<p>In response to discussions about what makes good college application essays, I've decided to post some that I found memorable. The first was in response to a Chicago writing prompt about food. Please post your favorites.</p>
<p>By Addiena (Addiena) on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 01:16 pm:</p>
<p>Tres leches. Literally, three milks cake- a delightful amalgam of the condensed, evaporated, and full varieties, marinated dense over an airy divination of pineapple and yellow cake. To some, it is merely an after-dinner accompaniment to suitable libation; to me, it is so much more- a tangible representation of my heritage, a sort of gustatorial link to my family hundreds of miles distant. I eat it again not with the false nostalgia of a reinvented past but with the knowledge that one's history is a fluid and ever-changing thing. I eat not to recreate but to remember
I am transported back to the streets of Calle Ocho, where white-hot headiness implodes in the sky and the euphony of drums accompanies lithe browned bodies gyrating in the night. I am in my grandmother's- no- Abuelita's backyard, at thirteen, trying desperately to mimic the other adolescents' steps that are seemingly unconscious in their execution. That summer there was always tres leches- for brunch after the aforementioned parties, as hospitality to Abuelita's friends, as filler when we sat on the porch and watched Elian Gonzalez sympathizers camping like refugees down the street. I empathize with synaesthaesia patients: when I eat, I inhale the cigar smoke and feel the unconditioned air and tongue the café con leche on the back patio. Yet my grandmother's voice is what I remember the most.
Abuelita's green eyes shone as she baked. "Come here, Yessica, she would say, always with a "y". She only knew select phrases in English- "I love you" and "Bathroom" being two of her practicalities- yet she would stand for hours and elucidate to me a life story in her hushing blend of Spanish and Portuguese. I did not understand a word she said but to listen was comfort. She sounded like the personification of flowing water; the lines on her arms furrowing and branching about her like sleepy rivers.
Sugar incensed the house and she would sing: "Los soshpidos son aire, y van el aire/ los lagrimas son agua, y van el mar,/ ¿Así que me dice,/ cuándo usted adora alguien, dónde va?"
"What does that mean, Tia? Her song?" I asked my aunt one day.
"It means this. Your sighs are air, and go to the air. Your tears are water, and so fall to the ocean. So, you tell me," and at this, she paused- "When you love somebody, where does that go?"
I was thirteen when that question was scribed into my yellowed Garfield journal. It has accompanied me since- haunting and deep as a flashbulb memory, vague and frustrating in its possibility. Since then, I've tried to search for the answer.
One afternoon, my uncle invited Abuelita and I to a Key Largo country club where he worked as a janitor. It was unfortunate, because I was just at the precipice of discovering haves-and-have-nots; Abuelita, in her constant humbleness, blushed crimson at the wealth lavished before us. We tried to have fun on that beach, Anglo children startling at her stuffy blouse and heavy perfume. We did try.
"Do you have a green card?" A query from a waiter, imploring under the blue umbrella.
Abuelita blushed again. "I am not resident."
"That's not what I meant," he scoffed, hurrying away with a dessert cart. I looked at the contents- yes. Tres leches was there. Insult to injury.
After she got home and tore away to Mass I stood there in the kitchen, trying to somehow know her beyond time. Then, blindly, I began to make dessert- unconscious and precise, with the kind of strength that inhabits mothers saving their children from death by heavy machinery. When she got back and saw me sitting at the table, a pan of tres leches gracing my lap, she dropped her rosary to the floor and cradled my face in an eternal moment. We didn't need to say any words, Abuelita and I. We didn't need to.
Years later, after she was gone, I tried to recreate tres leches for a dinner party of my uncle's. It was a disaster; the night ended awkwardly. I didn't know why I couldn't do it.
My uncle was quiet as we drove home. "Jessica, what have you learned here?" he asked me.
It took me a second to realize what he meant, but then his intention dawned. He had understood!
"I think, my dear Tio," I finally replied, "that now I know where love goes."</p>