I cut into them and raise my fork to take another bite. I perch my
utensil there for a moment, regarding this, this … glorious mess,
all gooey, a meltdown of yellow-brown. For that moment, this little
dive is
the Louvre and these enchiladas its
Mona Lisa. I
slip the fork into my anticipating mouth. Ohhh. It tastes of
what-used-to-be.
These days, the town is crummy with fancy-shmancy. These enchiladas
are a throwback. No froufrou filling, like spinach or wild
mushrooms. No hoity-toity sauce of raspberry chipotle. No
new-fangled cilantro-pasilla tortillas.
They are the past. The way we were, as it were.
Eating them is my way of saying goodbye. Which is good that
something is saying it, because I don't have the words.
Never can say goodbye.
Never can say goodbye.
It's funny what happens when you're about to move. You start
feeling sentimental not only for those things you did, but also for
those you didn't.
We have a lake just outside of town, takes maybe 15 or 20 minutes
to get there from my house. I never go. 'Course, that's partly
because there is no place to go to. There used to be all sorts of
little hideaways and secret swimming holes. They're all privately
run amusement parks or publicly operated "park facilities" now,
even the nude beach.
Still, these are an old-timer's laments. Even if the drive through
the hills to the lake is no longer ruggedly beautiful with craggy
tree-covered limestone cliffs but an eyesore of post-boomtown
development (mostly ostentatious houses), even if the traffic
weren't snarled all the way out there, even if they left everything
like it was, I probably wouldn't go to the lake often. Family man,
now. Too much to do around the house, like ignoring the garden and
thinking hard about painting the spare bedroom one of these days.