When my family visited my grandparents in Mexico City, my abuelita would take me, her first grandchild, to the big mercado in that part of the city. She and my grandfather lived on Calle Tabasco, a nice coincidence as that was also the name of the state in which they owned a ranch. Later, the government took the ranch but that is another story.

My grandmother and I made these trips together to the mercado del distrito in the 1940s when I was quite young. We’d set out with mesh bags, a big one for her and a little one for me as well as Abuelita's black leather purse, purple with age, her market handbag.

I loved being the only one to go with her to the mercado – not my aunts, not my mother and certainly not my little brother. Sometimes if many relatives were to come for dinner she would take Chaba with us. Chaba was the younger of the two maids and she was filled with fun.

The mercado was large and extended well beyond its regular stucco buildings into alleys and lots and sidewalks, covered by canvases and sheets strung by ropes from nearby roofs. There were stalls, stands, tables and just plain pieces of cloth laid out on the ground to display familiar fruit and vegetables and many that were strange, beautiful and ugly . Meat stalls, fish sinks, glass cases of dulces (sweets of colors never seen in the states) and the many booths of little clay figures and animals, miniature kitchens and dollhouse supplies such as tiny, tiny coffee sets, and nesting bowls. I usually needed many of these miniature clay figures because the ones I’d brought back to the states from the year before were mostly broken.

In the mercado, there was noise, talk, shouts and songs to get shopper’s attention. The smells were mysterious, usually and especially near the fruits. One was always jumping over brooms, puddles of water and channels that carried away the garbage.

Abuelita was all business in the mercado and she knew where to go for the best produce and the fairest prices. I thought she looked rather angrily at the vendors. I didn't think she was as polite to them as she should be. When she argued with them over their prices, I believed them when they said they couldn't lower the price any more as they would not be able to make any money. It was obvious to anyone that they were poor and that my grandmother could afford the price. It didn't help when they would compliment her on her little blonde granddaughter. It made no difference that they would thrust the food towards her and tell her to take it. A few years later I understood this was the dance expected on both sides of the counter. I could never enjoy it but it was expected.

Finally, by the time I wanted to be anywhere else but the mercado, my grandmother would abruptly put the package of food into her mesh bag, or give it to Chaba. She would pull out the little black silk change purse attached to the inside of her purse by a short black cord. She doled out her money carefully.

When the morning's shopping was complete, Abuelita would buy me one or two of the clay miniatures I "had" to have. I don't think I realized how important those market visits with my Mexican grandmother were to me until they were no more.