Still Blooming

... the little five-petaled pink flowers still bloom outside my abulla's old apartment building.

Still We Sing

Happy Birthday Abulla!

My grandmother,
Ana Mercedes Portillo
born this day, 1926.
Berlín, Usulután, El Salvador

Felíz día de las Madres
... always

Change

... hadn't visited a Coinstar machine in a long time. Sure needed all of this $27.44. From my pennies, nickels, and dimes*, i got back everything I spent at Target last night. Even cashed in a winning $2 lottery scratcher ticket that had been in my wallet since Christmas.

I have a box on my dresser where I throw in all my loose pennies and nickels. All dimes go into a glass bottle my grandmother, mi abulla, gave me years ago. Filled to the top, the bottle holds $60 in dimes. I love this bottle not just because mi abuelita gave it to me, she was always filling up some container with coins to give to her grandchildren; but because she covered the bottle with stamps for magazine subscriptions that would come in Publishers Clearing House mailers (remember those?).

My crafty grandmother ... I know now where i get it from.


*Coinstar did not accept my dimes from the following years: 1949, 1957, 1961, 1963. Never has. For sentimental and superstitious reasons, i've just thrown those dimes back into the bottle every time.

Old Moon* Rising

"It's a full moon tonight. You should see it. It's really cool." And she got out the car and sat with me on the curb to watch the Harvest Moon* rise through the thin clouds--the eerie looking ones that linger above haunted houses in cartoons. And we had reason to feel scared, but it wasn't from sitting in the moonlight. That was four moons ago. It was the last full moon we would see rise together ...


Every month, when visible, i watch the full moon rise and each month the sight amazes me. The moon has always held an important place in my life. Maybe because Astronomy, like Art, was my favorite subject in 3rd grade (a watershed year in my schooling for sure). I wanted to be an astronaut ... or at least learn to paint stars like Van Gogh.

By the time i was in high school, fell in love, and fell in love with poetry, the moon was a natural muse. While at Pasadena City College, a random conversation with a romantic on the bus home one night, led to him supplying the title for a book i was making for a girl i had fallen for: Alcanzando la luna ("Reaching The Moon"). Around the same time, I began listening to John Coltrane. Only months before recording his masterpiece, the highly influential A Love Supreme, in December of 1964, he recorded the slightly dark Crescent. That album, like the moon phase it's named for, continues to be my favorite. Many have sung about the moon, from Billie Holiday to Tom Waits, i'll have to dedicate an upcoming entry to all the beautiful music in honor of la luna.

I named my now 8-year old ragdoll cat, Moon, mainly because he was brought to us, an 8-week fluff ball of a kitten, by my cousin Mercedes on the night of an October full moon.

My late maternal grandmother, mi abulla Ana Mercedes, playfully said to me once after i pointed to a full moon: "Mira que linda la ingrata. Como se burla de mi" ("Look how beautiful and ungrateful she is. How she mocks me"). And not long ago my paternal grandmother, my Mama Merceditas, cautioned after a discussion on world events and the cosmos, "La luna ya no es la misma de antes ... tanto hombre que ha llegado a pisarla" ("The moon is not the same as she was ... so many men that have gone and stepped on her").

I am blessed and thankful for Grandmother wisdom.


*For more on the Moon and its folkloric names, visit EarthSky ... a fantastic, and by far my favorite, resource for Science and Astronomy.

Hola Abulla

Mi abuelita, Ana Mercedes Portillo, 1926 - 2008