The news broadcasts are telling us the homes of one million people have
been foreclosed and taken by the banks in 2010. This is one million individual
people, every single one of them facing a ruined life and possibly nowhere
else to live, many of them in bankruptcy. It’s too much to hold in my head.
But I can tell the story of one of these one million. My friend Melina
(I’ve changed her name) lost her house in the crash and the crunch.
I met Melina about ten years ago at a metaphysical church to which I was
donating some plants. When I walked in, she was screwing the legs on a
little table. We introduced ourselves, and that was the beginning of our
friendship. Melina is a professional woman, self-employed like me. But
she provides a service that people have apparently decided is a luxury
they can forego in this economic climate, and so her income has sunk and
sunk and sunk. In December, 2009, while she was still in her house but
under threat of foreclosure and eviction, we had some long phone conversations
in which I tried to bring her out of her depression by telling her to keep
warm and wear socks. (In that context, socks became magical bringers of
comfort.) Her roommate had just moved out, so there went half of each month’s
mortgage payment. Melina tried legal remedies and nearly got to keep her
house, but in the end, all her legal appeals did was make the process longer.
Last fall, she finally started packing for real. Friends helped her, and
pretty soon nearly everything she owned was in a big storage unit. When
a professional colleague offered her his spare bedroom, she accepted …
but she hasn’t got any of her stuff with her. We all need our stuff, right?
Melina is an intelligent, beautiful, proud woman. Her life is nearly unendurable.
It’s heart-breaking.
I seem to be one of those people who keep thinking I can fix things, so
I thought of one small thing that might help my friend. Like many people
in southern California, Melina’s family came from Mexico. A few years ago,
she and her roommate got out her mother’s old recipe for tamales and threw
a tamale feast. I don’t normally like Mexican food because it’s too spicy
for my stomach, which thinks it still lives in St. Louis, but those tamales
were delicious. I didn’t eat any of the mole sauce, though. Too hot. So
now, I said to myself, why not have another tamale feast? Melina would
get a chance to cook real food in a real (not shared) kitchen. She’d also
spend a day with friends and make new friends.
I invited her to lunch last month and presented my idea. (I also gave
her a couple pairs of new socks. It’s been cold here.) She liked the idea
(and the new socks). Next, we started talking logistics. Because I am fortunate
to earn enough by editing to live comfortably, I was able to send her a
PayPal payment to buy most of the ingredients for the tamales. Then I got
on my computer and started inviting people to come by, eat a tamale, bring
a pot luck salad or dessert, and buy a few tamales. Selling tamales would
be another bonus—Melina would go home with some pocket money.
My friends are generous people. It didn’t take long before it dawned on
me that this tamale feast was outgrowing my apartment. My kitchen, for
example, is microscopic, maybe three steps from the stove to the fridge,
four steps to the sink, inches of counter space. No room to assemble six
dozen tamales. I called my friend Tamara, who is one of the most organized
people I know. She can put anything together and make it run smoothly.
And she owns more than six plates, eight forks, and five chairs. (I said
I live comfortably. Not grandly.) And she also has big pots and a food
processor. After a dozen or so emails back and forth, we moved the tamale
feast to her house.
Sunday, January 16, was the day. Tamara invited Melina to spend Saturday
night at her house. They went shopping together Saturday afternoon and
boiled chicken breasts and did whatever else could be done ahead of time
that night. At noon on Sunday, I picked up my friend, Penny, and we took
off for Orange County. When we arrived at Tamara’s house, we found them
more or less up to their elbows in massa dough and chicken and salsas.
Two pots the size of washtubs were on the stove, each steaming a dozen
or more tamales. Penny sat right down at the table with them and started
constructing more tamales. I stayed out of the way, but contributed to
the conversation.
A couple hours later, two more friends had arrived. The guys I’d invited
couldn’t make it (well, two of them showed up on time, but twenty-four
hours too early, and when I phoned them on Sunday, they were working),
so we ended up with six women sitting around the table and gazing at three
kinds of tamales, two kinds of salad, guacamole, and fruit. Yes, indeed,
we feasted until we were about to explode.
Afterward, Tamara got out her plastic wrap, some paper bags, and her calculator,
and we put together the take-home packages. Penny and our other two friends
took tamales home, and I got sorta lucky—not only did I take my own six
tamales home, but I also got to haul the orders for three friends who hadn’t
shown up. It’s a good thing I’d taken along one of my canvas grocery bags.
It was a good day. I have this theory that all my friends should know
each other, so Penny got to meet four of my friends. She and Tamara are
both foodies, so I suspect they’ll be talking soon. Our other two friends
hadn’t seen each other in several months. We all got caught up. And Melina
went home with more than $100. Yes, a good day and—the cliché is right—a
good time was had by all.
Contact Me
Email: bawriting@earthlink.netPhone: 562 628-9688