The whole village mocked the widow who kept too much food on the hill.
They said she’d lost her mind after losing her family.
But when winter returned and the truth came out, everyone understood why she was the only one who was prepared.
When July arrived, the patio of my house in the mountains seemed like a place where every corner worked silently to survive the winter that would return sooner or later.
Beneath the large oak trees, thick blankets had been spread out, from which strips of meat hung, slowly drying in the sun.
On tables made from old planks rested baskets filled with potatoes, chayotes, and squash cut into thin slices.
The clean mountain air patiently did its work, as if it too knew that all of this was a promise against hunger.
Near the stream he had built a small smokehouse with river stones and mesquite branches.
A wisp of gray smoke rose from its low roof almost all day long.
Further up I built several tall structures where carefully salted river fish hung, red chilies opened like flowers, and strings of aromatic herbs that perfumed the entire area.
Under the floor of my house I dug a deep cellar where I kept potatoes and turnips between layers of straw to keep them fresh for months.
Every corner of my property held food.
The smell around the house was strong:
salt, smoke, sweet fruit, and dried chili.
Even the coyotes roaming the woods seemed bewildered by that scent.
Many in the village began to murmur.
One afternoon, during the rosary in San Miguel del Valle, Mrs. Elvira, the parish priest’s wife, commented with a pitying smile that I was keeping so much food as if I expected God to punish the valley with hunger.
Some laughed quietly.
But Father Isaac calmly replied that, perhaps,
but he was also the only person in the valley who never had to ask for credit at the store.
The murmurs continued throughout the summer.
They said sadness had driven me mad.
That I never got over my grief.
The village children even dared each other to climb the hill and look from afar at “the strange widow”.
Nobody understood what he was doing.
Nobody knew what I had been through.
Because no one in that valley had ever experienced the winter that changed my life.
In December 1883 my husband Samuel Valdés was known as the best carpenter in three municipalities.
