(I wrote this entry Thursday night and now I'm not sure how to change the date...)

Mella of The Empty Sky recently wrote quite eloquently about how vivid memories of specific moments run through her head at certain times. You know the type of memories: quick snatches from the past, charged with emotions and visuals that transport you directly back in an instant. Some make sense, other moments seem inconsequential and silly.

I've been thinking about memories lately, too. Last week, my mom, sister, Filomena, and I visited the cemetary in Juarez where my abuelo and abuela are buried. We cleaned up a bit and put new flowers, then just sat around to think a bit. I remembered sitting around their kitchen table on a hot day, drinking coke out of glass bottles (always tastes differently than the coke sold in the US). I'd be slurping up mango pieces while my mom nibbled on the mango pitt--my abuela always had mangos in her house--I like to think they were just for me. I was usually quiet around the table--my Spanish is not great, but I did understand all the family chisme passing back and forth between my mom, her sisters, and the abuelos. Cousins usually dropped in on their way home or to work. I felt like I was really part of the family, like my abuelos loved me as much as the other grandkids, even though I spent most of my childhood far away from them.

There are other memories that plague me, memories that abruptly insert themselves into my daily life. These moments are not quite so nice as the abuelos kitchen table, nor do they come about at appropriate places like cemetaries. Instead, they pop up and pop away, lasting just long enough to leave a bitter taste. Little, unpleasant reminders of my own past embarrassments or instances where I hurt loved ones.