magical realism

One time, I was following my abuelo in the tomato fields.

We were bending at our backs, stooping close to the earth, parting leaves of the plants, searching for ripe tomatoes.

"Ah, Salito, pulling words from you is like picking one of these tomatoes," he laughed. "Hard work!"

It was worth the effort to pick the tomatoes, though, because we kept a few in our bags to take home to mamí.

She stewed them with fresh green beans and chicken legs.

We ate them in the dusk after the long day, smiling at each other in peaceful quiet.

"It's okay that you don't talk," said my abuelo as I rested my head on the straw pillow on the cot inside our bus.

"If you talked all the time, you'd never learn anything."

He's right, you know.

I learn by listening.

But as I closed my eyes to go to sleep in the still heat of the metal frame of the old bus  in the summer moonlight I wondered, "But if you only listen, will you ever be able to teach anything? 

How do you find your voice?"

Hmmm.

Part of me wants to live my life as a talking teacher, have my ideas at the center of the universe with everyone and everything orbiting around me.

Part of me wants to live my life as a listening learner, have the ears of my heart at the center of the world serving life around me. 

I know most of what I know by watching my abuelo live and work the farms and fields of migrant labor.

Maybe I will speak.

Though it will be without words.

Maybe I will speak with my life.

Maybe this is the greatest thing I've ever learned.

Learning to listen to other people's lives.

Learning to listen to life.

I watch my abuelo.

I follow his footsteps.

It is a humble path.

Estoy aquí.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020