Month of Joy: Sharing My Joys with My Son by Maria Turtschaninoff
This year, my husband and I have introduced roleplaying to our son. He was 6 at the beginning of the year, so we thought it was time. I never got to role play as a kid. I had the games, and I would have loved to play, but I had no-one to play with. I was the only nerd in my class (not that I even knew the term). I spent hours making characters, drawing maps, and planning adventures. It was difficult to plan the adventures, though, as I did not really grasp how the game was supposed to work, never having tried it for real. It wasn’t until I met my (nerdy) husband, who DM-ed for me, that I got to play. I love that we did that together! I even got to DM for him.
Month of Joy: The Smell of Masa in the Morning by Sabrina Vourvoulias
There is a particular smell to corn that has been soaked in wood ash lye, then washed and hulled and ground into a fine meal. It is the aroma of freshly made tortillas, of tamales as they steam, of my mother’s huipiles. Really. No matter how freshly laundered, no matter how many cedar balls or lavender sachets have been thrown in the drawer to keep the moths away, the distinctive hand-woven Guatemalan blouses my mother wore retain the smell of a grain turned more aromatic, more flavorful, more nutritious by the nixtamalation process.
