Apron Strings

This next Apron Strings Mother’s Day blog post was writ­ten by Mary Luz Mejia. Mary Luz is a Colombian-born, Canadian-raised writer who is pas­sion­ate about food. She’s also a researcher, presenter/speaker, food event curator/organizer, non-fiction doc­u­men­tary pro­ducer and cook.

1972, Medellin, Colombia. Mary Luz’s favourite photo of her­self with her mom.

Agustina joined our fam­ily before I was born. She was twelve when my mom took her in and taught her how to run a house­hold which of course, included how to cook. This was Medellin, Colombia in the 1960s and Agustina came from a dis­ad­van­taged home. Her abil­ity to earn a mod­est liv­ing that offered room and board in a decent fam­ily home was seen as a Godsend to many. By the time I came along in 1970, Agustina was my nanny.

When friends or rel­a­tives would ask, “Mari, how is your mother?” I’d inno­cently respond, “Which one?” I loved them both.

Agustina excelled at cook­ing. My mom Mary Laserna, tells me that as a tod­dler, I could always be found with Agustina in the kitchen. I’d tug on her dress to pick me up so I could see what she was doing at the stove. Mom would walk in say­ing, “Agustina– put her down. You’re fry­ing pla­tano (large trop­i­cal bananas) and she might get splat­tered with hot oil.” I’d be put down, appar­ently only to insist I be picked up as soon as my mom left the room. Poor Agustina was torn– but she always indulged my two-year old self. And this included fre­quently mak­ing my very favourite thing in the world back then, a smoothie burst­ing with Moras Andinas (Andean Blackberries). As soon as I’d see her wash­ing the fruit and hear the clink of ice cubes hit the blender, I’d jump around the kitchen.

When we immi­grated to Canada, sadly leav­ing Agustina behind, I missed her and her gen­tle ways more than my three-year old self could have imag­ined. Gone were the rit­u­als of the kitchen, replaced by two hard work­ing par­ents pulling dou­ble fac­tory shifts to make ends meet and two teenaged sib­lings try­ing to get accus­tomed to a new life. My mom says that when I was four, I walked into the bed­room and woke her up– she’d had maybe three hours of sleep. “I’m hun­gry,” I pleaded. Exhausted, my mom dragged her­self out of bed and fixed me break­fast includ­ing a Colombian arepa with scram­bled eggs– a favourite to this day. Sitting down at the table with me, head rest­ing in her hands she mur­mured, “What’s wrong? Breakfast is ready, eat.” It sad­dened her when I replied, “I’m sorry mommy. I’m not really hun­gry, I’m just lonely.” She stayed up and played with me that day. I even got to put her make up on her while she took a nap and she didn’t say a word other than “Look at my pretty blue eye shadow!” when she woke up.

1996– Barranquilla, Colombia. Mary Luz and Agustina on her front porch. At that point, they hadn’t seen eachother for 23 years!

Over the years, my folks made a point of keep­ing in touch with Agustina. As I got older, I real­ized that when­ever my par­ents could, despite our own hum­ble cir­cum­stances, they had been send­ing her money for years. She mar­ried, had five chil­dren of her own and moved to the trop­i­cal city of Barranquilla. In my twen­ties, I went to visit Agustina. “Mi Niña!” (my lit­tle girl!) she beamed when I walked through the door in a flurry of hugs. And there, wait­ing for me at her kitchen table were all of my child­hood favourites includ­ing a frosty Mora Andina Smoothie. To this day, one sip takes me back to the sun-drenched court­yard of my early years, com­plete with joy­ous after­noons spent sit­ting in the lap of two of the most spe­cial women I have ever known.

My Favourite Blackberry Smoothie

• 3/4 cup of freshly washed, ripe black­ber­ries (it’s hard to find Andean Blackberries here but some­times you can find them frozen– unsweetened)
• 1/2 cup of ice cubes
• 1 cup of milk (or almond milk if you prefer)
• ½ banana
• Dash of pure vanilla extract
• Sweeten to taste with unre­fined cane sugar – start with 1 tbsp and work up from there if necessary

Add all ingre­di­ents, start­ing with fruit, fol­lowed by sugar, ice, vanilla and milk into blender. Blend on high until smooth, pour into a tall glass and enjoy with your favourite person.

Sip slowly or you’ll give your­self some seri­ous “brain freeze” which could explain why Agustina and mom would always say “sip slowly.”