“It says three times.”
“All the way to the boil?”
“Yeah, do I whisk it still? It’s bubbling, look”

The pot stacked with molinillos sits by the window, where it always has, and they quietly gather dust. One day we will pull them down, clean them, and set them to work. Today, we use a simple metal whisk for the rapidly thickening liquid. The smell of burnt cinnamon fills the kitchen. I grin. The smells of a childhood, half a world away, issue from that pot on the stove, and memories dance along the boundary of remembrance.

We are in a jeep, blue, with a ragged canvas back, and I hold tight onto the steel cross bar as we bump through the jungle. My mother holds me tight, and there is a picture of a tiny red man, leaping from a sea-side cliff, that moves across my father’s chest as he changes gears. Everything smells of bananas, and dirt, and sweat, and the light is golden against the deep green of the canopy. My hair is in my eyes. And then I smell the chocolate.

Posted in Shutterbug on Sunday June 27, 2010.

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