“This reminds me of Brazil!” Mom exclaimed, not so much for the garish lemon-yellow and orange-burnt-umber and royal-blue paints and the grimy broken baseboards and the uncleanable black-and-white-checkered linoleum-square floor, but the for smells and humid heat of fried corn paste and stewed pinto beans and shredded port, and for the smiling brown-skinned servers and the radio trumpets and the humble homemade feel of the place. I had brought Mom and Dad to Carlos’ El Salvadoreño Café, for grilled bean-and-cheese pupusas and cinnamon-rice horchata and fried plantain empanadas with sweet cream for dessert.  “Las pupusas se tardan.  Por favor tengan paciencia.”  Pupusas take time.  Please be patient.  I knew this from experience, and so we reminisced beneath a blue El Salvadoran flag pinned to the wall.  We ordered two pupusas each, but could eat only one-half each—I had forgotten how filling pupusas are—and took the leftovers home for next day’s dinner.  I helped Dad walk to the restroom, but the return trip took a bad turn.  Even with my arm hoisting under his, his legs suddenly and simply would not move; they began to shake and buckle.  A kind and friendly teenage server rushed to buttress Dad’s other arm, and we inched across the restaurant floor.  “I don’t feel old,” Dad lamented, “I feel paralyzed.”  And I wondered if both were two faces of the same reality.  Mom was waiting in the cooling Mighty V8, which I had parked just outside the restaurant door.  Despite the struggle, we considered the outing a success.  It does Mom good to get out of the house, and it does Dad good to be out with Mom.  We may not venture out again, to Carlos’ Café or anywhere else, without a wheelchair, but I am thankful the wheelchair may make further fieldtrips possible, safe, and even enjoyable.  My Sunday-night snack of pupusa revuelta, with a slice of hot banana chocolate walnut bread, hit the spot, though I wish I had saved some horchata.