No, not the Swiss Miss

but this...

I smelled hot chocolate permeating the air at work today. Surprisingly, it's not the usual hot chocolate that you buy in powdered form. It smells so much of the tsokolate that my childhood is made of...

4:00 pm in a warm summer afternoon

the sun is spilling through our capiz windows

I'm playing in our caida

It's so quiet I hear the occasional creak of our wooden floor

I walk barefoot

I smell dust

I smell the smell of our old ancestral house

Then I smell the hot chocolate in the air.

Our cook, Nanay Ana, is preparing our merienda

Tsokolate...made from Tablea

I hear my Lola's voice

It's such a warm feeling that up to this day,

fifteen years since her passing,

I still know that voice.

Comforting, yet strict

Serious

Scary

But boy, I miss her laughing fits on the dining table

I can still see it all in my mind. Her blush, her smile, her hand covering her mouth with a servilleta. She could barely breathe from happiness. The gold on her front teeth.

Those moments are rare.

So they are precious.

I'm happy I still have them all in my heart.

I miss my Lola.

It's amazing how most of my childhood memories go home to thoughts of her. Even that smell of hot chocolate in the air.