Come in.
Before there was Lisa Leyva, there was Buela's House.
The name was never invented.
It was remembered.
Before there was a story, there was a door. Before there was a recipe, there was a hand. I never said Abuela. We said Buela. And everything happened at Buela's House.
Who first taught you
how to love?
For me, it was my Buela. Before I could speak, I knew what it meant to be held.
The arms that taught me home.
My Buela taught us that love has a flavor.
Steel against counter. A rolling pin keeping time. The aroma of tortillas moving through the rooms.
The sound of the house.
St. Julia
Patron Saint of Abundance & Giving
Everyone said she had ollas benditas — blessed pots. But the blessing was her.
Tiene la mano.
She said it about me when I was still a child. Not because I followed a recipe — there was no recipe to follow. It was recognition.
My Buelo taught us that steadiness can be beautiful.
He carried silence like dignity. The jacket. The glasses. The pen in his pocket. The chair that knew his shape.
Presence, without announcement.
They could not read or write.
That was never the measure of their wisdom.
Their knowing lived elsewhere. In aroma. In taste. In feel. In earth. In brick. In hand.
He could draw the soul of a horse.
People brought horses to him because he understood what could not be forced.
Some things are not kept.
They keep us.
The objects still participate. Pick one up, and the house answers.
Mortar. Not dirt. Evidence.
He could not write his name.
He carried a pen every day of his life.
Still waiting in the pocket.
The song waited until I knew it.
My Buelo never forced the piece.
The puzzles were maps. One piece survived. It travels with me still.
There is a house
I can no longer enter.
So I built the threshold another way. Not to recreate what is gone, but to make the inheritance walkable.
One house. Many rooms.
My Buela is how I know it is true.
Your buela is who you feel.
The house blooms around you.
I keep trying to tell you who I am. Instead, I keep telling you who they were. That says everything.
I am the keeper of the house she can no longer enter, and the builder of the one where others may come in.
They never left me a house.
They left me a way of coming home.
Come in. Leave held.
We’ll leave a light on.