She was hunched over at the shoulders, shuffling about in her tiny kitchen, wearing pink satin slippers and a soft cotton housedress with small yellow flowers printed on it. Piece by piece, she tore the stale corn tortillas into strips and dropped them into the well-seasoned cast iron pan, and stirred them with some butter. She scattered in chopped onions and peppers, cracked an egg or two on top, sprinkled in grated cheese, and whisked it with a fork and wooden spatula until it was a softly cooked mixture, almost a custard of comforting goodness – a savory Mexican-style bread pudding.

As I sat at the little stainless and green Formica table that had been in her kitchen for decades, I watched her cook, wondering how many more times I would be treated to such delicacies served up with her memorable stories and homemade salsa and tortillas.

Her 1926 Spanish-style house, with a terracotta tiled roof and rough Monterey plastered walls, held special meaning for me. Although I grew up in southern California, my family would gather here in the summer. With meat smoking and chiles roasting nearby, we played in the backyard, caught green chameleon lizards, put them on our shirts to watch them change colors, and then released them so they could scurry off into the ivy. Sometimes there would be a chicken on the grill – an unlucky bird that was most likely a gift from the next-door neighbor, Mr. Whiteman, who raised chickens and exotic birds in his backyard. Cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles would crowd around a wooden picnic table, and we would eat al fresco.

My grandmother and grandfather bought the house together, and my grandmother lived there until 2003, when she passed away at the age of ninety-seven. I bought the house from my father in 2007, thinking it would be a fun project for me and would alleviate the stress it was causing him.

Eva (on left) and a friend in San Antonio in the 1920s.

When I left LA in my little silver Audi with my China pup by my side, I felt sure that a life of sparkles, butterflies, and great Mexican food was in my future. However, my excitement ended when I pulled into the driveway of my new home and saw my grandmother’s enchanted casa covered in sticky vines with pink flowers, peeling paint, and decrepit windows – some covered in black trash bags where the glass should have been. All I could manage was a quiet “Oh shit,” and I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

The sparkles quickly sputtered out, and the butterflies flew away, leaving me in the mid-August heat with a broken air conditioner and windows without glass. As China and I slept on the living room floor that first night, listening to the cicada singing their songs of yearning in the sweltering heat while the muffled horns of trains rumbling through town cried out in the distance, the universe was conjuring up challenges that would almost break me, and a love I could not have imagined.

Photo by Gwyneth Miller @sheepdogproductions

I was alone but for my dog – my magnificent and devoted Border-Collie Chow mix companion. She was a glorious-looking rescue dog that had been returned to the humane society four times before I took her. We had a rough beginning, but she became a piece of me, a fluffy black soul-sister pup who went everywhere with me. I’m unsure what I would have done without her during that period, as I didn’t know anybody in San Antonio other than a cousin I had not seen in years. I would find my anonymity comforting and a little frightening. The past few years had been tough, and I left LA wanting to be invisible as I felt small and lost, but the loneliness was palpable.

It turned out that those years in San Antonio, and the isolation, were crucial for my healing and growth. The amount of work necessary to restore the house was overwhelming, so I took small steps, cleaning it, painting it, and taking care of the essentials to make it livable. It needed a complete renovation, but that would have to wait because when I least expected it, I fell madly in love with a man who lived on the other side of the country. After a year of his commuting from the east coast to Texas to see me, I followed my heart and moved to Maryland to be with him. Initially, I left my house empty and then rented it out as I began my life with the man who would become my husband.

We moved to Boulder, Colorado, where we lived in our sweet mountain house surrounded by towering pine trees and beguiling wildlife. It was a special time for us, and we loved our little birdhouse and the natural beauty of the Rockies. Still, years later, after an extensive renovation of that property and one too many wildfire scares, we felt it was time to sell the house and finally tackle our home in San Antonio.

Our renovation of the interior is almost completed, and my grandmother’s house now has a kitchen she could have only dreamed of. It’s still the funky little Spanish house on the hill but also a rare historical gem. Soon I’ll be cooking again, grinding a concoction of spices in grandma’s molcajete and I’ll stand at the stove in her footsteps, stirring a pot filled with chiles and pinto beans, while Ric sits nearby and strums his guitar.