When I was a kid, the smell of platanos fritos (fried plantains) told me it was breakfast time.  Today in the morning as I made my own (not quite as tasty as the ones my mother makes), I thought about those breakfasts a long time ago. 

My mother worked I don't know how many hours as a nurse and she would still find time to cook.  If I'm not mistaken, she was still in her nurse's uniform when I found her cooking in the kitchen.  She looked tired, but happy.

My dad liked to help around the house and my sisters did their chores as I "did" mine.  I say "did" because I am not sure just how much I actually got done at that age. I remember literally climbing on the bed in order to pull and stretch the comforter. Anyhow, back to the platanos fritos.  Next to them,  you had your huevos (either revueltos/scrambled or estrellados/over easy). Then you had a serving of frijoles negros (black beans).  Of course, you had a bunch of tortillas waiting for you all nice and hot...and let's not forget about the cafe con leche (coffee with milk).

My dad would say a prayer, I still remember how it went.  My dad came from a pretty religious family and this prayer is older than time, I would venture to say. Okay, not really, but it was passed down from generation to generation. After we were done praying, we began to eat. 

I remember I did not make the taquitos I now make. That I learned from my Mexican-American friends.  I make taquitos without thinking now, it is something automatic. I see a piece of chicken, I get it and put it in the tortilla.  Back then, I would tear off a little piece of the tortilla and I would dip it into the black beans, eating slowly and savoring each bite. I was usually the last one to finish and my mom did not mind.  I was also a chatter box. I'm not quite sure what I talked about or what was there to talk about at an age where my feet did not touch the floor when sitting down.

As we had breakfast, as we talked and shared, as I went on and on about I don't know what we all got close as a family.  Although I did not realize it then, we were making memories that I now cherish as an adult.

I am in the capital of Guatemala.  As my father has told me and now I realize, there is evidence of the future.  A few cars pass by, the wealthy families being the only ones able to afford such transportation in the 1940s.  For the most part, there are carriages, horses, and of course a lot of construction going on. There are buildings that proclaim that this place is the capital of the country and then there are streets that have just been transformed to avenues of transportation. 

My father would be a recent arrival to the capital.  He would be a countryside kid who has started working since he can remember.  Although he knows life is tough, he looks and finds beauty around him.  There is, for example, La Catedral, a place not only of worship, but of solace. My dad as a kid has no idea that decades later, I would be invited to cafe con pan (coffee with bread) by my aunt (dad's cousin) who is a nun.  She would quietly show me around the halls and rooms and I would feel like Alice in Wonderland.  My aunt lived in El Palacio Arzobispal in the 1980s and I would get the chance to see artifacts, paintings, and sculptures up close. The only things I did not find appealing (perhaps because they reminded me of my own mortality) were the catacombs.   La Catedral and El Palacio Arzobispal are, for me, childhood memories that tell my family history.

In the 1940s my dad would earn a salary, child labor not being something out of the ordinary (then or now).  He would give most of his salary to his family, what little he had left he would save to buy the newspaper.  This would become a daily ritual of his up to this day.  In the 1940s, he would read about places that sounded to him like names of planets .  Alemania. Estados Unidos. Inglaterra.   Even at that young age, he would realize he was reading about things that would later be called History.  At night, he would go to school and learn as much as possible.

During the day, reality would set in.  He would tend to his job responsibilities at the house of the wealthy family with the foreign last names.  They would speak in their foreign language at the table and my dad would remind himself one of the essential rules, one is not to be seen or heard while doing one's job.  Not an easy task.  When he left that house, he was able to be a kid if only for a little time while he ran through those streets, money in his pocket for his family and dreams of a better future in his heart.