By Fourth of July. The fireworks are louder this year, or maybe I hear them differently now that my son is deploying in September. The booms are not celebration — they are preview. The fire in the sky is the fire on the ground somewhere far away where my son will be, and the distance between the fireworks at Cohen Stadium and the fire in the Middle East is the distance between safety and danger, between watching and participating, between a mother holding elotes and a mother holding her breath.
But we go. Because you go. Because the country your son is about to risk his life for deserves the celebration of the people who live in it, and I live in it, and I am an American citizen, and the citizenship was earned, and the earning includes the fireworks and the fear and the flag and the elotes and the whole complicated, beautiful, terrifying package of being an American mother of an American soldier in America on the Fourth of July.
Camila was not scared of the fireworks this year. She watched them with her mouth open and her eyes wide and she said, after the finale: "I want to make that sound. With my voice." She is six (seven in October). She wants to be the fireworks. She wants her voice to do what the sky does — explode and rain down and make people look up and hold their breath. She will. I have no doubt. Camila will be the fireworks.
I made elotes — the tradition, the July Fourth corn — and the corn was perfect: sweet and charred and slathered with mayo and cotija and chile. We ate them in the parking lot, standing, with the juice running down our wrists, and Luis Jr. ate three and Andrea ate two and Sofia photographed them for Instagram and Diego explained the Maillard reaction again (I let him; it is his tradition the way the corn is mine) and Isabella ate hers neatly, with a napkin, because Isabella does everything neatly, even street corn.
I held Luis Jr.'s arm at the fireworks. Not his hand — his arm, the muscled, Army arm that will carry a rifle and a rucksack in two months. I held the arm and I watched the sky and I thought: this arm. This arm that was a baby's arm, a boy's arm, a teenager's arm, and is now a soldier's arm. This arm will go where I cannot follow. This arm will be far. And I held it, tightly, for the duration of the fireworks, because holding is all I have, and the holding must last until the next time I can hold it, which might be nine months, which is a pregnancy's worth of absence, and the absence will birth something I cannot predict.
The elotes are the center of our July Fourth table, but the pork chops are the anchor—rubbed with cocoa and chili the way my mother taught me, the same dark, smoky spice mix that fills the parking lot at Cohen Stadium every summer and makes the kids look up from their phones. I started making these alongside the corn years ago because Luis Sr. said the rub reminded him of the mole his grandmother made in Chihuahua, and once a man says something like that, you make the recipe every year for the rest of your lives. This year, standing in that parking lot with Luis Jr.’s arm in my hand and two months left before September, I needed every piece of that tradition on the table.
Cocoa & Chili Rubbed Pork Chops
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 4 bone-in pork chops, about 3/4 inch thick (approximately 8 oz each)
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon dark brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Instructions
- Make the rub. In a small bowl, combine cocoa powder, chili powder, brown sugar, cumin, garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt, black pepper, and cayenne. Stir until fully blended—the rub should be a deep, uniform brown with a faint sheen from the cocoa.
- Coat the chops. Pat pork chops completely dry with paper towels. Press the rub firmly onto both sides and along the edges of each chop, using your palm to ensure even coverage. Let the chops rest at room temperature for 10 minutes so the spices begin to adhere.
- Heat the pan or grill. For stovetop: heat olive oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. For outdoor grill: brush grates with oil and preheat to medium-high (about 400°F).
- Sear the chops. Cook pork chops without moving them for 6 to 7 minutes on the first side until a dark, fragrant crust forms. Flip once and cook an additional 5 to 6 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part reads 145°F.
- Rest before serving. Transfer chops to a cutting board and tent loosely with foil. Rest for 3 to 5 minutes—this keeps the juices inside the meat where they belong. Serve immediately alongside roasted corn, rice, or a simple salad.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 285 | Protein: 33g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 6g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 390mg