About My Grandmother

I grew up staying at my maternal Grandmother's house most days while my Mom worked at the airport. My grandmother baked cookies and pastries, cooked tacos, and tamales, and tortillas, and took care of me and my cousin every day. It wasn't until she almost died that she told me that she worked very hard every day at a hotel to bring my Aunt to the United States legally.

I heard later that she had been some kind of healer that cleaned the houses of wealthy people and she told me that she had healed some girl that was almost dead. I don't really know how she did it, but she said that one day she was on a hill and she evaded being raped and her dress was bathed in white and since then she had the capacity to heal. I heard when she was younger that she would go into trances and worship the devil, but by the time I was born, she saw angels and would erupt into songs praising Jesus at family gatherings. I guess she became very spiritual, and she told me if there is anything I wanted, that I could just ask God and He would give it to me.

That was the same kind of story I heard when I was introduced to Buddhism. If you just chant you can get anything you wanted. I guess that's what they tell you to sign up to religion. She attended some kind of Christian church called Verbo. I went to one of their ceremonies once when I visited them when they were evacuated in Austin after Hurricane Katrina. I remember going up to the front and lying on the ground and I saw a big eye on the floor when they were praying for me. They tried to get me to convert after, but I didn't want to. I kept laughing throughout the experience. The whole thing was kind of weird.

My grandmother told me to be very careful of the people I associate with. She told me to be very careful of my acquaintances. She told me that her Father had been President of Honduras, but was murdered by his own brothers because they were jealous of him. My Mom said there was no official record of that. She was an orphan and learned to cook bread from the black women she worked with. My Aunt told me she travelled on horseback delivering baked goods throughout Tegucigalpa. She managed to earn enough money in the States to purchase her own house and leave an inheritance for her children. I guess not everybody can be that successful.

One time when my Grandmother went into her garden to pick some herbs to cook with she took my hands in hers and told me, "Your hands are good for something, but I don't know what." I guess they are ok for drawing pictures. Here is a picture I drew of my Grandmother, better known as Abuelita Conchita. She is currently buried with my Mother in the same mausoleum in Metairie in the corridor of mercy.