So tomorrow the ubiquitous flour tortilla is all but ignored.  For an entire year, day in and day out, it carries within its fragile walls our lowly bean, our stout potatoes, our lofty hopes.  The tortilla tomorrow gives way for one day at least to dark and rich wheat rolls, buttery biscuits and melting loaves of white bread.  Not a bad trade for a day of true thanksgiving.

But come Friday morning, the tortilla will again take on its burden and enfold our very sustenance within its hold.  Yet it seems unfair, after so much toil and labor month after month, week after week, day after day, that it is relegated on the eve of our national thanksgiving to second chair on the operatic stage of family get-togethers.

When last seen this evening, the tortilla will remain in its plastic packaging or in an envelope of aluminum foil in the refrigerator or perhaps encased in a more sturdy holder along with the others.  Lying silent, flat and close, each tortilla is patient and caring.  Each will wait there for the dawn to come, once again ready – and willing for our sake – to be slung unto a hot slab of iron to secure our immediate future.

For the unmade tortilla, its journey has not begun, and I wonder if the secret recipe for its making somehow floats culturally in the air.  Are its careful combinations – known from house to house – a gift of Nature, or does one maker take it upon him- or her-self to add more salt than the other?

And the flour-to-water ratio – is it universal?

To what extent does the baking powder match the fat factor?

What is all this, and who is its author?

Who and what determines the velvety smoothness of you, our endearing friend?

Whatever your origin, perhaps it is as divine as any part of our culture, for you, O, Tortilla, are ours as much as we are yours.  We could not do without you, and you could not exist without us.  What happy harmony conjoins us one to the other.

And are we grateful?  You must know, you must know! For you were here before us!  The axis on which the earth spins is as important to us!

And it is to your unselfish testament – whose bounty cannot be measured – that you allow us this one day of distance so that we can again rush back to you at the first moment to feel once more your warmth and the very being of ourselves.

Gracias, gracias, gracias.

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