BORDERWORLD GIRL

Backyard family barbecues during my childhood in Laredo,Texas happened on magically long summer evenings when a stubborn twilight managed to eke out its last gleaming even after 9:00. We wore no watches. It was summer. For the only time in our lives we didn’t have to worry about homework or fret about bedtimes.

On the radio blared the sounds of the Four Seasons exclaiming about that night back in ’63 or Timi Yuro imploring us to “Smile.”

We ran and screamed and played with only intermittent trips inside the kitchen to find our mother seeing to the pot of beans simmering on the stove. We scurried back outside with her to “check the fire.”

Ah yes. The summer Saturday barbecue. Or as we said it in those parts, the “Carne Asada.” That phrase named the meal but also the family gathering.

My dad would set up the huge oil barrel pit, pockmarked and rusty from years of exposure under our orange trees. He purposefully poured in the charcoal. He chopped up leña—the mesquite that made the fire smell so much better than the chilly November bonfires of the city’s rival high schools.

After that it was a frustrating coin toss. My father had a weekly battle with the fire. Adding fuel to that conflict was the fact that he didn’t care much for the grilled fajitas or beef skirt–the inexpensive but mouth-wateringly delicious cut of meat we craved and awaited patiently.

That’s when my mother would charge out the back door to the barbecue pit toting a pitcher of water in one hand and in the other a large swatch of cardboard from some box long ago discarded. She was quite expert at it. She waved it over the fire, fanning some imperceptible ember, and then squinted as gray ribbons of smoke blew all around her. She waited patiently in a glowing serene vigilance.

My father protested saying he didn’t want to “quemar un palo” (which translates to “burn a stick”) just to be able to eat. He was inevitably distracted in the backyard by all of the other self-imposed chores he saw around him. He pulled weeds or edged the sidewalk. He hauled branches to the back of his truck or toiled in his workshop. He just couldn’t slow down long enough to wait for the fire.

My siblings and I were regularly recruited to assist in these impromptu chores or in the cooking happening inside the house. Mainly we played and turned up the radio if “Wooly Bully” or “La Bamba” came on; we smiled and swelled with pride over hearing Spanish lyrics coming from the top 40 station.

My mom came to the barbecue rescue not because she is such a brilliant cook. She is. No doubt about that. My mom corrected the stalling embers because she understands fire.

She was forced to forge a quick and trusting relationship with the element when she was a migrant worker. My grandmother, a single mother of eight, traveled with her brood up north to places where gradations of climate weren’t limited to warm, warmer still, and hot. Sometimes my granny cooked even the family breakfast over an open campfire before she and the children set out to meet the hard physical work of the day. Even in their little house back in Laredo, a small gas heater glared in the front room where they all huddled close and slept together on long winter nights that unexpectedly blew in.

My daughter is an only child. I wish for her these days a screaming, sweating swarm of siblings—even brothers like mine who were merciless in those endless, goal-less chases, scraping past tree branches, scratching at mosquito bites, plucking the stray thorny sticker clinging to our skin. Believe it or not, I wish that for her—that adrenaline rush abandon maybe only athletes can relive as adults.

Because of this summer’s merciless drought, I’ve not grilled much at all. However, in recent years I was indeed the keeper of the flame at my house. Maybe it bordered on pyromania. It used to be a weekend thing, but the addiction rendered me weak. If we scratched our heads over what to have for dinner, I could usually entice my little family into some small grilled feast at least a few times a week. The neighbors must have thought we had no stove.

In some strange way, taking on this role makes me feel more grown up. A kid can pull out a tiny cake from an Easy-Bake Oven, scramble eggs, or mash up the potatoes while mom checks on the pot roast. But children don’t have a very big part in the barbecue production. My brothers used to dare me to toss twigs into the roaring fire, but I didn’t dare tease the gods–or my mother–with that kind of horseplay.

Those endless summer nights decades ago were some of the happiest times of my childhood. They involved no rewards, no presents or toys or privileges. They were just times spent out-of-doors with the people that mattered most.

At the end of those nights, bathed and pajamaed, I made the rounds to finally kiss my folks good night. Dad busied himself with the outdoor clean-up and mom washed up the last dish. They hugged me tightly, and I carried the lingering scent of the summer night to bed with me, the last strains of an old song barely audible above the soft insistent whirr of the fan.