by Rossana Segovia

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First, remind your teacher at a United States boarding school that guacamole is not just enjoyed in the Super Bowl but is also a nurturing dish you eat back home every day.

Replace the fresh natural avocado that your mom spends hours choosing by its texture and size with the fake two-for-one deal green paste that you found on the corner of the fridge in a big and doubly hygienic supermarket. Grab ten or more little boxes of premade avocado paste because you and your best friend do not know if making traditional Mexican guacamole for a thousand American kids would be a total success or a disastrous failure.

Call your mom because you do not remember how many tomatoes or onions you should buy. Hear her voice through the phone and miss her, but don’t tell her because she will cry and that is on you.

Instead of buying a fresh lemon with a hard crust, the one that your grandma always squeezes in a small glass dish before we start eating, replace it with a little plastic bottle in the shape of a yellow lemon with a paper sticker that says “one hundred percent natural”.

Let your teacher drive you from the supermarket to the basement of his house near the school where other international students are making a poor attempt to recreate their traditional dishes with stuff they ordered in door-dash or bought at Walmart, a tense air wrapping the kitchen while the students complain about how this does not represent the essence of their countries.

Teach your best friend how to cut the onions and tomatoes just as your grandmother taught you in her kitchen when you were nine years old; let everyone be impressed by your agility with the knife; and then explain to them how your mother’s side of the family is composed of chefs and passionate women and men who cook and feed families as a job.

Miss your grandparents while you cut the onions that disguise the tears.

Don’t let your best friend do anything, not because she is going to do it wrong, but because you are holding the spoon and mixing like the only way to remember home, to remember the imprecise measurements of your mom, the way she sprinkles salt and pepper and puts olive oil all over the pan with a fast movement of her wrist, and the way your grandma will always cook more food than is necessary to feed the family, her two children had a big discussion a couple of years ago, but still, she expects that cooking tons of “frijol con puerco” will join my cousins and uncles and us all again at the nice dining table at my house.

Put the guacamole in a big bowl, and instead of handmade corn tortillas, replace it with a bag of chips on the side. Try not to get mad when you see the chips are all torn apart, and ignore the idea that these things would never happen back home.

Serve your culinary masterpiece in the last stand of the international food fair at your boarding school. Do not worry about the uncomfortable feeling of presenting a traditional dish that has nothing traditional and the sad memories the process provoked. This will be fixed by the curious faces of kids asking what this genius creation is while devouring chips and guacamole.

In the last step, just let the nostalgic feeling of home wrap around you while everyone tells you and your best friend how good the guacamole is. The idea of “I cannot wait to tell this to my mom” makes your heart melt.

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Rossana Segovia is an author currently based in the United States, specifically in Connecticut. As an international student, she brings a diverse perspective to her writing. With a passion for cooking, Rossana often incorporates this art form into her stories, adding rich layers of flavor to her narratives.

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