Tag Archives: Possibles

Innocents in Mexico, Chapter 2: El Paso, Juarez, Chihuahua

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This is the only photo I can find of Bob and me. Taken in our driveway in Boulder Creek, CA

(If you haven’t read Chapter 1, Go HERE.)

Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 2: El Paso, Juarez, Chihuahua

(May, 2001)

            As soon as we drove into El Paso, it felt like we were in Mexico.  The dirt roads climbing the hills covered with tiers of tin-roofed tiny adobe houses looked like the outskirts of any of the large Mexican towns we had been in in the past––Nogales, Oaxaca, Tijuana.
             As we passed through Juarez and into the countryside, the dust devils appeared. Ever since I’d experienced a real tornado twenty-four years ago, I could never witness their smaller brothers with the same delight they aroused in me as a child.  Here, they seemed a symbol of the panic and lack of organization which had plagued our day so far.  Everything had happened too quickly, and not in the way I’d planned it.  Bob plowed through El Paso, passing each place I wanted to stop, saying we’d stop at the next one.  He was always in a hurry. To me, this was finally the part of our lives where we could take our time. I wanted to do and see things–– to experience it all.  There were no real schedules now that we were out of the States­­––no friends or relatives waiting to see us, no certain places to reach each night.  But for Bob, it was a matter of quotas––getting there in as few days as possible.
            What he would do once we got there was probably to try to find a place as soon as possible when I hadn’t even made up my mind whether this was the place where I wanted to be, then worry about not feeling inspired, then sleep, a lot, before finally trying his hand at something.  I preferred to travel a bit first, to get my bearings, and to compare places before we made a commitment.
            And the cat, Bearcat, who accompanied us?  What did he want? We had not intended to bring him.  He was a cat who had been born and lived all of his fourteen years in the same remote house in the Redwoods. The menaces he recognized and knew how to deal with were mountain lions, raccoons, coyotes, feral cats, owls.  With his talent for survival, he’d outlived his entire clan of mom and two sister cats.  He’d been king of his own domain back at home in the redwoods of central California, but now he was out in the real world.  Like the man emerging from Plato’s cave, he was seeing the full reality for the first time, and the light was blinding.  As we drove, we kept trying to coax him out to view the scenery or at least for a pat and a rub, but he preferred to stay under the air mattress in our van, his green eyes peering down it’s long cave, his red leash sticking out like a guide rope for him to be pulled out by at night. I liked to imagine him as a brave cat, stalking the world, but for the moment, even the scenery rushing by was too much for him.  He preferred to stay low, grounded, hidden.  He preferred not to know the full measure of this new world he had been so abruptly pushed into.
          Our first day in Mexico had been a fiasco.  We were through El Paso and to the border before we realized it.  We had passed no exchange places or insurance vendors and suddenly we were there––at the border with no pesos, no tourist visas, no car insurance or permit.  The official had insisted that we needed to drive 30 more km to the airport to get our visas.  What about car insurance, I asked?  Yes, yes, insurance too, he promised.  So, there we were––driving in Mexico with no car insurance––that one thing warned against by every living in Mexico book, by every guide book, by every friend who had ever traveled there.  At the airport, we obtained visas, but were told we’d have to drive 30 more kilometers to get an automobile permit and car insurance.
          My heart was in my throat the whole way as Bob sped down roads with no shoulders, past signs warning of cattle in the road, around orange cones that grew like mushrooms down one lane or the other for the entire 30 kilometers.  Cars turned left from the right lane, signaled left but turned right, or stopped.  I stewed and fretted, which made Bob drive faster.  Finally, by promising to make him a sandwich only if he slowed down by 10 mph, I got him to slow down.  Until he’d finished the sandwich.  Then he sped on.  Finally, we saw the Aduana sign that signaled the customs house.  There, after a long wait, Bob obtained the car permit and after much haggling, I got a week’s worth of Mexican insurance.  We’d try for a better deal in San Miguel.  There was, however, no money changer at the Aduana, so we had only the few pesos I’d saved from our last trip to Mexico two years ago in addition to some I’d pilfered from my childhood coin collection.  They were not enough to cover even the first toll, but, thankfully, they took our American dollars.
          Through each tiny town, we searched for a banco, but it was nearing 7 o’clock when we finally pulled into Chihuahua to search for a money exchange in rush hour traffic. Trying to maneuver through streets which, too narrow for oncoming traffic, still allowed it, Bob scraped the side of our new van on a pole.
            When we finally found el centro, only casas de cambio were open, not any banks, and the credit card I’d taken with me when Bob let me off was one I didn’t have a pin number for, so I hadn’t been able to get any pesos. Forty-five minutes later, when he’d finally been able to get back to me through the rush hour traffic, we headed out of town, still peso-less, wondering where we’d find a place to spend the night.
          It had been our intention to sleep in the van, both to save money and to guard the art supplies we carried on the roof rack and the tools we carried inside. Bob had taken out all but the two front seats and had built and carpeted a platform in the van so we could put an air mattress for sleeping on top of it and still have cargo space for clothes, tools and books underneath. We had a porta-potty for us and a cat box for Bearcat.  In a cooler were meat, cheese and greens for sandwiches, ice to cool drinks, and a few other perishables.  This would both keep us on our diets for a few more days and enable Bob to set the speed record he had full intention of setting for time between El Paso and San Miguel. We had not, however, taken into account the possibility that camping areas or even areas suitable for just pulling off the road for the night might not be as readily available in Mexico as they were in the U.S. 

It had taken us only one day to firmly slip into our roles of ” Innocents in Mexico!”

.  .  .  .  

As before, I would appreciate any comments. Are you still along on the ride with us? Is there anything you are missing? Anything unclear? I’m really not going to duplicate the entire book here, but just seeing if I’m off to the right start. It is perfectly okay to give suggestions and critiques!  And thanks for the comments so far…..Judy

Go HERE to read Chapter 3

 

Lighting a Candle for San Antonio (Possibles, May 9, 2023)

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Lighting a Candle for San Antonio

When I arrived home and found the candle burning next to the Virgin of Guadalupe on the counter between my kitchen and dining room, I took a fast survey.  It wasn’t Mother’s Day as there was no photo of my mother next to it.  The celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe was months away.  It wasn’t Dia de los Muertos.  What could this new conflagration represent?

I had left soon after Yolanda arrived in the morning. She had run out to the car with coffee in my go mug and a bottle of water.  Sweet Yolanda, who was half mother, half sister.  She had been helping me since I moved to Mexico fourteen years before: cleaning my house, bringing a local healer to my house when I was ill to “cure” me via massage, now and then bringing her babies for me to dance around my house as she cleaned or ironed or washed clothes.

We had a wonderful symbiotic relationship.  She made my house a home and relieved me from tedious tasks so I could write.  I was her chief bank and no-interest loan officer—loaning the money for their new house, more land, a new used car when theirs was totaled by a drunk with no insurance. She always paid me back, either via installments deducted from her salary or in lump sums sometime down the line.

Yolanda, Pasiano my gardener, their families and I went on short vacations together to the Guadalajara zoo or to see the wildflowers in Tapalpa, loading up my full-sized van to capacity. This happens in Mexico.  Your gardener and housekeeper become your extended family and you become theirs.

So it is that Yolanda occasionally sets me right in the world as well.  The first year I didn’t build a Day of the Dead altar for my husband, she queried.  “Oh, so you no longer miss your husband?”  I built a shrine.  On Mother’s Day, she was the one who moved my mother’s picture from the guest bedroom onto the counter next to the virgin and lit a candle.

What was the candle for this time?  I asked her on Wednesday, when she arrived for one of her three-times-weekly three-hour sessions.  This time, senora, it was for San Antonio.  He was the finder of lost things, and we had been searching in vain for weeks for the lost cord and microphone for my amplifier.  The bowl of water under the glass with the candle in it was to cool the glass so it didn’t shatter.

I had let the candle burn all day until I went to bed.  When Yolanda arrived two days later, she lit it again.  Then hours after her arrival as I still sat at my computer blogging my blog, she came into the room carrying a large Ziploc plastic bag.  It was the cord and mike!

“Where did you find it?”  I asked.

“It was in with the sheets,” she answered.

“We’ve been losing a lot of things lately,” I said.  “Remember when we looked for weeks for my bag of lost keys and I found them in the drawer with the light bulbs?”

“Yes,” she answered.  “And do you remember that I lit a candle that day as well?”

Let me say right now that I am not a religious person.  I don’t pray, although now and then in a really stressful situation, I will address the God of my youth.  But, I am coming to have faith in Yolanda.  When she tells me to light a candle, I do so. And I’ve never missed a Day of the Dead Shrine since her last reminder.

I actually blogged this little vignette in 2015 but that is so long ago that even I’d forgotten it. I’m not sure how much of the past 22 years I’ll include in the book, so just in case, here it is again. By the time I finish this book, we’ll all probably have forgotten it again. And yes, this is “the” San Antonio from my tale above. When I was in Greece a few years ago, I found a little shop that dealt entirely with little shrines of saints and brought Yolanda back her very own new San Antonio as well. 

Eclipses and Visions: Letters from Mexico (Possibles, May 8, 2023)

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This is a short piece I found in a file marked “Possible Add-ons” for the Mexico book. What do you think? The essays and chapters I’m sharing with you here are all out of order but all take place within my first two years of being in Mexico. I’m still trying to find my original first chapter which I have a printed copy of but can’t locate so far in my computer files.  Since then I’ve written two others but find I prefer the first so I’ll keep looking. In the meantime, I’m going to publish assorted possible add-ons for your perusal and vote. If possible, I’m putting the date I originally wrote it after the name of the segment. Although “Letters from Mexico” is my working title, I’m still looking for a better one. 

 

Eclipses and Visions 5/16/03 (19th month in Mexico)

     Gussie’s mouth was frothy with the insides of cattails after our tug-of-war over the long stalk of the cat tail.  I cleared out her mouth and we started again, most of the lighter-than-air tendrils clotting in her mouth but others erupting to drift out into the air until we were both covered.  Ana laughed.  Diane laughed.  Gussie barked, but it was a bark muffled by cat tail fluff, so it came out “warf, warf.”  We were an unlikely threesome:  two Americanas in their fifties, a thirteen year old Mexican girl and a beach puppy, but we had found a tremendous lot in common during our past month of beach walks.
      We had not started out as a threesome. I had been walking on the beach of the lakefront by myself for over a year.  These walks had been spasmodic, and always in the late afternoon to sunset.  But when I met Diane, who had newly moved to a house near the back entrance of the Raquet Club, we decided to try walking every morning at sunrise.  After Daylight Savings intervened, out 6 a.m. walks shifted to 7 a.m. and within a few weeks, Ana had asked to join us.  It was a brassy move on her part, and I was much relieved to find her standing up and asking for what she wished.  I’d been tutoring her for over a year now and although her vocabulary seemed to be growing, I hadn’t been very successful in getting her to actually talk.  She would answer questions  with “Yes,” ”No,” or the the fewest words possible, but she would never start conversations or return questions.  Yet now, just one month later, she chatted casually in English, with frequent pauses and Spanish words filling in the gaps in her English vocabulary.  We’d arrived at a good compromise.  On our beach walks, I spoke Spanish and Ana spoke English.  Diane, who was behind me in her Spanish mastery,  listened and asked questions if she needed to.  Gussie ignored both languages with equal regularity as she drank from rancid pools, ingested cowpies, chased and was chased by colts and baby burros and reached up to snatch pelican feathers from my fist as she raced by.
     Today, Ana was going on at great length about the eclipse the night before.  I had missed it, going out to sit in the jacuzzi at 8 to find only mist and no moon.  There was intriguing music wafting up from the plaza of the pueblo far below.  The drum beats were of the native variety, and I was considering driving down to investigate when a phone call pulled me out of the jacuzzi and into the house.  Once dressed, however,  I found that the couch and a good book won out over a sleuthing trip to the village.   I’d check every 15 minutes or so to see if the moon was up yet and in eclipse, but in fact I awoke three and a half hours later to find the full moon glowing clearly above me.   I had missed the entire event.
     Now Ana filled me in on the details.  During an eclipse, it was customary that everyone dress in red.  Her father wore a red sombrero and her mother a red blouse.  Then it was necessary to tie a cord around the wrist of each family member.  Even your cats and your dog, she insisted.  You must tie a cord around their necks for good health.  Within minutes after saying this, we passed a pasture.  Inside was a cow with a red bandana tied around her neck. “It is for salud,”  said Ana, who did not remember the word for health.  “. . . and for good milk as well as many other things.”
    The drumbeats the night before had been for the eclipse ceremony in the church and plaza. There had been many people, she told me, and many races between chayote fields,  but at this point the description grew vague.  I decided these were details I needed to check out in the future, but I already regretted sleeping through the eclipse, which by her description sounded like a grand event.  Not to mention the costuming and the cryptic racing between fields of vegetables.  I had grown jaded about fiestas and loud music emanating from the town, but I could see that in this case I’d missed an authentic event.   Ana assured me, however, that this was a four times a year event, and that next year she’d keep me better informed.
     There is so much going on in Mexico that I’ve found that I have to ignore some of it to manage to have a life of my own.  I’d been putting off writing for what seemed like months, and sooner or later I’d have to seal myself into my house and get on with it or just give up to a life of sloth.  But in the meantime, I’ve found that all I want to do is sleep.  Maybe it’s my new schedule of arising at 6 to walk, but I find that by 3 p.m., I need a nap.
     The other morning, I fell into bed as soon as I got back from our walk at 9 and stayed there until midafternoon.  I suddenly remembered that I was the age Bob was when I first met him and I remembered also what he said right after we’d had the diagnosis of his pancreatic cancer.
      “I hope they find out I’ve had it for a long time so I’ll finally have an excuse for how tired I’ve been feeling,”  he said.
      “For the past five years?”  I asked.
     “No, for the past fifteen years.”  That was the entire time I’d known him, and I suddenly felt guilty for all the times I’d prodded him on to finish a task.
    Now today, I lie in the jacuzzi with no strength to even get out of the water.  I wonder if this was the type of exhaustion Bob felt for so long. The jacuzzi  is only 1/2 full so I can float and use the step in the jacuzzi as a pillow holding up my head as I stare straight up at the clouds.   It’s a mackerel sky, but as a wind rises, the scales begin to group together to  form a beautiful avant-garde sculpture of a bird.  Its wings are partially folded in,  and as the clouds change, they keep drawing closer together, like the bird is making a hugging motion.
     It reminds me of Bob’s self-sculpture of the angel with the broken wings,  and I suddenly think that the cloud image also looks like a sculpture Bob would make.  Immediately, the clouds below the bird form a perfect image of Bob’s face.   Am I imagining this?  Less than 30 seconds later, it starts to rain big drops, straight down, and the face vanishes.  Invigorated by the rain, I go into the house and begin to write.