It was the summer of 1980 when I learned you could eat goose eggs. That summer, my mom, my sister Cathy, and I made a trip from California to Wattenberg, Colorado, to see our aunties. Everyone called the town “Watte,” for short, situated in Weld County outside of Brighton and just off County Road #6. My family worked the farms in Watte before they became oil fields in the 1970s. The town is one of those places that is easy to miss. As we drove to Watte, Mom said that everything seemed both familiar and unfamiliar and told us about the big changes where farmhouses and families lived but were now pump jacks and whatnot. The only reason we didn’t miss the turnout was that she could smell her aunties’ cooking from down the road. Tía Melinda was our great aunt, and wherever she cooked was where everyone sat—she could...

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