Panzas Llenas, Corazones Contentos: Sweet Recollections and Memories Made at La Estrella

Story and Photographs by Adela C. Licona

As we experience the countdown toward Sophia’s day of departure for college I continue to ask myself if I’ve prepared her well enough. Her Grannie will tell you that I have not taught her enough about the domestic realm, particularly how to wash her own clothes… It’s true. I do feel certain though that Sophia is well prepared academically and intellectually. Socially too. She is smart, well rounded and broadly interested. And she cares.

What I find myself wondering most is if I have given her enough of our stories to travel with and to recall whenever she needs to as well as to remind her where she comes from, and who her people are — especially those she didn’t know.

So, today, in anticipation of our tour of La Estrella Bakery in Tucson, I recalled for Sophia and Aida how my grandmother, mi Mema, would eat pan-de-huevo. It’s not that the recollection of someone eating pan-de-huevo, in and of itself, is worth recounting as significant in preparation for a college departure. It’s the significance of breaking bread, of sitting for sobre mesa, of sharing, of savoring sweetness, of lovingly anticipating visitors, of making a home space, of being present, of counting on someone being there… It’s about sensual knowledges and rememberings that connect us in vital ways to meaningful everyday practices, traditions, to those who have come before us, those we love, have loved, have been loved by…

I remember Mema’s crumbs on the table before her. Her half-closed eyes and partially tooth-less grin. And I can see her hands playing with the crumbs. These gestures were calming in their rhythm, reassuring somehow. Present. Pleasant. I recall the satisfaction in my grandmother’s smile while she would eat her sweet bread. I remember her cup of coffee before her. We would sit, eat, visit and linger like this together. And as she got older the silences stretched out before us as we sat. And I remember, again, her hands – the ways in which she would distractedly attempt to pick up around her place at the table, to collect the crumbs too small to eat. These crumbs floated and flew, scattered to the floor. This memory makes me smile. Perhaps it offers a clue to my own distracted approach and sometimes half-hearted attempts to be tidy… I share these recollections with Sophia and Aida.

My mother then recalled for Sophia that “the Memas” (my grandmother and her two sisters, our family matriarchs) would go to the Bowie Bakery in El Segundo Barrio/South El Paso (near where my father was born) to buy pan dulce. Lots of it. They did this in the early mornings after their sunrise services at Sacred Heart church. And when any member of our very large family would drop in to the Memas’ home at 1625 Rampart – the pan dulce would be there for us. And if that ran out – they’d fry us an egg.

Sophia comes from, among more, a tradition of open-door hospitality, comfort food, and a whole lot of love.

To connect this story to our present lives and the place we now call home and because of our good fortune to be coming to know Erica Franco of La Estrella Bakery, I was able to go on a tour with the girls, Grannie, and Jamie to this Tucson treasure – that was reminiscent for me of a bakery that figures in our family history…

And so the tour began. I am so grateful – de todo corazón – to Erica for hosting us at La Estrella, her family’s bakery. And I’m grateful to Laura who helped navigate my mother in her wheelchair through the racks of freshly-baked and waiting-to-be-baked breads while I tried my hand at rolling out dough and took photos to document the visual – sensual – representation of sweet memories recollected. At La Estrella sweet memories flooded my senses and I was transported to my youth. I remembered the smell of the bread, the texture, the flavor, and the delightful sight of seeing the selection before me at the Memas. Cochinitos were my favorite. And Erica had some in miniature waiting for me at La Estrella. My mother insisted upon and ate a glazed doughnut before we could even make it to the back room to start our tour in earnest. At the site of the glazed doughnuts we remembered my father. He would buy glazed doughnuts at a shop called Spudnut. My mother says the boys, my brothers, used to sell those doughnuts. And so she had to have one. Right then. And there. Memories relived and savored with each bite.

And we all ate hot and huge tortillas right off the grill.

I remembered my father at each turn of our tour of La Estrealla. I remember how we would tell the girls to “slap the maza” as they were learning how to make tamales at the family tamaladas he hosted.

I thought of my father, too, with all the heavy machinery knowing that if he had been with us he would have been offering to connect the Franco family with future machines for their bakery.

It was amazing to see that though there are of course the kinds of machines/heavy equipment my father spent a lifetime buying and selling, the baked goods at La Estrella are mostly made by hand. We were each encouraged to try our hands at rolling out dough and making cuernitos (much larger versions of the ones mi Tía Adela used to make at Christmas).

Even the gracious hospitality was familiar to me and such an important connection to the story I want to send Sophia off to college with…

I hope that this story and this experience – of connections, and sharing, of openness and family tradition, of sweet sustenance and soul food, of making and breaking bread, of hard work, of the appreciation for tradition and cultural heritage and of the importance of telling stories and of making memories, will come together in meaningful ways, comforting ways, encouraging ways for Sophia and Aida – it did for me.

¡ Mil gracias Erica y a toda la familia Franco y a todos en La Estrella !