When people think of Mexico, mariachis, tacos, tequila and Azteca often come to mind. But when I am asked about my childhood, what surfaces is something quieter, more intimate. I think about growing up in Irapuato, Mexico, between 1974 and 1979, about homemade mole and fresh tortillas from the shop around the corner, jícama with lemon and salt, guava and banana finding their way into just about everything. It was a time and place where music seemed to set the pace for daily life, where rhythms, both heard and lived, gave shape to the ordinary. The city was smaller then, slower, still stretching itself into what it would become. Life moved in patterns that felt unquestioned: the hum of routine, the familiarity of streets, the quiet certainty of where you belonged. Some memories from those years have faded at the edges, but others remain vivid, anchored not by grand events but by small, repeated rituals that gave shape to our days.
Weekly supermarket expeditions were sacred, shaped as much by the times as by our family. In those years, there were only a handful of options in Irapuato: Comercial Mexicana, newer and slightly more aspirational; Blanco, which my mother never quite trusted; and Aurrerá, practical and affordable, the one we returned to week after week. My mother preferred it for its prices, for its straightforwardness, for the quiet assurance that you could fill a cart without excess. And so it became part of our rhythm, as non negotiable as Sunday church.
My parents did not believe in eating out in general, unless we had guests. So these small expeditions carried a certain weight. They were our outing, our shared experience beyond the home. To this day, a trip to the supermarket still feels like a bit of a grand production. If a local wet market is an indicator of the soul of a town, then a supermarket on a Saturday morning gives you a front row seat to family dynamics.
They were non negotiable, just like Sunday church. Even in the weeks when my father worked night shifts and moved through the house like a shadow I barely caught, those two rituals held steady. Church in the morning, supermarket after. That was our time, predictable, quiet, ours.
My father never ate in the company canteen. My mother made sure of that. Every day she packed his lunch with a kind of care that felt almost ceremonial: a large thermos of coffee, another filled with ice cold water, two double decker sandwiches wrapped just so, a Tupperware of fruit, and always something sweet. If she had not baked, then the sweetness came from a box, pastisetas tucked in among the rest, as if they belonged there just as much as anything homemade.
But the lunch was only part of it. Even in those early years, my father kept a stash of cookies in his office drawer. Just in case, he would say. It was not said lightly, and even as a child I sensed it came from somewhere deeper than habit. He had grown up during the war, and hunger was not an abstract fear to him. It lingered, quietly shaping the way he moved through the world. There was always something set aside. Always a reserve.
Pastisetas became a constant in our home. When we moved to Culiacán, they came with us. When we moved again to Mexico City, they followed. The brands may have changed depending on where we were, what store we shopped in, what was available on the shelves, but in our house they were always called the same thing. Pastisetas. The name itself was enough to carry continuity.
From the moment I set foot in Portugal four years ago, I sensed, without fully understanding it, that I had come full circle on many levels. It is never the grand gestures that reveal this kind of truth, but the small, almost incidental discoveries. Realizing I could buy chuchu here, the same vegetable I had grown up with in Mexico as chayote, known elsewhere as sayote in the Philippines. These quiet recognitions accumulate, gently stitching together places that once felt far apart.
My father, in the late 1970s and early 80s, was in charge of developing the canning of sardines, tuna, and mackerel. Because of that, we never ran out of them at home. They were simply always there, part of the background of daily life. How ironic it feels now to live in Portugal, where sardines and canned tuna are not just pantry staples but something almost sacred, woven deeply into the culture.
A recent trip to Valencia sharpened that awareness even further. Walking through its streets and tasting familiar flavors in slightly different forms, I was reminded how much of my upbringing is rooted in the Iberian peninsula. The ingredients may have shifted when they crossed the ocean, adapting to what was available in Mexico, but the essence remained, echoes of horchata, of buñuelos, of traditions that had traveled long before I ever did.
Last week, while doing my grocery shopping, I wandered into the cookie aisle without much intention. And then I saw them. A box of spiral butter cookies, familiar in a way that did not immediately announce itself, but settled somewhere deeper. Same shape, same size, and by the looks of it, the same unapologetic amount of butter. Something in me paused.
It was not until today, when I opened the box, that the memory fully surfaced. Not as a thought, but as a recognition. A quiet, undeniable sense of return. And with it, an awareness that startled me in its simplicity. Somewhere along the way, I had become the one who keeps cookies just in case.
I have always had a complicated relationship with my father. Time has a way of sharpening some memories and softening others, but there are a few that remain untouched, small, intact moments of shared joy. They do not ask to be explained or resolved. They simply exist, like those Sunday rituals, like a box of pastisetas in the cupboard, waiting quietly to be opened.
The power of a single cookie.
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