I was always hungry as a little girl.
Not the kind of hungry a snack fixes. The kind that settles into your bones when you’re small and poor and there’s not much in the refrigerator.
So when I think back to the smells of my childhood, the first one that finds me isn’t café con leche or a pot of arroz con pollo bubbling on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a hot dog. Frying. In the middle of the night.
I couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. I was home alone, which wasn’t unusual back then, and I had fallen asleep, waiting. I heard the door open in the wee hours of the morning. Mama and my stepfather were home from a night out. Still tipsy. Loud in the way grown-ups get home late at night when they think the little ones are asleep.
Half asleep, I called out the only thing on my mind.
Mama. I’m hungry.
She grumbled, surprised that I was still awake. But she went straight to that hotplate and started frying me a hot dog. When my stepfather asked her to make him one too, she put him right in his place.
Hold your horses.
Me first.
In her own imperfect way, she chose me that night. Eyes barely open, I ate that hot dog in bed like it was a feast. Because it was.
But the smells and sounds that shaped me most came later, in a small two-bedroom apartment in sunny Miami, where I lived with my maternal grandparents for three precious years.
At the time, I thought that was just life. I didn’t realize until much later that those three years would become the safest years of my childhood.
I knew I was loved there before I even opened my eyes in the morning. I could hear: the soft clattering of dishes in the kitchen, my grandmother up and moving, already starting the day good before it began. And near the curtain window, the soothing sound of doves cooing somewhere close. And always, always, the aroma of Spanish coffee.
On the radio, Paul Harvey’s warm, unhurried voice filled the room. And now… the rest of the story. Even the radio felt steady in that house.
My grandfather was a man of few words. Strong, quiet, and deeply loving toward my grandma. He didn’t cook; that was entirely Grandma’s domain, but he showed up in every other way a man can. Every morning, he walked me to school. Every afternoon, he walked me home. No big speeches. No lessons announced. He allowed me to speak, asking how my day went. Just his presence, steady as a heartbeat, beside me on the sidewalk while I chatter along.
He read the Bible every day and the newspaper front to back. And every Sunday on the city bus after church, without fail, he took us to a cafeteria for lunch and then to the Public Library in downtown Miami, where we’d spend hours just wandering among books. Looking back, I think that was his way of showing me the world.
And Grandma.
She cooked three warm meals a day, every single day. I didn’t know until I was older that she wasn’t the best cook. It didn’t matter. To a little girl who had gone to bed hungry more times than she could count, three warm meals a day felt like abundance. Like being rich.
If you didn’t finish your plate, there was no dessert. Simple as that.
But what I remember most about Grandma wasn’t the food. It was the sound of her. She hummed gospel songs through everything, while ironing on the aluminum table on laundry day, at the sewing machine, at her big black typewriter, or crocheting in her rocker. Worship wasn’t just for Sundays with Grandma. She hummed while doing everything … always moving, making something, doing for others, always grateful.
And on Sundays, we dressed in our best.
I didn’t have many dresses. But what I had was always cleaned and pressed. Grandma made sure of that. We walked into church looking like we belonged there, because she believed we did.
The church was our source of strength. Comforting and encouraging in a way that held us together through the week. And I would watch my grandmother in the pew, her eyes glistening with tears she didn’t bother to wipe away. She wasn’t performing. She was just… grateful. Deeply, quietly, overflowingly grateful to God.
I didn’t fully understand it then. But I was watching faith with skin on it. And it was leaving its mark on me.
I was sent back to live with Mama when I was twelve. That chapter is its own story, and not an easy one.
But I still carry the memories with me. The soft sheets between my toes. The cooing of the doves outside my window. The coffee aroma. Paul Harvey’s mellow voice. My grandfather’s footsteps beside mine. And my grandmother’s humming over daily household chores.
Those smells and sounds didn’t just shape my childhood.
They shaped my faith.
What smells and sounds take you back to your own childhood? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.
From Heart to Heritage
Reflections From the Heart 