Jelly

In 1957, the day after we landed in Dallas after a 24 hour 2-stop airplane (no jets yet) journey from Montevideo, Uruguay, we began another trip.  This time we crossed the country by car—first to California and then across the great continent that I immediately loved.  I was 7 and our finances and spaces were very limited so I had no toys.  None.  The first morning though, brought me a new wonder—with my toast came small aluminum jelly containers (now plastic).  After emptying two of them and washing them out in the  bathroom, I started creating things with them while my parents finished their coffee.  They became tiny boats for imaginary tiny people; And when those people got tired, they became tiny beds.  A waitress helped me make a little sails for them by cutting up some napkins.  So began my trek across the country.  I remember a great deal about that two-month trip, but warmest of all are my memories of waitresses.  In each restaurant I entered with my small army of ever-increasing containers, and in every restaurant one or two waitresses would contribute something to my stash.  I still couldn’t speak English but my American father would explain that these were my only toys as I spread them out on the table in front of me and began my adventures.  One waitress showed me how to make little people out of toothpicks; another made me tiny bananas from Juicy Fruit gum wrappers; another one cut a tiny picture of a tree out of a magazine so they could have shade.  And so it went.  All across the country—Nevada, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Minnesota, and points east, waitresses helped my collection and my imagination.  Years later while wading through my daughter’s toy room, my father and I reflected on my  childhood and our adventures.  I reminisced about the wonderful waitresses who helped me create my tiny container worlds and how caring they were.  “It’s funny,” he remarked, “What I remember is how happy you made them. Some of those stops were run-down and seedy, but you never saw that.  You were just happy and thankful.  You made those women smile at your little towns and for just a few minutes they had some fun.  One waitress—I think it was in Arizona—had been mourning the death of her daughter for months —the manager told us this when she went back to her pocketbook to get you something for your little aluminum town.  But that waitress was really happy playing with you—first time they saw her smile in a very long time.”  I scanned my memory for what she could have given me.  Then I found it:  “Was she the one who gave me the lace hankie?”  “Yes, that’s it, “ my father continued, “she said she had cried enough and now she wanted that hankie to go on to a happier life.  It was her daughter’s.”  I jumped in: “I remember she told me that my people might get cold and she wanted them to have something to warm them, so we made it into a blanket.”  Warmth.  And so, this odyssey—this sharing of joy and grief and hope and loss and resilience was the America I found at the age of seven.  It’s still the one I  live in today.

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