Category Archives: Memory

I Am the Invader (43)

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Once I walked from Ajijic to Chapala and back. I don’t remember how many hours I spent doing it, but I remember being present for big chunks of time, taking it all in with new and thirsty eyes. I avoided the highway for all but a two or three block stretch in a couple of spots where it was the only choice. I walked through cobblestone streets in the villages, past horses and cows and goats on the dirt roads on the outskirts. More than once I sensed I was walking where gringos didn’t show up very often, and probably not on foot, a woman alone. I didn’t feel afraid, only conspicuous from time to time.

Shore of lake, old rowboat and wheelbarrow

I hugged the lakeside when I could. I passed old brick buildings, glassless windows, the courtyards swept clean, women doing laundry outside by hand, the cluck of chickens behind low brick walls with bougainvillea spilling over them. Once I stopped for a long time watching a heron standing still in the shallows near the shore, and I felt the richness of the life there, the birds, the water, the place where fertile earth and decay overlap, reminiscent of my visit to the deep south here, maybe Biloxi. I marveled at the idea of owning land beside this lake, how much that would mean to me, but wondering if it could feel like that same opulence to the locals in their poverty. East of San Antonio Tlayacapan there was a stretch where the road became more of a walking path than a road, dotted with shacks, more plywood lean-tos than dwellings. I passed a man and two children. They were sitting at the edge of the road, a piece of plywood for a table, a bag of bread between them, the makings of sandwiches. I remember the surprise on their faces when I appeared. I felt like I’d just walked uninvited through their living room. I can still see the man’s face. He is chewing, and he nods to me in response to my greeting. But his eyes are wary, resentful. I am the invader.

The Blind Man (42)

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In Ajijic there was a blind man who I came to know a little. I can’t remember his name now. I’ve forgotten it, and the names of other people, names I thought would stay with me always. Was it Luis? The name pops up now, but I can’t be sure. He had a blind person’s cane, red and white, and carried a cup with him. I would see him at the Wednesday tianguis, the outdoor market, or standing in front of one of the supermercados that catered to the expatriates and the tourists. I don’t remember him ever asking for money. There were a few old women there who were pushy and demanding beggars, an odd entitlement I’ve never encountered before. But the blind man was only there with his cup, always cheerful, never pushy. I came to know him a little. We would talk about his family, about the thunder the night before, about what he might be able to do in order to still contribute to his family, about how much he’d like to learn how to play a musical instrument. I remember feeling good when he would recognize me. When I had the money, I would tuck a bill into one of this shirt pockets, tell him in a quiet voice how much I was sticking in there. Because I left so suddenly, I never said goodbye to him. It’s one of my small regrets. But I console myself with pictures of me finding him again one day, of him still remembering me, of being able to explain. “Lo siento mucho que no te dije adios, Luis.” I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you goodbye. “Yo te pensaba muchas veces desde me fui.” I’ve thought of you many times since I went away. I think of him still. I hope one day I find him well.

The Waxing Light (41)

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I am lying on my back on my yoga mat. I’ve come late to my practice today, so I’m on the living room floor, chased inside by the cold air. I move my head, and I can see the last light in the sky through the window, still visible in contrast against the darkness of the bougainvillea leaves in the late dusk. The white of the sky is a soft glow, like muted neon or dimmed florescence. I turn my head back, and my eyes sweep the little row of snow globes on the windowsill. There is something peculiar about them this evening, something caught in their curved glass. I check the sky again. Are there clouds up there, still lit by the sun long lost to our edge of the valley here beside the mountains? Sometimes the clouds are lit golden. But there are no clouds, and it’s too late really for them to still catch and hold the sun’s light from their heights. And then I realize what I’m seeing. It’s the Christmas lights I have woven around the bougainvillea trunk and branches. The green and blue and red and amber lights are showing up in my snow globes, five strands glowing there in miniature. I’ve always loved them, I think, in part because they’re little worlds, and they’ve never felt more like that than this moment with these tiny strings of lights alive in them.

Five colored lights against the stepping stones

Glass bird in window with white feathers

I think of the lights I laced along the curtain rod in my Ajijic apartment, looping down into the windows so people would see them from the street below. I remember the white glass bird hanging there, a photograph somewhere, the white tail feathers floating against the window screen. I think of the rounded yellow bird so like that white one, that hung on my shower rod with three glass hummingbirds in Santa Rosa, and the shock of the crash when the rod gave way that afternoon, nothing but glorious shards left in the bathtub. I think of the new glass rooster on my patio table, sunlight through the red glass of his comb, his tail, his wattles. It is my love of color and light that leaves me always reluctant to take down my Christmas lights. I left them up late in Ajijic, too, though I felt self-conscious about it there. Would this be another mark of my crazy estadounidense self? Here I don’t seem to care what my neighbors think of me, the solar lights still sharp and vivid in the hedge beside the gate at night.

two tall palm streets strung with white lights

But I was glad all out of proportion to see two people in my neighborhood who still have their lights turned on, too. I asked Ana about it once, if people in Ajijic ever left their Christmas lights up despues del año nuevo, after the new year. She told me some people wait until after Candlemas to take them down. Candlemas is the Christianized name for one of the main pagan holidays on February 2nd. The Catholics call it the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But as I understand it, we celebrate the waxing of the light. I told Ana I liked that idea, a kind of sanctioned extension of my pleasure in the lights. What better way to honor the growing light than with these bright colors in the dark? When I finish my yoga, I move on hands and knees to the windowsill, stare deep into the small glass globes. It is a wonder, I think, these tiny strands of light that stretch within them, sharp and clear and luminous. I bow to the light in each and every one of us. Namaste, indeed.

New Year’s, Too (40)

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I don’t remember the noise of New Year’s Eve in Ajijic. But after October with the steady rotation of the statue of Guadalupe from church to church, rockets marking the progression every morning at 5am, and the two weeks of our saint’s festival, culminating in whole days of almost ceaseless explosions–not to mention having lived through the rainy season with the cascading thunder (!)–I am betting New Year’s Eve seemed quiet there in comparison.

Cobblestone street in Ajijic

I do remember walking through the village on New Year’s Day, spying the evidence of street fires in every neighborhood. Everything was rather impressively cleaned up, no trash or half-burned logs or even big ashes left in the road from the last embers. But you could see the charcoal remains dusting the cobblestones every block or two, and you could feel the quiet, everyone asleep after the big night. Later I learned from Ana they would make tamales and have a fire in front of their own house on Zapata. They would stay up all night, eating and drinking and enjoying each other, the family, the neighbors, nearby friends. Staying up all night seemed to be part of the tradition, though I didn’t ask why. One truly greets the new year that way, I am thinking, more than only marking midnight.

Now every year I picture them together in the street on New Year’s Eve, the firelight dancing on brown faces, dark shining hair. I imagine Rodolfo has made his pipián, and there is a big metal pot filled with homemade tamales, and the corn husk wrappers pile up beside it as the night moves toward the dawn. I can almost taste the masa, can almost hear them singing. Happy new year, everyone.

Felíz Año Nuevo (39)

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crossroads with corner market

In Todos Santos, I could see the bonfire in the dirt crossroads beside the corner market two doors down from La Casa Azul. Rockets bombarded the last night of the year, and the flash of firecrackers fell across the ceiling and the tall walls in my second story bedroom.

window and light on the tall walls

I was supposed to go to Iris’s for the evening celebration. I’d imagined driving over before dark, but she called me from a restaurant downtown where they had all ended up to let me know they wouldn’t be home until later. It took what wind was left in me, buffeted as I was from the neighborhood fiesta. I imagined trying to squeeze my red Jetta past all the other fires in the streets between my center of the old village and Iris’s home in el otro lado, fireworks arcing across my car, fingers gripping white on the steering wheel. I chickened out, hunkered down at home with the cats while the wild party crashed around our barrio. Felíz año nuevo.

On Calling Home (36)

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I’m trying to get it together to mail a package to Ana and Rodolfo for Christmas this year, something the whole family can enjoy. I failed to get it there in time before, sent something late two years ago, incomplete. This year I have a puzzle, a night scene that looks like Italy. I went to buy vegetable seeds yesterday for the milpa, but True Value didn’t have their new stock in yet. I want to get some photos made for them, maybe the Mexican marigolds in my garden, pictures of my cats napping on the patio. I worry they’ll think I’ve forgotten them. The last time I spoke to Ana was in January when I called to talk to Isabel on the day of her quinceanero. I never called back to see if her card arrived with the magic Mexican pesos still tucked inside it, worn bills I had carried in my wallet for years like good luck charms.

I’ve thought of calling often, mornings like this when I sit quiet on the patio and let my thoughts wander back to Ajijic, with Ana and Rodolfo always at the heart of it. I especially wanted to call them on el dia de los muertos and for Thanksgiving, too. I wonder if they celebrated it there this year, the expatriate’s customs rubbing off on the locals. They are people I am grateful for, so I wanted to call to let them know. But I didn’t. I haven’t called since that morning in January, the whole family in a happy flurry getting ready for Isabel’s big day. And I ache for not hearing their voices, not learning las noticias, the news. But something keeps stopping me from calling, and I ask myself again and again what it is. I’m pretty sure it’s not the difficulty of speaking Spanish over the phone, the disadvantage of not having their facial expressions and their gestures to help me out. I suspect, instead, it is the way the thought of them squeezes my heart.

Still, for the fullness of the moment, hearing their familiar voices on the phone, reveling in the sound of their laughter, of laughing together though we’re 1600 miles apart–I tell myself to call soon. That richness is worth the small heartbreak sure to follow.

Incarnations of Yerba Maté (35)

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This morning I let myself drink two cups of yerba maté. I bought two tea bags from the health food store here on Saturday, my latest approach to letting myself indulge in this addiction now and again. Each sip is delicious, the unique, bitter aroma, the coconut milk and agave a divine alchemy with the sharp flavor. I think of the even more wonderful maté I can buy in bulk from Mountain Rose Herbs. But I don’t let myself buy it because I’ve learned I’ll drink it until it’s gone. And then, I remember the first time I drank that same quality of yerba maté, and it carries me to Ajijic.

my Ajijic balcony with the chair and pots of flowers, including the terra cotta I mention with the bougainvillea

I am on the sidewalk near the little health food store two blocks from my apartment on Aldama, the one on the frontage road north of the highway, beside the nursery where I bought my bougainvillea for my balcony and that lovely oblong rectangular terra cotta pot. The health food store is run by a woman and her husband who live in Guadalajara. I like them both very much. I pause before the nursery next door, run my eyes over the plants spilling out onto the sidewalk, inhale the scent of gardenias, then move past and enter the open store front. Yerba maté is not a thing in Mexico–it’s more a South American drink–so I don’t really expect them to carry it, but I ask anyway. I’ve forgotten in the moment the owners are from South America themselves. The woman is there today. She nods then smiles at my surprise, walks toward one of the shelves in the small space, hands me a large bag of loose yerba maté. I am shocked they have it, dismayed it’s not in teabags. I buy it anyway, then buy a small sieve from the Soriana in Chapala. I brew it in a glass pitcher in my rental kitchen, strain it with my new sieve.

In Palm Springs now, I use the sieve every day, to strain my alfalfa, oatstraw, horsetail, to catch my seeds when I make a glass of lemon water. But this morning I use the two precious Guayaki teabags I have allowed myself. I sit in my courtyard and savor every sip, relish the clarity of the mountains before me, the peace of the late autumn morning. And then I am back in my rental kitchen in Ajijic, the ridge of the hill outside my window, running that deep green Argentinian maté through my Mexican sieve. I mix in the half and half and local honey I bought from the tiangis. I walk out to the balcony, and I sit in my big chair. I sip the creamy hot sweetness while I look out across the lake below, and the crimson flycatcher makes acrobatic swoops from the neighbor’s chimney across the narrow cobblestone street.