When I ask Papi if he needs help with dinner the next night, he doesn’t make a big deal of it. He just asks me to shred the chicken for the enchiladas while he works on the sauce.
As we move around the tiny kitchen to pull out the baking dish, grate the cheese, arrange the tortillas, it’s not the choreographed dance he does with Nor. We bump into each other. I drop the cutting board. He can’t find the cilantro.
But the enchiladas get made and in the oven. They smell amazing. It’s comfortable in a way that feels both totally foreign and familiar. It’s family.