It is possible to be thankful every moment, every
day. It is possible to be thankful every moment,
every day. It takes practice and humility. Hi
and welcome to Tell Me What Happened, the podcast
that features people from all walks of life talking
about real events from their childhood and how
those events impacted their lives. I'm your host,
Jay Rehack. And I love listening to stories from
people's childhoods, which also helped me understand
who those people are. Tell Me What Happened is
sponsored by Sidelining Publishing, publishers
of quality books, including Susan Salador's children's
book, I've Got Peace in My Fingers. Available
worldwide wherever quality books are sold. Tell
Me What Happened is also sponsored by laughsaver
.com. Visit laughsaver .com and record your laughter.
LaughSaver .com will keep it for you, now and
forever. Your family will appreciate it. It's
free and it's easy to use. That's LaughSaver
.com. Today I have as my guest, Eva Lopez, a
former student of mine from about 12 years ago.
Eva is a communication strategist living in Brooklyn
right now. Welcome to the show, Eva. Thank you
so much for having me. Well, I look forward to
hearing your story. I'm hoping if it's a sad
story, it does not involve any part of honors
to American literature with which I taught you.
But if it does, it does. I'm going to take my
chances. What I'm going to do, Ebez, I'm going
to get out of your way. I'm going to ask you
to tell your story. And I try my best not to
interrupt you. If you hear me in the background,
I hope not to distract you is what I'm trying
to say. So the basic idea of the storytelling
is that I stay out of the way you tell your story.
And then afterwards, I'm going to ask you how
you feel that that story has impacted you as
an adult. Are you ready to tell your story? I
am ready to share my story. So our story takes
place in Santa Maya, Mexico, actually. So this
is the town where my grandparents on my dad's
side were born and raised is where they grew
up. And back when I was about eight or nine years
old, I spent two weeks with them back in Santana
and it was those two weeks were just some of
the best weeks of my childhood honestly because
I got to see a whole different world I got to
explore the town that my grandparents were from
I got to meet and make relationships with a lot
of my family members that I you know had never
met before or had only met in passing and previous
trips down to Mexico when I was younger. But
this trip was the first time that I was old enough
to actually form memories and, I guess, to build
relationships with certain, certain cousins and
other family members. But the specific story
that I want to tell is one in which one day I
went to my, my tiaoli's house and she lived right
next door to my grandparents where they, their
house there in, in Santa Ana. So I went over
there and we had a whole list of errands to do
that day. And the first errand was we had to
go to the market to pick up some groceries and
just some other things that we needed for the
house and for dinner that night. So she takes
me to the town market. And to paint the picture,
Santana is a very rural town, very rural community,
a lot of dirt roads. You know, the market you
see. live animals in cages that you can you can
just go and buy hens and live chickens and you
know you also have people that are selling vegetables
and and fruits that they grew right there in
their in their backyard so so this was the to
paint a picture of what this market looked like
it was something that i had never seen before
having grown up in the u .s so it was a bit of
a culture shock for me but i i loved it and so
my tia my aunt she guided me to to this woman
who was selling live chickens. And she goes to
me, she goes, can you help me pick out a chicken?
And I said, sure. So I'm looking at chickens
and here I am thinking, oh, well, this is gonna
be another chicken to add to the coop that my
aunt has in her backyard. Because my aunt, she,
they had a number of chickens that they would
raise and lay eggs and collect them and sell
those eggs and use them for dinner and everything.
So in my head, I'm trying to find a really nice
looking chicken to add to that community that
they have back in the backyard, right? So I find
a really nice plump white chicken and we purchase
it from the woman who's selling them there at
the market. And then we head back to my aunt's
house. So once we get back to my aunt's house,
we go straight into their backyard where they
have a chicken coop and where my other aunt is
starting to kind of get things together to start
making dinner. And my Aunt turns to me and she
goes, okay, so now I need you to hold down this
chicken's legs for me. And I'm very confused
because in that moment I realized, oh, I was
helping to select the chicken that we were gonna
eat for dinner tonight. That's what I was doing
back at the market. And so I was a little mortified
in that moment, but I knew I had to help out,
and I wasn't about to let my aunt down. So she
grabbed the chicken and put its body down on
this tree stump that was in the backyard. And
she had me hold its legs while she took an axe
and chopped its head off. And eight, nine -year
-old me... is sitting there holding the legs
and and it's still moving after the head was
cut off because it you know that that's how the
body reacts even after it's lost its its head
for a couple of minutes and that image has stayed
with me for the rest of my life because that
was just a oh that is a the life of an animal
that was that we just took but is for our food
later And again, having grown up in Chicago,
in the United States, where we buy our meat prepackaged,
we don't see that whole process. To see that
as such a young kid, it just made me realize,
wow, you have to have an appreciation for life,
for animals' life, and recognize the work that
goes into making a meal. So after we killed the
chicken, my aunt then took the body. There was
a... big pot of boiling water that my other aunt
was prepping. And so they put the chicken into
the pot. And then they started plucking the feathers
one by one to start cleansing the chicken and
preparing the meat. And I remember watching this
process and helping my aunt with that as well.
And, you know, there was a couple more hours
of food prep, of chicken prep that went into
this. And fast forward to dinner. For dinner,
we had galgo de pollo that night, chicken soup.
and I remember sitting at that table and staring
at the bowl of soup and my cousin who was sitting
next to me made a comment and she goes she goes
yeah we can't just go to KFC here and I turn
to her and I go yep but this is so much better
so much better because the soup was phenomenal
I still remember how it tasted and I think what
made it taste even better as well was again just
knowing all the the love and labor that went
into it and my my aunts and just in general the
My family and the community in Mexico, when you
do see prepper food from the market, from farm
to table like that, there is really an appreciation
for everything that went into it. And so that
meal and that whole process of witnessing and
helping to kill the chicken that later became
our dinner that night just made me realize a
number of things. It made me realize that the
privileges that I had, growing up in the U .S.
compared to what my cousins and what my family
had to do just to make them a meal back in Mexico.
It made me realize all the things that my grandparents,
my abuelitos, what they gave up to come to the
U .S. and how everything that they did was to
give us that better life and to ensure that we
had a life that was just a little bit easier
than what they had growing up in Santana in such
a small rural town. But most of all, I think
it made me realize I should not take anything
for granted, anything that I have back home and
that the true beauty in being able to appreciate
the food on your table or just something that
you really worked hard for, that it's important
to take a moment to appreciate the effort and
hard work that goes into that. And again, the
love and the labor that can go into. something
as simple as chicken soup, which if I was eating
chicken soup in the US that was straight out
of a Campbell's can or from a restaurant, I wouldn't
think about it. But staring at that soup and
knowing that, okay, that was the chicken that
I helped select earlier today and that I held
its legs down, but it served a purpose and it's
feeding our whole family. There was just a lot,
a lot in that meal that I, again, still carry
with me, still carry with me today. Well said,
beautiful story. I was thinking, of course, the
whole time, I'm wondering down the road now,
are you a vegetarian? You still eat chicken?
Do you go to KFC? Do you, you know, I definitely,
I've never experienced what you're talking about,
but I do know, of course, that somebody has to
kill the chicken, somebody has to repair it.
So did it impact you in that way? Are you still,
are you vegetarian? Are you, you still good with
eating chicken? How do you, how do you, how else
has that impacted you down the road here? That
is a great question. I am honestly a big carnivore.
I love meat. It would be very hard to give up
meat. And that's the thing is, especially where
my family is from, pork, for example, is huge.
So carnitas and making anything that can come
from it. Santa Ana specifically is a big pig
farming town as well. And so, but the animals
are treated there with respect. And there's this
just common knowledge that yes, we're going to
eat these animals, but in knowing that and knowing
that they're providing the food for this family,
it's important to treat animals with respect
and understand that when you're raising them,
when you're killing them, to do it as humanely
as possible. So that was part of the other lesson
that I learned. And so that experience did not
deter me from eating meat, but it did just make
me more appreciative of, wow, this is the process
that goes into it. And it's important to be making
food selections that you know this meat is coming
from a reputable farm or brand or someone that
you know is practicing humane farming practices.
Yeah that's great I agree with you a thousand
percent because I definitely think these these
animals they are a gift to us in terms of our
ability to eat food etc but also they should
be treated with respect when I think people who
are farmers are generally generally people who
are humane people who understand the process
and uh certainly don't abuse animals for the
purpose of abusing them. They literally understand
that this is nutrition and this helps sustain
the world. Well, thank you for that story. I
feel kind of badly for the eight or nine -year
-old, Eva, back then, picking out dead chicken,
thinking, oh, it's a cute little chicken, or
thought you're picking out the cutest one, or
whatever, and turning out, oh, that's tonight's
dinner. That's it. Well, thank you for coming
on the show. I appreciate your time and it's
good to actually reconnect many, many years later
after you're in my class. I talked to you briefly
before the show and I said, it's only been a
few years and you wound up telling me that you've
actually graduated from Whitney Young about eight
years ago, is that right? Yes, in 2012. The time
flies by. It does. It does. I will remember so
much from your class. The Jersey Shore song that
my group and I had to write to Yankee Doodle.
Do you remember that assignment? I do remember
that. We do. We still do it. We take 19th century
songs and modernize them, I guess, basically.
Oh, that's great. Well, I'm glad you remember
that. Hopefully nothing by class is any sort
of a painful memory. I think I'm happy to know
that you're in communications. That's fantastic.
That's great. And most importantly, it sounds
like you're happy living out in Brooklyn, and
that makes me happy too. So thanks for being
on the show. Thanks so much for having me. I
appreciate it. And it was so great getting to
reconnect as well. All right. That's our show.
I'd like to thank my former student, Eva Lopez,
for telling us her story. I also want to thank
our listeners for tuning in. I'd also like to
mention, if you'd like to be on the show, contact
me. If you have a story to tell, I'd love to
hear it. And then finally, our sponsors, of course.
I'd like to thank laughsaver .com. Go to laughsaver
.com and record your laughter. We'll keep it
for you, now and forever. It's free, and your
children, and your grandchildren, and your great
-grandchildren, and probably a lot of friends
will thank you for it. That's laughsaver .com.
Of course, I'd also like to thank Sidelining
Publishing, Publishers of great books, including
Scott Summa's timely work, don't act like the
president. I'm going to end this show, as we
often do, with Susan Salador's classic, Every
Moment, Every Day, available on Spotify, BTW.
Ask Alexa to play Susan Salador. So until next
time, this is Jay Rehack asking you all to stay
safe out there and try not to hurt anybody. It
is possible to be thankful It is possible to
be thankful every moment.