Mama Consuelo

My earliest memory of my grandma was that she hated being called grandma (abuela) or any variation of the word. My cousins would warn me that if I ever called her that to her face she would pinch me really hard and she was a notorious pincher. Everyone just called her Mama Consuelo. I don't remember the first time I visited my grandparents in Mexico but I remember being scared of their house. It was old and too open for me. They didn't have a toilet and I was always afraid of having to go to the bathroom because I'd have to pee out in the corral (stables) in a hole in the ground. One thing I remember about her house was that there was one room I never went in because it felt creepy and that was the room next to the kitchen that had that painting (at least I think it was a painting) of my Aunt Lucia (I'm pretty sure it was her.) To this day I have never been in that room and I think that it's haunted if I heard the stories correctly.

Mama Consuelo was the definition of a matriarch. She had a lot of kids and I'm not even sure of the number; is it 9? Most were girls and 2 boys. The Ramirez family was started long before I was born, my mom is the youngest child. I have cousins who have kids who are as old as me! I would visit San Pedro every year in December when our family would go to Mexico for Christmas. Mama Consuelo's house used to be a store back in the day so when I was really little they had leftover products of it's glory days. Later on, after my Papa Doroteo lost his leg, the family help build them a super nice bathroom and that made visiting them not so bad.The town Mama Consuelo lived in was called San Pedro. It's small, but you can still find it on Google maps. The town seemed lonely as I grew up because the younger people were moving out and going to bigger cities or moving to the US. You could walk down the main street and not see a single person. As far as I could tell, my Grandparents had always lived in the same house on the corner of the same street their entire lives and the entire town knew them.

Mama Consuelo used to smoke back in the day. Apparently she smoked a lot but I only remember seeing her do it once or twice. She eventually stopped smoking at some point but I remember thinking that she must have lungs of steel because she never got sick. She was a sassy woman with a sharp tongue and every time she saw me and gave me a hug she always said I was getting bigger than her, and not in height. She had a big laugh that everyone recognized and that all my aunts and my mom inherited. One of the things I remember most about her was that she loved to tell a good story and loved making people laugh. Whenever Mama Consuelo and my aunts would get together you could hear their roaring laughter from miles around. She passed along her sense of humor to my mom which I inherited from her because I find humor in everything. She also loved going to church. I think she used to go every day just to pray. I thought it was weird because church was just on Sunday's but it was something she loved doing and it made her feel at peace.

Mama Consuelo had blue eyes and dark leathery skin from being in the sun for so many years. She was a short woman, but what she lacked in height she made up with her big heart. She was a warm and loving person and would always welcome you into her home even if you showed up out of the blue like my sister and I did that one summer. I never went back to see her after that and regret it. I know that she knows I truly am sorry and that I love her very much. I hope I can live a long, prosperous and simple life like she did, well, maybe without so many kids. I know that she's in a better place now hanging out with God in heaven and she's probably telling him a really funny story because I can hear her laughter all the way from here.