Tita

A plastic Tweety bird figurine with a blue backpack and a matching cap wasn't anything special. Yet, I loved it and I would take it everywhere.

Every Sunday up until I turned four, my family would attend Spanish mass in the morning and then visit my great-grandmother in the nursing home. We would sit in her room and the adults would chatter for hours on end. The conversations seemed to last forever.

On one particular Sunday, it was my great-grandma's birthday so I was forced into wearing a super frilly dress. It was pink and had ruffles on the skirt. My grandparents were dressed very sharply and my mother was wearing a black dress that made her pale skin look white as a ghost's.

My great-grandma, who I called “Tita,” had the small television in her room turned to a novela and the bleakness of the room was accompanied by the smell of a powdery perfume. “Your Tita likes to spray the room with her perfume before we get here so it'll smell real pretty,” my grandma would tell me. We had been allowed to bring a cake for my Tita's birthday. It was chocolate, her favorite. We sang “Los Mañanitas” and stuffed our faces until we couldn't eat anymore.

After the initial celebration, I was sitting on the ground, playing with my Tweety figurine when my Tita called me over. I shyly walked over to her bedside. My grandpa picked me up and put me next to my Tita. She spoke to me in Spanish and held her hand out. I handed her my toy, and she grabbed it and made him dance. She then made a weak attempt to copy Tweety's voice. I giggled and she hugged me. She continued to create a bunch of stories with the small figurine. We ended up leaving the small room a few hours later. I would never smell my Tita's perfume, which was as

My Tita ended up passing away a few weeks later. I never really got the chance to be sad about it because at the time I was too young to understand what death was. Looking back, that is the only real memory I have of my Tita and it is one I continue to treasure even to this day.