Black Hole

My mother's house is a black hole.

Time melts away here like chocolate in the Texas sun. Nature abhors a vacuum, yet, here I am, in my mother's house, a vacuum of time and space, where phone chargers, crucial papers, clothing and toys disappear into nothingness, and time is meaningless. I am in a vacuum where the vacuum cleaner never ceases to run, and items are swept away into drawers, closets, and files, never to be seen again as clutter grows around us. A morass of contradictions.

We've only been here a week. It has been both relaxing, stressful, and invigorating. The trip here was surprisingly easy. I anticipated delays, cancellations, and worse, being stuck on a plane on the tarmac for hours with three excited and tired children. Instead, I was blessed with ease and convenience. My husband was given a security pass to accompany us to the gate. The flight left on time and arrived twenty minutes early. My parents were given a security pass on the receiving end to help me guide my children off the plane. My son even got to visit the cockpit.

My cousins weren't so lucky. But, despite hair-raising travel delays, family from all over the country were soon sucked into to the abyss.

In a couple of days, dozens of siblings, aunts, uncles, tias and tios, cousins, nieces and nephews were lounging around on my mother's soft, squishy couches, eating and eating, and eating great Cuban and Turkish cuisine. Weeks of my abuela's work disappeared in minutes, filling souls and stomachs, hungry for her lovingly made tamales, yaprakes, and borekas.

For several days, we were reunited, a close-knit family separated by years and miles, spun in together, drawn by the gravitational pull of my mom and dad's home and my grandmother's cooking.
Abuela's cooking is an irresistible force, but more than food draws us together. We are drawn to each other out of love and family ties so strong, they often boil up our South Texas passions into fierce battles and fiercer silences.

But this time around, even the battles and silences were wonderful. My kids got to play non-stop with their little cousins, completely uninterrupted, since all of the adults were too busy catching up with each other, and doting on the new baby.


We celebrated some birthdays, a couple of anniversaries, and each other's accomplishments and joys. We criticized each other's weight gains, parenting skills, and fashion sensibilities. The pressure was on for some cousins to settle down, some to have more kids, others to stop having kids.


In short, we celebrated life.


But time moves too quickly in the vacuum. In a flash, it was time to hunt the hidden nooks and crannies of my mother and father's home to find hidden objects, to pack up, and to head back home.


All too quickly, it was time to say goodbye to the people who nourish each other almost as much as they aggravate each other. It was time to kiss and hug the kids who had grown up so fast, knowing they'd again be almost unrecognizable the next time we meet.


As the last of the cousins head back home, we are trying to get together with old friends before our time here runs out, too.

My son turned eight today. We lit some candles on top of a boxed chocolate babka I picked up at the grocery store. San Antonio is no Chicago when it comes to kosher offerings, but in other ways, Chicago is no San Antonio, either.

On a sad note, a dear friend of ours here is fighting cancer. It has been a tough battle, as he and his wife have travelled back and forth between San Antonio and Houston's M.D. Anderson hospital. Their three daughters have stayed here, and the community has pulled together to help out as much as they can. I wish I could do more than offer my prayers and best wishes. Even though I'm not in this community anymore, it's still very much in me.

I had hoped to visit my old colleagues at the university today, and to drop by and visit my husband's old colleagues as well; but San Antonio was on the path of a tropical storm that dropped ten inches of rain in one day. I didn't get out much at all; therefore, my last few days will be a whirlwind, as I try to catch up on the lost time.

My husband is back in Chicago, interviewing with law firm after law firm, for next year's summer internships. He tells me he's missing us, but he sounds relaxed, relieved even, for the peace and quiet. I miss him, but I'm not ready to go back quite yet. There are too many friends to visit and gifts to buy. And I would like, very much, to sit with my Abuela, recorder in hand, asking her to share her memories with me.

When we got here, I thought I'd have so much time to do everything I wanted. But these couches are so soft, and the food is so yummy, and I wouldn't mind one more game of scrabble with my college-bound niece...

Wow! Would you look at the time?