Time was measured in the cooking of frijoles . "They will be done in two telenovelas ," my aunt would say, nodding toward the tiny television where Betty la Fea was stumbling through another romantic disaster. We learned patience because beans cannot be rushed. We learned resilience because the arepas would always burn when we were distracted by the sound of distant sirens.
That was the year the desplazados (displaced people) started arriving in our town. They came from the countryside, barefoot, carrying only a mattress and a story of burned houses and murdered fathers. They set up makeshift tents in the town square. My mother made me take them a pot of sancocho (soup). I handed the pot to a girl my age who had no shoes. Her eyes were not sad. They were empty. as a little girl growing up in colombia
At age four, the world is the cool, terracotta floor of my grandmother’s kitchen in Manizales. From down here, the legs of the table are a redwood forest. My mother’s ankles are marble pillars. The women of the family float above me, their voices a tumbling river of subjunctives and diminutives: “Ven acá, mijita.” “Siéntate, gordita.” “Cuidado, mi amor.” Time was measured in the cooking of frijoles
But here is what I also learned: resilience is not a grand speech. It is my mother waking up at 4 AM to sell empanadas at the bus terminal so I could have a new notebook. It is my abuela turning a single chicken into a three-course meal (soup, main, and fricasé leftovers). It is every costeño on the Caribbean coast laughing harder than anyone else the day after a hurricane. We learned resilience because the arepas would always