"What a woman."

The creature.

Do you know that feeling you get… that off-center shift in your body that lets you know that soon… very soon… you are going to get sick? It sometimes manifests itself as a little discomfort at the beginning of your throat. Often times it appears in the form of watering eyes that seem to be slightly above average in temperature. I was not experiencing these symptoms… I was beyond them. Thankfully there are safety mechanisms within the great human design that prevent you from actually puking up your lungs but on many occasions I actually thought my kidneys or perhaps my spleen had collapsed into the toilet bowl. I was sick.

Contrary to the stereotype affiliated with my gender, I do not become a sniveling little mama’s boy when I am ill. In fact I prefer to be left alone. I wrap myself in a blanket, turn off the fan, shut the windows and proceed to sweat the problem out. It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be a stomach problem, a fever, a broken bone or a fractured skull while bleeding profusely from every orifice at 110 degrees… sweat the damned thing out. It never failed. It always worked. It was a proven method. It wasn’t working.

The elixir

During college, I lived alone. My mother was still living in Connecticut and I had no roommates either. “Barrrrf” Good god! Was that my liver? I needed a new remedy and, short of running to the emergency room of the nearest hospital, there was only one way to take on a creature of this magnitude. Chicken soup. Real chicken soup… not the Campbell’s canned counterfeit. Alas… in my condition (Lets face it… even if I was perfectly healthy), I couldn’t cook. I knew of only one person who could prepare the elixir with enough power to not only cure me but probably add a good ten years to my life in the process. My grandmother. Yes… it is true that all Puerto Rican grandmothers have the power to cure just about any known disease in the western hemisphere by incorporating the right proportions of water to chicken carcass. It is their grace and humility that prevents them from patenting the coveted secret formula.

I lowered my guard, withheld my stubbornness and called my abuela.

She prepared the potent brew and hopped in a taxi to my flu stricken apartment. Even in a dwelling that was not her own, she immediately took charge (as grandmothers do). Our conversations, mostly commands on her part, were composed mainly of “Sit down,” “Stop getting up,” “All of it…ALL OF IT!” and “It’s supposed to look like that, just eat it.”

After I had been fed and bathed in rubbing alcohol, we sat down in front of my television set and she began looking through my video collection. She didn’t seem all that interested and, up until then, the only movie I knew she really liked was The Princess Bride, which she never passed up when they showed it on cable. Although I did have a copy of it, I really wasn’t in the mood for that kind of happy-happy kiss-kiss flick… not while strands of my lower intestine were still dangling from my mouth. “Oh my!” I heard her say. “This is Gone with the Wind!” and indeed it was. It was still sealed in its flimsy plastic shell and slightly covered in dust. It was one of those movies that I had purchased, not because I wanted to watch it, but because of its historical value within film history. As an arrogant little turd, I felt it made my collection all the more impressive. “I haven’t seen it yet.” I told her. “Then you will. Let’s watch it.” She answered. I was too weak to argue. She made me get up and stagger over to the VCR to play the tape. As powerful as my “abuela” was, modern technology was her kryptonite. I put the thing in and sat down with a loud thud. I took a deep breath. It began.

The movie was actually very good. As much as I marveled at the grandeur of the 1939 epic, it was my grandmother who impressed me the most. I learned more about her in that night than I had ever known before simply by watching her watch the movie. She had grown up in a large family with a father who owned a huge portion of land in the Naranjito countryside. Even though she and her brothers and sisters had to help out with the chores, they did have their fair share of servants and field workers. It was no wonder she identified with certain aspects of this movie but I was startled to see her actually well up when Scarlett O’Hara yells up to the heavens in defiance and utters her classic line “… I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!”

Here was a woman who belonged to a large, traditional and very catholic family… a woman who sought and obtained her independence. She had become a divorced, single mother living in the city during a time when such things were frowned upon. She never stopped working. She never gave in and as far as she and my young mother were concerned, there was always food on the table.

After the movie, we talked about it for a while. Nothing deep. Nothing profound. We just talked about what we had seen and how much she loved it. She also thought Clark Gable was hot. That… no. That I didn’t need to know. I fell asleep.

The next morning… I was cured! I felt much better! My grandmother gathered her things, left me some soup in the fridge and called a cab. I had shared a movie with my grandmother. I had shared her favorite movie.

I’m glad I did.