Thinking it Over

Grateful for a well-fed soul

By Félix Alfonso Peña

Originally published in the Reading Eagle, November 21, 2004
Reprinted with permission.
All rights reserved*

Surfeit, gluttony, carbohydrate-induced euphoria — the season of gratitude is upon us once more.

On Thursday, Americans of every color, stripe and preference take to their tables in a frenzy of family, food and football, there to overindulge till they bulge in their annual nod to plenty.
I am not being critical. To do so would be hypocritical, since I am as grateful and prone to the bulge as anybody else, if not more so.

I am grateful, for example, that I have little competition for the dark meat on the turkey.

I am grateful for pumpkin pie, for which I have a preternatural affinity. I am even grateful when too many others want it and the portions shrink accordingly, because then I get to practice my politeness. It is no mean feat to contain myself when a hand other than mine reaches for the shrinking pie.

I am grateful that the spectacle of football absorbs so many people’s attention after the feast, so that I may retire to a quiet corner, there to silently digest and cogitate on the subject of which serving pushed me beyond moderation to the verge of indigestion.

Because hunger lived only a few houses or a few streets away in the neighborhood where I grew up, I learned that one who had little should be grateful that he had at least that much. So I am grateful that the bounty that covers our plates is within our means, and that throughout the year, a decent meal is always within our reach, never farther away than the refrigerator, the grocery story or a restaurant. I know that for too many people, basic sufficiency lies well beyond their grasp.

But there are things beyond food and drink that fill the reservoirs from which the soul nourishes itself, and as the years I have accumulated grow into a noisy rabble clamoring for my attention, I find myself increasingly drawn back to the early ones, when the world was not wholly familiar and my eyes and ears were still hungry for surprises and eager for lessons.

Those were the years when I was apt to run into my great uncle Enrique Tays on Convent Avenue in Laredo, Texas, inching his way toward my grandmother’s house under a blazing sun and blue overheated flatiron sky.

The man was all leathery skin pulled over rickety bones when I knew him. Wracked by emphysema, devastated by disease that had cost him a good portion of his stomach, he nonetheless tried to visit his favorite sister, my grandmother Mary, several times a week.

Gruff to a fault, a large fault, he took a Mexican bus from his neighborhood in Nuevo Laredo to the international bridge, and from there he would walk or, if he had money, take another bus to my grandmother’s house, a mile or so away.

Wearing his typical poplin shirt and gray slacks, and with a nice but not overly large gray Stetson hat perched on his head, his figure was unmistakable as he made his way along the sidewalk, hugging the shade where possible.

At his sister’s house, the routine was predictable: Squinting through cataracts and limping with arthritis, she would hasten to the stove and fix him a small meal such as tortillas and eggs with chorizo sausage while he, in very rough language, protested.

She should stop. He wasn’t hungry.

It was too hot, and he would just roll himself a cigarette. He would even pick up the glass of ice water that she had given him and threaten to douse her with it. Of course, she ignored him, gave him some rough language right back and made him eat.

They would sit at a kitchen table he had built for her, each nourished by the other’s gift, the visit or the meal, and nourished by the act of giving.

At that same table, a boy, relishing the banter, spooned soggy chunks of flour tortilla from the bottom of a sweet cup of coffee.

Back then he savored the little mid-afternoon treat. Years later, his soul savors a deeper nourishment from an inexhaustible cup filled to the brim on those hot, South Texas afternoons: the knowledge that bounty and surfeit are nice, but that what really matters in people’s lives is just a little something when they need it the most.

And for that he is grateful.

*This column may not be reproduced or distributed in part or in whole without the express permission of the writer. For permission to reprint or otherwise reproduce or reuse, contact Poncho@lifewithponcho.com.