A year and a half later, it’s come to an end. I’m now the owner of a diploma in Especialización de Gastronomía Mexicana from the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana in Mexico City.
I should’ve been excited at graduation last week. Instead I was nervous. What if I wouldn’t get my diploma after all? What if there was some weird fluke and they’d left my name off the list?
I was sad, too. I’d made my first tortilla dough here. I learned how to properly salt a mole. And how to toast chiles, how to crack dried beans under the weight of my metlapil, how to appreciate the nuns’ inventiveness, and how to tie little bows made from cornhusks to the edge of the tamale pot so the pot stayed happy and steamed properly.
The class had gotten Yuri and Edmundo a card, and when it was my turn to sign I didn’t know what to say. I looked at Crayton helplessly. How do I sum up into words… ? I felt teary.
Crayton suggested an opening line: “I’m of Mexican-American roots, and you taught me about a culture that was always inside me but I didn’t know existed.” It was exactly what I felt, so I scribbled it down, along with a few other thoughts about them giving me a gift. It didn’t seem like enough.
Toward the end of the ceremony, Dulce, the academic coordinator, called my name and I stood up to get my diploma. I kissed Edmundo and Yuri on the cheek. Crayton snapped a photo. And then that was it.
There’s a sentence at the bottom of the diploma that says I’ve completed 148 hours. Can you believe it?
I keep thinking about the time we made manchamanteles in class and it was so good I ate it cold from my refrigerator the next day. I had never liked manchamanteles, but there I was, not even caring to sit down, standing in front of the open refrigerator with a tupperware and a spoon. That’s what good mole can do to you.
