Back for lunch
Chapter 13. About how cigars and how they explode
Temixco, Morelos, Mexico
On the dashboard, aside of the compass, he also invariably carried a small rosary with black beads; it was a gift from Grandmother, who had it blessed by the Bishop of Managua years before. Before Grandfather took off, many times in the dark and ahead of the dawn, he reverently touched it to his lips, in a sweet kiss (this, I know this for a fact, for I once witnessed it), and in a low voice, almost as if he were talking to himself, or praying in the church, he’d say:
“Manuela, wait for me: I shall be back for lunch; maybe later than you or I wish. Yet, I will return. Keep our nine daughters, our nine sons, and all our grandchildren safe until then. But most of all take care of your beautiful self; do it for me, until the day when I cannot come back, having passed beyond our beautiful Nicaraguan blue skies.”
Years before I arrived to this world, Grandfather bought his Cessna to fumigate the cotton crops that belonged to the family. Between him and my uncles it was a lot of land and amply justified purchasing the aircraft.
One beautiful Sunday afternoon, my grandparents told me about how the Bishop from Managua was invited to bless the airplane, though Grandfather called it the baptism of his plane, for he never referred to the event as the blessing.
In the land of volcanoes’ Chapters Purchase the book