My Canadian Mexican Mom

My Canadian Mexican mom moved to Germany for two months to spend time with Justin, her second born who lives in Berlin with his fiancé. I’m going to miss her dearly. Angela is originally from Toronto but has lived in Querétaro and raised her family there for the last 35 years. Angela has taught me a number of different recipes, such as a baked fish with jitomates, cebolla, calabazas, and papas. And a salsa verde with tomatillos and chiles. The one I hope to master are her black beans. I don’t know what she does to those legumes but they are damn delightful! She starts by making frijoles de la olla (whole black beans cooked over the stove top), and then after a couple days she will mash them a bit into a mix of whole bean and refried. And the last day she turns them all into refried. It is the most wonderful cycle of black beans that is delicious at each stage.

When we were heading into winter and Jamai had just left from his first visit and I wouldn’t see him for a couple months until New Years, Angela taught me to knit. She suggested it’d be good to do something creative and told me to knit Jamai a scarf so I could think about him basically as much as I wanted and do something productive. Or watch three seasons of Scandal right in a row and not feel bad about it.

Measuring my progress with a selfie

And going into Spring, she taught me how to oil the joints of her old, steel, Singer, lace it up with some hilo and load up the bobina. She instructed me in starting an apron as my first project and once the cloth was cut, told me to “just bang it out”. I passed all of my free time over two days in the sewing room until I walked out wearing my delantal, with a bright red border and two carefully placed pockets.

 

Angela worked as the director of a bilingual program at a school in Querétaro for 30 years and constantly helped me navigate working in a Mexican educational institution. She also taught English for many years and helped me plan lessons for a pretty challenging class I taught in the late fall.

She invited me into her home and made me a part of her wonderful family. I am forever grateful for having had the opportunity to know her and am excited for her on her German adventure.