirty, too. Left to raise her little ones alone, Grandma's horizon loomed daunting. She was a Spanish-speaking immigrant in California, a product of her upbringing, raised to believe in marriage, home and family, and the husband who would provide it all.

She depended on the man in her life for livelihood, and her job was to keep the home fires burning.

In the maelstrom of grieving and shock, Grandma couldn't immediately imagine what to do, where to turn.

Another man in her life stepped up to the plate. A relative with his own family took her, my dad and his three sisters into a tiny, earth-floored shelter in his own back yard. He helped them with food and the basics as he he could, and arranged for the little family to go north each summer for grueling months of agricultural picking.

My dad was five years old when my grandpa passed, with a toddler sister and two above him by a few slight years. In 2015, I have a five-year-old granddaughter we shelter from an hour in the sunlight, with sunscreen slathering, a water bottle, and little to no exertion. Back in the day pampering like this was unheard of, but knowing that still hardly tempers the reality my grandma and her little family knew.

In fact, after a few seasons of this, Grandma suffered an excruciating injury. She didn't go back, and neither did she allow her children to. Instead the family pulled together and made their way into the ensuing years, all the way to adulthood. My dad eventually joined the Marines, and my aunts, one by one, married.

Their coming of age proved a mixed-bag of emotions for Grandma. Yes, they were grown and a worry lifted. But together they were a team, forever her help and more so as the years went by. Now that they would have their own families to put first, the day came she asked aloud, "What am I going to do now? I have to do think of something I can do for myself. I have to come up with a plan."

In that day and place, "Cordelia" Knott of the now-famed Knott's Berry Farm was selling chicken dinners to the locals, at amazing pace. Grandma took note of this, and the light bulb in her head sparked her "aha" moment. She said aloud: "If Mrs. Knott can sell chicken dinners, I can sell tacos!!"

An adventurous and intimidating thought, all at once.

Grandma told herself, "I think I can do it." And then, "Yes, I will try."

Grandma by then was a property owner, and so she went to the bank to borrow money. She moved into a house behind the house she raised her children in, and the work began to transform the family home into a restaurant.

Early on, Grandma was overwhelmed with the commitment. Her girls pitched in, but babies were being born, attentions were being spread thin and exhaustion setting in. For a time, "cooking" literally got shoved to the back burner, while Grandma pondered that maybe her plan wouldn't work, after all.

Grandma soon found she had little room for pondering. Bureaucracy reared its imposing head, when the city notified her that her building, now commercial, would have to have business conducted within its walls, or its walls would have to be torn down.

In a scramble, Grandma pulled it all together. Her sons-in-laws kept their day jobs, but agreed to devote after-hours to promoting and building up "El Rosal", my grandma's namesake. All three of her daughters, Bea, Nina, and Cecilia, contributed the very best of their work ethic and enthusiasm toward the venture. They put together a substantive menu, chockfull of favorite family recipes for traditional Mexican dishes, as well as many American standards.

One false start almost led to two, until a popular, long-established local diner decided to shut its doors. Then, that eatery's biggest customer base, the "Auto-netics" factory, was suddenly impelled to give El Rosal a try. Very soon, addicts akin to modern-day "foodies" teemed on the doorsteps of my grandma's restaurant, in numbers too big to ignore. On the weeknights and days, couples and families filled the place, and every weekday (except closed Mondays) a combination of all spilled out onto the generous patio.

I came of age at "El Rosal," working there from the time I was twelve years old (my Social Security application just affirmed this!), ceasing about the time I got married. Working with my cousins, aunts, uncles, and siblings wasn't just a good WORK experience, it was the best, happiest mesh of many diverse memories.

Just before I got that Social Security card, I was an eleven year old in my own family's home. My "aha" moment, like Grandma Rosa's, centered on TACOS, and it too, led me to believe I could and should open up a restaurant...but way later.

It all started with the "Jamaica" (pronounced "Ha-my-uh-ka"), a churchyard festival, oriented to the Mexican culture, in a Santa Ana neighborhood. My dad LOVED to go there, for the tacos. He loved to order a waxy cardboard "boat" of them, sit at a picnic table and savor every juicy, drippy, spicy bite. He always reserved a corner of a tortilla to wipe up at the end the juices and shreds of lettuce or melty cheese that got away.

Oh, how he loved those tacos. I did too, and we didn't have them often enough; the festival was a seasonal thing. My mom made good tacos, but for some reason they paled next to the vibrancy of the "Jamaica" ones, even though no one I knew (then or now) could surpass her in any other delicious thing she ever brought to the table.

One evening I asked her if I could try to make supper. She paused only as if to SEEM like she was pausing, and then an amused, "Yeah, well, I guess..."

Somewhat nonchalantly, but also on-the-ball, as if the offer might quick get away.

I was always observant of my mom's cooking. Eleven was too old to "Captain Crunch" or "Franco-American" anything, and so serious tacos it would be. Using what we had on hand, I kicked it up a notch with the juices and the spice, mostly. I pulled my tastes buds back to their immersion in the tacos at the Jamaica, and I put in every single thing and more I thought those tacos had.

When my Dad tasted his first taco that evening, his eyes popped wide and beamed big. Not one to gush, he gushed. I was afraid my mom would slap him (or me)up one side the head, for his near-swooning, "Luisa...these tacos taste JUST like the ones at the JAMAICA!!"

Not a lot of reaction from Mom, but at least we had our heads left. Despite her toned-down response, the moment was like a passing of the "taco torch", to me. I made them many more times in the future, and other meals, too. Mom caught a break now and then; what wasn't there to like about that?

How Dad reacted to those tacos said a lot to me. Tasty food doesn't just subdue hunger for the body, it enlivens the spirit. It is not just about fuel, but about fueling anticipation, and joy. A good meal doesn't just vanish off the plate, it stays in the mind and spurs the senses into wanting to revisit, time and again. Even while resisting excess all the way!

Decades later my taco-inspired "aha" moment played on me much as Grandma Rosa's did for her. In my time, I thought: "If Grandma Rosa could sell tacos, I can sell....chicken salad."

Chicken salad was a specialty of my mom's, very simple, very delicious. I wasn't in California anymore, I was in the Midwest, with a more "bread basket" audience, and so really yummy chicken salad on bread, and later on in a "fold", otherwise known as a thick homemade tortilla, it was.

But it didn't start out chicken salad. It started out everything-typical-Midwestern fare, with a little "Mexican" thrown in. It started out, as it did for my Grandma, overwhelming from the git-go. In a very short time I was retreating, wanting to dig a hole and throw myself right in.

I did pull back, and let someone else take it over. That didn't last either, and just when I was lolly-gagging, taking my time to think things through, bureaucracy reared its imposing head. "Insurance" told me I had to get in there and do something, or "Insurance" would UN-insure me.

Oops. New plan. New enthusiasm. New resolve. I served the chicken salad, and the chicken-salad-thing worked out.

Very recently, my aunts Bea and Nina, now in their eighties and nineties, were interviewed by the Placentia, California library. A PBS segment on the history of the town is in the works, with my Grandma Rosa and "El Rosal" a part of it.

Oh, how I longed to be there. For days, I reflected to my husband my happy thoughts of Grandma, the restaurant, my aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings. Finally he said, for heaven's sake, can't you call your aunts and at least tell them what those times meant to you?

Yes, I think I can do that. Yes, I will try. One night of conversations, one night of reflecting on many years. If it can be said, I wore my heart on my sleeve those phone calls. In the end, my aunts KNEW how much I wanted to be there, and what those years meant to me.

And one new, amazing "aha" moment: I never knew I had relived (a very small part) of my Grandma Rosa's history. I didn't know it at all. I only knew I loved the times I spent with her, aside from the restaurant, at her home, spending the night, going to an ice cream parlor, taking a Sunday drive. I cherished my "alone" time with her, as I know my cousins and siblings did theirs.

I remember so many things about my grandma, but there were things I couldn't know, either. How enlightening to me that we had a little bit of shared history, each in our own time. I am so grateful to the graces above I did not suffer some of her darker experiences, but I love the "unity" of knowing now we were once in a uniquely similar circumstance, and we each came out alright with our resourcefulness.

And somehow I know now: she was the force behind the whisper..."I think I can do it. Yes, I will try."

There Once was a Girl

There once was a girl named Darlene. For as long as she could remember, she loved God, but hovered in the kitchen.

She knew God only as her church relayed, from well-intended lessons in a Sunday School courtyard, shallow in depth but rich in doctrine too complex for her to absorb.

And yet she knew Him, praying to Him in earnest, every day and most especially in the nights, under the covers, full of hope. She prayed for a most big thing, and let all the little things go unmentioned. If only the big thing came to pass, all the little things would fall into place.

Sadly, the big thing never came to be. She prayed and prayed many years, coming to a conclusion: the world was just so big, with so many prayers being said all at once, by people more appealing than she, to a God who loved some more than others, no matter what any Sunday School teacher said, ever.

Rejection taken. Comfort sought--where else to go but the kitchen? Not so much to eat the food there--although her mother's cooking was lovely, indeed--but for the distraction. The distraction of her own food creations, the appreciation for the creation by the consumers of her "art", the pleasures served to all.

Without a backward glance, the comfort of the kitchen assumed her loftiest goals. What could be better, really? You feed the people you love with the finesse of a "craft", she thought. They love you for it. They give you strokes for it. It tastes good. It feels good. It nourishes body and spirit and it is not the worst thing in the world to be remembered for.

And so she cooked for the "home folks" first, her mother and father and siblings. Then for the man she married, the two of them alone in a sweet little apartment, and eventually the children they raised together in a sweet, bigger home. She cooked for the neighbors and for friends, and she sought lonely people too, who had no urges to cook big meals for themselves but whose eyes lit up one hundred watts when she came bearing a plate.

Eventually she even cooked for the masses, if the subdued masses she could tend to with the loving attention-to-detail that mattered all her life. She made a small business of it, but carried it out as if it were for the family she loved the most. Because she so loved doing what she did, it had to be done in the same earnestness, whoever she did it for.

And so the girl didn't learn much more than to cook well, and she never really cared. It and its reverberations fulfilled her. No good person ever pointed out to her the drabness of her life, and no good person ever purported that her life should represent further fruition in more significant ways.

But for all the self-assuredness her joy in the kitchen brought, it elicited little for confidence in love from her God. In this she still felt small, a meek, insignificant being. From this, she derived He might still love her later, with the intensity of eternal love, where and how it counted the most. For this end, it was well and good to be insignificant now. It was well and good to believe and trust, and not to dwell on any one thing lacking in the here and now.

A life in the kitchen, thought Darlene, also exemplified her acquiescence to isolation. It quenched a thirst to be away from the world-at-large, in its simple satisfactions with her small hub of humanity. It separated her from serving in worldly capacity, but she never struggled with the humility of loving God and accepting His will for her life. He caused her to love her life, and even to believe fully that other women who lived very worldly lives also loved theirs.

Ah, but from the beginning of time, the world comes to all doorsteps, in one way or another. Stuff happens, and the distraction of a comforting kitchen at times played second fiddle to other facets of Darlene's reality. A loved child's circumstances and other adversities with the home and family made assembling a grilled cheese sandwich almost too much to contemplate. For these times, she asked, "Okay, so what now, dear God? I wasn't made for this stuff, this facing-down-the-world stuff. I always just wanted to stay in the kitchen."

At that, she felt God nod His head and say, "Yes, I made you for the kitchen. It's good if you always found the kitchen a comforting place to be. Now you just have to figure whether you can retreat to the kitchen and call these matters good, or if you need to get out of the kitchen so that you can get back to it in peace."

In peace? Darlene wondered. Does peace mean retreat? In a sense, she had prided her life on the humility of retreat. If she had confidence in her life, it was in knowing her place for the here and now, in her patience and willingness to await the greater glory of God later, eternally. How would she figure NOW that her responses should be anything BUT peaceful and retreating?

And so, she stepped back from her woes, much as the little girl did long before. She ventured to settle back into her routines, only to list as a sea vessel lists in waters overwhelming. She grappled to right herself, stunned by the need to leave the kitchen, to not retreat and sink.

The causes that took her from the kitchen had nothing to do with the kitchen. Swept out of her comfort zone, she buoyed herself in treacherous, unfamiliar waters, a being hardly knowing how to swim. Each time, she likened the wildly floundering chaos to a childhood experience of nearly drowning with her older sister, Cindy. The two, on a family day at the beach, innocently waded into erratic waters, carried unto thrashing panic, saved by two strangers, unafraid and appointed by God.

Motherhood and more brought the world knocking at her door, bringing its maelstrom of discomfort to her. But these things brought more too, love unlike any she'd known before, a sense of un-self, and longing for justice beyond her inner borders. She found her outside-the-kitchen calling.

How now, Lord, do I answer this calling? She appealed to Him as when a child, with a new, and almost-young, extended self. How do I still these quaking knees, slow my racing heart, calm the churning flutter of my insides? I was not cut of cloth for this, she thought, but you have woven these threads, these people into my life, and I need to cloak them in the love You made me capable of.

Somehow, she muddled through, one angst at a time. Along her way, she said, I do thank God for one angst at a time the magnitude of which is bearable, for I know of people broken by many angsts all at once, who do not bear up at all or who in their tumult put me to shame with their faithfulness in His intent.

I can get through one tumult at a time, she said, and she did. The Lord saw her progress, and bore her up. He began to show her His sense of humor. He placed a donut shop in her way, one she least expected, on a "lost" path, a dreamed-of donut shop she'd given up hope of ever seeing, for a reward of "following through" in crisis. He placed a man ahead of her in line at a counter, whose telling of his story provided her a "light bulb moment"--the insight she needed for an adversity she was contemplating solution to. Her Lord God gave her signs and words everywhere, too many to count, too many to talk about.

But talk about them she would, for this was a part of His plan. It is really true, she finally absorbed, that God is here for me, for everyone who turns to Him and who believes, in the good times and the bad. We will have courage to share His words and to meet our ends, because we turn to Him in need. We will open up His Book, searching, and each time, the page we land on will say something just for us and our moment.

With each happy day and each unhappy day, His grace seeped deeper into her being. He did not chastise her for the years she retreated, the years she acceded to others who maintained and sustained their faith as children, who never weakened and only added layers to their foundation.

She loved a time especially, when, opening His Book to "land" on a page she needed, came to the stories of the disciples who followed and faltered, followed and faltered in their faith toward the Son of God. A miracle a moment, they seemed to need. Jesus said as much, asking in essence and in exasperation: What is wrong with you people? How many times do you need proof of what I can do??

These were the days of healing and miracles, of feeding multitudes with five loaves of bread and two fish, of calming an oceanic storm to soothe panicking men. On and on Lord Jesus performed convincing feats, and on and on the impressions proved fleeting.

Darlene read this last, in her own moments of backtracking in faith and trust, over her trial of the time. These words indeed were meant for me to land upon this day, she thought. To think, His words have always been here, and instead, for so many years I read cookbooks.

Cookbooks in retreat, but going forward, not so much....

"Footnote" to this entry...the very day following Darlene's "landing" on Jesus's chastisement to His disciples for their lack of more sustained faith, she was driving a country road home from town, listening to a CD. Almost home, it hardly seemed worth changing out its "wearing thin" songs, so she just flicked it over to the radio. The song playing? Just enough time before pulling into the driveway,

to hear in entirety, "Have a Little Faith in Me." Bon Jovi singing, perfect words straight from the whisper of God.