My mother’s hands

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers. To the ones who bring life into this world and from that moment on give a love that asks for nothing but gives everything.

A quiet strength.

A constant presence.

A love that never ends.

Happy Mother’s Day

This is my story about my mother.

Some homes wake up to the smell of coffee. Ours woke up to the smell of fresh tortillas cooking on a hot comal.

The warm aroma would fill the house before the sun was fully up. Comforting. Familiar. It was the smell of home.

In our house, that smell always came from my mother. My mother made tortillas every day. We were a large family, and life was not always easy. But one thing we always had was freshly made flour tortillas coming off the comal.

She never needed a recipe.

She would gather flour into a large bowl and add what she knew by heart. A little salt. A little fat. Warm water. No measuring cups. No written instructions. Just instinct and experience from doing it day after day.

She would mix the dough with her hands, kneading it until it was smooth and ready.

She would roll the dough into small balls, each one almost exactly the same size. With a rolling pin she would press them flat and stretch them gently.

Every tortilla looked the same. Perfectly round. Perfectly thin.

It was almost like watching a machine work, except no machine could ever do it better. Each roll of the pin had a rhythm. Each stretch of the dough had a purpose. Her hands moved with a quiet confidence that only comes from doing something thousands of times.

Then onto the hot comal they went.

The tortilla would touch the heat and begin to puff slightly, little bubbles forming as it cooked. She would flip it quickly, always moving with the rhythm she had mastered over the years.

Perfect every time.

And the smell… you could smell those tortillas outside the house.

Family friends, neighbors, anyone visiting. The moment they smelled those tortillas cooking, they would linger nearby, the anticipation quietly building as they waited for my mother to offer them one.

And she always did.

There was always another tortilla coming off the comal.

On cold mornings one would come straight off the comal, hot and soft. We would spread butter inside and fold it into a triangle. The first bite was always warm with just a hint of butter.

But the best part was the bottom corner. That was where all the butter gathered. When you finally reached that last bite, the tortilla released a burst of melted butter that made it the best bite of all.

My mother rolled tortillas in the morning. Tortillas again in the afternoon. Tortillas again for dinner.

No matter how tired she was. No matter how much work it took to feed a large family. She never complained.

Those tortillas were more than food. They were love. They were commitment. They were how my mother cared for her family every single day.

Her hands worked quietly and faithfully, turning flour and water into something that fed not just a family, but anyone who walked through our door.

To me, the tortilla was never just something to eat. It was the thread that held our family together. And it all began with my mother’s hands.