Chocolate and Blue

To crave chocolate and blue, that’s all she ever wanted. She was a mother, an artist, a chocolate addict, an amateur bird watcher, a teacher, a forgetful person (“tsk tsk,” you would always hear her say as she would put her hands in her forehead, trying to remember the name of the person she was talking about), yet unforgettable: impossible to forget her ocean eyes as she laughed with you; impossible to forget the way in which she would flip her golden hair, revealing her age as strands of silver fell behind her ears; impossible to forget her smell of tea tree oil, and impossible to forget such a colorful character as that of my mother. “Qué pensás, hija?” she would say whenever she finished a painting — an abstract rendition of a purple and royal blue bed-spread she saw once in Guatemala, an exploration of different types of red that reminded her of the vermilion churrinche (one of the most beautiful birds we saw together), a fall of magenta and orange squares as she imagined what color musical notes could be, a swirly dance between black and blue as she remembered the ripples made in our pool. She expressed herself best in her art and in her embraces. She was at her happiest when she closed herself inside her studio and started painting while listening to eighties rock at full blast.

But, money grew tight and the house, the studio, the garden, all that, had to be sold. Before letting go she developed a deep appreciation for our house in Buenos Aires and would call me every week to tell me a memory she had: “Te acordás? Dios mio!” she would always say, while laughing, as she finished retelling her memory. I, too, developed a newfound appreciation for the house, even though I was far away and out of its reach. Everything about that house became sacred to us. There was the art studio which in the past had once been the family’s playroom, where we saw the Twin Towers fall in stupefied bewilderment; there was the triangular window, at the top of the house, where we could see the neighbors’ gardens, filled with pine trees, palm trees and jacarandá trees, making it look as if we were in the middle of a violet forest; and there was the boot-shaped pool, now drained of water and filled with autumn-colored leaves, which had been the scene of hippie-themed parties and photoshoots in the nineties (even our dog was still alive, panting and chasing the street cats as they came into our garden) but which by the time that I was eighteen, no one used it except our new cat which always lost her balance and fell, creating those ripples my mom so loved to paint.

-Alana