A fond memory of my mother was riding shotgun on an old orange (later crimson) Datsun 160J. She only drove when we lived in a small oil worker colony near the refinery in Tula, Hidalgo.

Being the smallest one, she would take me here, there, and everywhere to help carry shopping, keep a watchful eye on my fidgety self, and because she actually cared about my wellbeing.

The car only had AM radio, and sometimes, with the right weather conditions, you could get the odd AM country station from Texas, so a lot of memories of driving on the dusty landscape that was Tula was country. George Strait, John Denver, Conway Twitty, Kenny Rogers, Loretta Lynn, you name it, if it was big on the late 70s or early 80s, we probably heard it.

Sometimes she would buy me a pineapple empanada. They were kept warm and cozy on a woven basket, sold near some railroad tracks. I would sometimes sit on the back, over the spare tire, and look at the clouds under the bluest skies you’d imagine. Once we moved to Mexico city, she never drove again. She said the people here drove like idiots and she was correct.

My mom had a tough life. After graduating as a chemical engineer in Tampico, she got a job in Minatitlán, a good 700 km distance. My grandparents drove her there, and grandpa promised grandma was going to stay with my mom for a month. At the end of the first day, he ordered my grandma to get on the car and my grandpa told my mother to fend for herself on her own and left. She never recovered emotionally from this and with age, that memory popped too many times.

She then lost an eye to a soda bottle that exploded, and she never wanted an eye glass. She had a trench on her skull as her mother dropped her when she was a baby. Grandma was carrying her and my aunt, and stumbled and chose to protect the baby. Unbeknown to us, that trench pressed a part of her brain and acted like an epilepsy reaction. She would get aggressive or imagine scenarios that weren’t true.

This worsened with age and it was taxing on everyone. My dad took most of the brunt of these episodes, and after he was gone in 2020 from COVID, it was my turn. We had a cleaning lady that helped for a year and 3 months, didn’t took well one of my mother’s episodes and she was fired. My mother broke both hips, one in 2023, and the other one in 2025. That last one was the last straw and a series of cognitive problems she developed later in life exacerbated.

I want to think of the good times we had. The trips to Tampico to see her family, even if she had a massive resentment to her dad. The trips to Ixtapan de la Sal, one of those seldom happy places she had. I always found funny that her fave Disney attraction was Pirates of the Caribbean and she would sing the tune as often as she could. Those are the memories I’ll keep close to my heart, not the memories of hospitals or angry tirades that had a biological nature out of her control.

She knew chemistry like the back of her hand. She would narrate wonderful stories about herself and her relatives -as long as you didn’t ask about her dad- and she could tell you about cinema of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. She had an addiction to Coke, jello, cookies, and salty chips. Earl Grey was her favourite British tea (proper tea), but could fancy Lady Grey or Chamomile. Fish and chips, hamburgers, chicken soup with bananas (!!!!), smoked pork chops with plantains or applesauce (homemade or bust), and dark chocolate, the only one in the world for her.

She is now with dad and Dulcinea, their fave dog. I’ll wallow on sadness but won’t express it as writing. Like I said, I’ll focus on the great times and every time I listen to Dust on the breakers’ Frontiers, I’ll daydream about riding shotgun with her on that old Datsun on highway 57.

Thanks for everything, mom.

-Sam J. Valdés López