Juliana Aragon Fatula And the Woman I’ve Become

Hello Readers:

The above photo was taken after my autumn harvest. I realized that I had been so busy with my Chicana Garden, picking, canning, drying, freezing my bounty that I had neglected everything else. I realized that I have a penchant for concentrating on one job and being obsessed by it. 

I spent the last month working on my harvest and as soon as I finished that my bestfriend called inviting me on a road trip to Denver. Perfect timing. We both needed a break from harvesting. 

We were invited to play abuela and tia abuela for her son’s toddler. Day care emergency or some nonsense. The baby boy, Bennett, is learning to walk and talk and is so beautiful he draws a crowd everywhere he goes. He reminds me of one of the babies in the film Raising Arizona. There’s a scene where Holly Hunter and Nic Cage are trying to kidnap a baby from the nursery and all five of the quintets are crawling on the floor towards the stairs and Nic is holding one trying to keep him quiet and the other four go in four different directions. That’s how it went with Bennett. He would cry when he fell down, or was tired, or got scared by a noise and he would let out a grito. 

Luckily for us, my bestfriend and I, I brought dried cinnamon apple rings. Bennett loved them and when we needed to divert his attention, we would hand him one and he’d munch on it and ask for another. He was an apple ring addict. 

But the best part of the trip was just riding in the van to and from Denver chatting with a friend of 30 years. We’ve become family and she shared her grandson with me. I dream of grandchildren but have accepted I may never be a grandmother, ever. I’m cool with it as long as friends and family are willing to let tia abuela babysit and feed their babies my home made cinnamon apple rings. 

Now that I’m home, it’s back to the work, writing. But sometimes you need to walk away and just take a break from home, work, the routine so you can return and feel excited to be home.