Masa and Memories | Masa y Memorias
"A tortillería owner teaches a younger woman the art of making masa, and finds unexpected connection in the process"
Masa and Memories
Masa y Memorias
She walked into my tortillería asking questions that no one asked anymore.
"How do you know when the masa is ready?" she asked.
"You don't know. You feel."
"Teach me to feel it."
Her name was Amanda. Twenty-eight, graduate student, studying food anthropology. She wanted to learn traditional tortilla making for her thesis.
I was fifty-five. I'd been making tortillas since I was four.
"This isn't something you learn for a paper," I said. "This is something you learn for life."
"I want both. The paper and the knowledge."
"You're ambitious."
"Is that bad?"
"Not at all."
She came every morning at 5 AM, before my shop opened. I taught her to soak the corn, prepare the nixtamal, grind the masa by hand.
"Your grandmother did this?" she asked.
"And her grandmother. And hers. Back to the women who first discovered corn could become something more."
"That's beautiful."
"It's survival. We made beauty from necessity."
Her hands were soft at first—scholar's hands. Within weeks, they calloused. She pressed tortillas with growing confidence.
"You're good at this," I admitted.
"I have a good teacher."
"You have dedication. That's different."
The line blurred between teacher and student, between lesson and something else. I found myself watching her hands, her concentration, the way she smiled when a tortilla came out perfect.
"You're looking at me," she said one morning.
"I'm assessing your technique."
"Is that all?"
I didn't answer. I was afraid of the truth.
She kissed me in the prep kitchen, her hands covered in masa, mine covered in flour.
"Is this wrong?" she asked.
"Why would it be wrong?"
"The age difference. The teacher-student thing. The..."
"The what?"
"The fact that I've been in love with you for weeks and didn't know how to say it."
"You've been in love with me?"
"Since you showed me how to feel the masa." She laughed. "I thought you were teaching me about corn. You were teaching me about connection."
"Amanda..."
"I know it's complicated. I know there are a thousand reasons why this shouldn't work. But I also know what I feel when I'm with you."
"What do you feel?"
"Home."
We kept it quiet at first. She was still writing her thesis; I was still her subject. But when the paper was submitted, we stopped hiding.
"Your shop is trending," she said, showing me her phone. Articles about the tortillería, about traditional methods, about our story.
"People care about masa?"
"People care about love. The masa just brought them here."
She graduated with honors. The thesis became a book. The book brought visitors from everywhere, all wanting to learn what she had learned.
"You could do this full time," I said. "Teaching. Preserving."
"Only if I do it with you."
"Is that a proposal?"
"It's a partnership." She took my flour-covered hands. "The rest we figure out together."
We run the tortillería together now—my experience, her energy, our combined love for the tradition.
"The masa knows," I tell our students. "It knows when you're present. When you're patient. When you care."
"How do you know that?" they ask.
I look at Amanda, pressing tortillas beside me.
"Because I learned from the best."
Masa and memories—where tradition meets transformation, and love rises like corn from the earth.