Pan y Café: My abuelita makes the best coffee

I really don’t remember the first time my grandma gave me coffee. I just know that there is no one else on this planet who makes it like her.

Whenever the kids at school scrunched their noses and said they hated coffee, or their parents didn’t let them drink it, or they’ve never had it before, I often felt pity for them. How could you not drink instant coffee with whole milk and at least two scoops of sugar? That’s how my grandma, my abuelita in Spanish, made it growing up.

It feels fitting then that this column’s name would be a tribute to the woman who, without knowing how to read or write herself, made sure I made it to the one place she never had the opportunity to step into. Married at a young age and molded by years of war, labor and grief, abuelita never thought twice about her lack of formal education — what mattered was that her descendants had a chance to strive for more.

After I walked the stage at my high school graduation, abuelita hugged me tightly and cried into my shoulder outside of the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. I didn’t need to speak to her to understand the gravity of the situation — and, regardless, I wasn’t able to form many words because I was also crying. She took a moment to look at me dressed in my cap and gown, and in that moment, abuelita and I stood generations apart, but tethered together.

I think about that memory a lot. In part, I owe so much of my education to my abuelita because I was largely raised by her. She braided my hair in the morning, stood by the porch to make sure I made it to school safely and had food hot and ready for me when I came back. When my parents woke up at 4 a.m. to head off to work and would return in the evening with tired faces and exhausted bodies, it was abuelita who cared for me and gave me bread and coffee, or pan y café in Spanish.

In the memories I have with her, such as holding her wrist so she can form a shaky “X” as a signature or sitting alongside her during emergency room visits so I could be her translator, I stood in awe at the strength with which she carried herself. There was no shame in her resolve, only resilience personified, which makes me wonder who she could have been under different circumstances that hadn’t forced her to uproot her life time and time again. 

My mom often tells me that one of the reasons we immigrated from Guatemala was because she wanted to see me do more than get married and have kids at a young age. Girls’ education is scarce in Guatemala, often in part due to patriarchal attitudes and poverty that result in many young girls being barred from academia.

My mom has never let me forget this, and upon reflecting on how much my education meant to abuelita, I’ve never been able to shake off the pressure that attending college meant I served as an extension of my mom and abuelita’s unanswered dreams. This exacerbated the emotions I already had of not feeling like I belonged at USC because I felt like my place in this University was drastically different from my peers with intergenerational legacy status.

Whenever events such as Trojan Family Weekend came around and I would see groups of students whose parents, grandparents or great-grandparents came to USC, it was hard to push down all my jealousy and sadness. I longed for a traditional college experience where I could relate to those families, where I could count on abuelita to give me stories about her years in college. But in the end, I’ve come to realize that I have something better because I have her. 

My USC journey has often been about making abuelita proud and reaching accomplishments in honor of her, and while I’ve sometimes forgotten along the way what that has personally meant to me, I can’t deny that it hasn’t been an anchor that has guided me these past four years. I think of her courage often when I’m struggling, and I think of her strength when I feel hopeless.

Writing a column such as this one was always something I wanted to do since I got to USC but have never had the courage to do so. I deeply admired and outright envied those who so easily and so proudly attached themselves to writing about their passions, but I found that to be a vulnerable position I didn’t want to step into.

But I realize now that these experiences do matter, and writing about them makes me feel a bit less lonely. Plus, abuelita would want me to share this with you all as she is the best storyteller that I know. 

And soon this story will finish in its entirety, as I count down the days until commencement so I can hug abuelita once again.

Angie Orellana Hernandez is a senior writing about contemporary Latinx experiences in conjunction with higher education. Her column, “Pan y Café,” runs every other Friday. She is also the Development and Recruitment Director at the Daily Trojan.