Underachiever
Because being extra is never enough...
The most wonderful time of the year.
Christmas is complicated for Puerto Ricans. We are an anxious people. As kids, everyone watches us: Santa, the Three Kings, God. But Santa and the Almighty combined do not have the power of a Puerto Rican mother with her death stare trained on you and a flip-flop in her hand ready to give your ass un gran chancletazo.
The pressure for Puerto Ricans doesn’t end with childhood: we enter an adult world dominated by fear. We remain afraid of our mothers, who remind us they have the right to whack our ass till the day they die and are assumed into heaven, where they’ll watch us right alongside God. And while we outgrow our belief in Santa and his naughty v. nice list, we worry about making it onto an even more important list. We need to make it onto a coquito master’s list in order to receive a bottle of the magic that makes winter days merry and bright.
You see, Puerto Ricans love coquito. It is not pre-made, mass-marketed nor available in the refrigerated section of ShopRite. It is a once-a-year elixir of creamy smoothness that warms, cheers, and dulls the sharp edges of life. These are homemade brews, crafted in accordance with secret family recipes that each call for unique combinations of milk varieties (condensed + evaporated + whole? Coco Lopez? Soy?), egg cooking times, rum brands, and spices. These formulations are not entrusted to print; they are shared via whispers in kitchens or invitations to watch a batch being made.
I’m not a good cook but I’m also no pendeja: I made sure I learned how to make coquito from a master because I’m not willing to depend upon others for access to my cultural prerogative and key to joy. Coquito is made during the Christmas season but causes year-round anxiety for Puerto Ricans not skilled in the art of making coquito: they must think twice about not being nice because they need to make it onto someone’s coquito distribution list. A new pony, six-figure bonus and world peace combined can’t beat coquito at Christmas, made in some tia’s or doña’s kitchen and presented in a re-purposed Snapple bottle, one from a stockpile amassed since June, rinsed with hot water and air dried multiple times.
That annual bottle of coquito is a gift best stored on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, behind the bagged kale and fresh pasta or in the fruit drawer under the bag of grapes. A single bottle is the gift that keeps on giving, in solitary moments in the kitchen, where the coquito is poured into that little shot glass from a cousin’s wedding eight years ago. It must be poured carefully, making sure the glass of the bottle doesn’t clink against the mouth of the shot glass, which is shallow enough for my tongue to reach in and lick the insides clean. And a tablespoon is effective to measure and stir coquito into my morning coffee so my system is awash in coquito and caffeine and I’m deliciously revved up but tipping off the rails and it’s bliss… but I have digressed into sharing too much…
A Puerto Rican is screwed if she or he doesn’t make it onto someone’s coquito list: That boricua is dependent upon the good will of others, and while holidays are the time for giving, no one is pendejo enough to share their coquito stash. Forsaken Puerto Ricans have to hope that when they visit their padrino’s or tia’s or commai’s house during the holidays that: 1. maybe there’s coquito; 2. if there is coquito, it doesn’t taste like shit; and 3. there isn’t just a bowl of Turkey Hill egg nog on the table, neglected and room temperature.
There is a fate worse than not making it onto someone’s coquito list: infinitely screwed is the Puerto Rican who makes it onto the list of someone who makes nasty coquito. That poor pendejo is stuck year after year with a watery drivel that tastes of the peach Snapple that was not adequately eliminated from the re-purposed bottle and the too-much cinnamon and nutmeg the doña used to mask the fact that she burned the mixture on the stovetop. The coquito tastes too terrible to drink or serve to others, but it can’t be washed down the drain either. Puerto Ricans know there is a special place in hell for ungrateful malcriados and malcriadas who can’t appreciate the efforts of some tender-hearted viejita who shuffled to ShopRite, filled her screechy shopping cart with the canned milks and a jug of Palo Viejo, paid with her Social Security money, then shuffled back to her kitchen to burn that mis-measured concoction.
The complications of being Puerto Rican are not confined to one stage of life nor one season. Being boricua is a round-the-clock, life-long existential drama. I’m a high-anxiety machine after more than 50 years of being watched, being judged worthy or not, being included or excluded – of just being. But I’m no pendeja. If anxiety is my cultural baggage, I also carry things that help me take the edge off what is often an unwelcoming world. I don’t mean the Don Q rum I use in my coquito.
I mean habits like drinking Snapple in the summer but thinking of the coquito those glass bottles will hold in a few months. Or buying the cans of evaporated and condensed milks when they go on sale in October because I want to be stocked and ready in December. And remembering afternoons spent in the kitchen with Mami, stirring the liquids and egg yolks constantly over medium heat to keep the mixture smooth, and remembering that Gloria first whispered the magic formula to Mami who then showed it to me. It’s giving out the bottles of coquito to those on my distribution list and surprising first-time recipients.
And it’s rationing out those stolen sips so I can savor them alone until Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m sad when I hold the bottle upside down so the last precious drops go directly into my mouth but I don’t shout nor cry nor pout. That one bottle really is the gift that keeps giving and even when it’s empty, I have bits of that magic to savor all year long.