The Magic Tricycle
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Five jobs that didn't make my resume. No. 2
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“Ojos negros, piel canela, que me llevan a desesperar.”
"Dark eyes, skin like cinnamon, that drive me past the edge of longing."
That’s what my mother was singing, slightly out of tune, when I came home with sawdust clinging to my skin like proof of the day’s labor.
That was the year I learned tricycles could carry more than wood.
I worked as an apprentice in a furniture shop where the air was always thick with dust, the kind that stuck to your sweat and followed you home no matter how hard you brushed it off.
The work wasn't glamorous: holding plywood steady, sweeping floors, sanding until my wrists ached. Raw wood slowly becoming something useful. Something wanted.
Hope in that place was practical, almost mechanical: measure twice, cut once, and pray the board stayed true. A crooked line meant wasted lumber, wasted hours. And my hands shaped what the machines could not: rubbing out splinters, softening edges, coaxing the surface smooth enough for varnish.
By the end of the week my fingertips burned, my nails lined with dust and varnish.
Every Saturday, around noon, Simon arrived on his tricycle, hauling wardrobes twice his size down the road. If he returned in ninety minutes, we got paid. If not, we waited.
Our prayers weren’t lofty. They were small, muffled things: that the piece would sell, that Simon’s tricycle would come back heavy with pay, that the week’s labor hadn’t been wasted.
Sometimes the tricycle came back lighter, with rejection. We never said it aloud, but we all knew: three wheels held our survival. Three wheels that carried not just furniture, but the weight of our week and the quiet hope that our work mattered.
That Saturday, Simon returned empty.
My mother poured water over me in the courtyard. Sawdust swirled like cinnamon dissolving in warm milk. Her laughter carried pride heavier than any wardrobe.
And her voice rose again; off-key, unafraid, full of something more permanent than money…
“Me importas tú, y tú, y solamente tú. Y nadie más que tú…”
“It’s you I care for, you and only you. No one else but you...”
Not just a song, but pride disguised as melody. And as the sawdust and cinnamon drifted away, only her voice remained:
“Y nadie más que túuuu...”
My next letter had fewer songs. But more noise.
'Piel Canela' written by Bobby Capó in 1952, and sung by many, but it was always Eydie Gormé's version on the Sunday mornings of my childhood. It still is.
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