Of Poets and Empanadas

The woman sitting next to me at the half moon table in the dining room of the nursing home clutched my hand and caressed each nail slowly. “How pretty,” she said with a smile, then turned her hand over, showing me her newly lacquered red nails. The other three ladies at the table with my mother-in-law nodded in turn as I admired each one’s manicure. One of the women only stared mutely and offered me an empty coffee cup when I turned to look at her nails. Behind us, two men commiserated with each other so loudly and animatedly in disconnected sounds that it echoed off the walls while cafeteria workers cleaned up from lunch.

Although I was there to visit my mother- in- law, I was glad to see these other ladies, each over 90 years old, who had befriended her. We talked of the empanadas (Mexican fruit filled pastries) I had brought for their merienda (afternoon snack) and one of the ladies commented while patting the bag of empanadas that it was nice to find such treasures with wonderful fillings in a nursing home. My mother in law pushed off in her wheelchair to get some napkins.

As quickly as Alice falling down the rabbit hole, though, the woman I assumed didn’t speak suddenly picked up on the word empanada, loudly turned it into a similar sounding Spanish word that has a slang, sexually vulgar meaning, and the conversation took a deep swerve into a direction I’d never anticipated, complete with loud chortling and thigh slapping by the formerly silent woman.

Since I've never talked with 90 year olds about sex, I was caught momentarily speechless by the intimate questions two of these nonagenarians now felt free to pepper me with. They interpreted my dumbfounded state as innocence and both chimed in, trying to educate me on advanced topics in the birds and the bees. My mother- in- law pulled up behind me and whispered in Spanish, “They can be so immature! Let’s move to another table.” Even as their laughter continued, I stood and we looked around the room for another table.

The elderly man who sometimes thinks he is my husband waved excitedly as we turned in his direction, gesturing us over with fervent ooh’s and ahh’s and bouncing in his wheelchair. I smiled at him but scanned the other side of the room quickly, and another man with a short crew cut and dark rimmed glasses beckoned us to his empty table. I reasoned we didn’t have much to lose, so we headed his direction.

I’d never met him before, and smiled a hello as we settled in. The two men who were loudly communicating with each other with an array of booming sounds were now closer to us and it was difficult to hear anything else, but our new table mate extended his hand and introduced himself.

“I am Oscar Hernandez Ortega (name is changed). I am her second cousin on our mothers’ side,” he said as he patted my mother in law’s arm. “I was a double major, English and Spanish, in college. That was 70 years ago when I graduated,” he added.

“Were you a teacher or professor?” I asked as I mentally calculated his age.

“Actually, I’m a poet. I worked other jobs to put food on the table for my family. My last job before I retired was as a newspaper editor, but I’m a poet. You can’t retire from a passion, you know,” he added genially.

I nodded appreciatively as I shared I had just retired as an English teacher. A nurse’s aide came to retrieve my mother- in- law for her bath. “Ahhh, if you don’t mind, could we talk of poets and poetry for a while? I really miss that in here,” Oscar Hernandez Ortega confided. So for the next half hour, we talked of Donne, Plath, Lorca, shaped verse, free verse, and meter, in what was the most satisfying literary conversation I’ve ever had.

They wheeled my mother in law back in and he held up one palm. “Please wait- don’t go until I can get back. I have something for you,” he asked.

I assured him I wasn't moving as he wheeled himself down the hall. My mother-in-law was munching on her empanada happily when he maneuvered his chair back to the table holding a creased piece of paper. “This is the last poem I wrote before I came in here. I’d like for you to have it because I think you’ll give it a good home.” The neatly typewritten poem on the paper sat atop a shaky inscription to me, and was signed Oscar Hernandez Ortega.

And indeed the treasures in a nursing home are filled with wonderful things.