my mom's tortillas

My mother rolled her way out of the picking fields when she was about 12 years old.  Her large family, along with extended relatives and fellow migrant workers, spent harvesting time in Indiana each year.  Of course, this disrupted school and she later had to earn her GED, but that was life and she didn't have many choices.  And while they did work in the north, there was no shortage of heat and discomfort when working to gather tomatoes.

So when her father told her to get into the kitchen one afternoon and start making lunch, she happily obliged, got to rolling what have truly become her famous homemade flour tortillas, and she never looked back.

Decades later, she would tell me this story when -- while waiting anxiously to top a fresh-from-the-comal tortilla with stick butter  -- I asked just how she managed to make the most perfect tortillas in the world.

This story is the basis for many other stories I want to pass down and along from my mother.  Stories of how her life, in a much simpler time with much less opportunity, molded and shaped her into the woman she is... a strong, generous, orderly and gracious woman.  As she likes to remind us, her mother and father were not "educated," but they taught her a thing or two about manners, cleanliness and social awareness.  First thing that comes to mind from her varied list of one-liners: "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

And so when we visit Mom or she comes to Austin (although she has so very much to offer as a person and she gives it freely), unless there is that obvious aroma of heaven-on-earth lingering in the air, the unspoken question lurking around the house somewhere is usually something along the lines of, "Are there any of Mom's tortillas?"