Thursday, January 17, 2002
I sit at my computer in my new writing room. My salla. Ahead of me, beyond the open terrace door, some kind of feathery leafed tree provides a canopy for the tiled terrace. A rooster, who crows incessantly night and day, sounds off again. The maid, Sonya, sweeps in the bedroom behind me and one step up. The sounds of Mexico.
Pounding, birds, rooster, washing machine, breeze through calla lily leaves, broom on tiles, children wrestling, cars honking, men yelling, loudspeakers blaring, drums marching, garbage trucks clanging, women laughing and burros braying…
The colors of Mexico…deep blues, ochres, oranges and yellows.
A maid:
To have a maid…is strange and wonderful. Sonya can’t speak a word of English and we can barely speak Spanish. Her presence requires us to try out new words, checking the dictionary constantly for words like babysitting, cleaning, vinegar and laundry.
This house is enormous, with nearly every surface tiled. It requires enormous effort to keep it dust free and shining. The maid was hired by the landlady, who is trying to sell the house. We pay for her services. She comes three days a week, from 10-1 and we pay her $10 (US) a day to clean for three hours.
Food and water:
Dealing with food and water is complicated and time consuming, but not difficult.
The water is not potable so cleaning ourselves, our food, and our dishes takes a good deal of thought and some kind of system. We soak any fresh vegetables or fruits that can’t be peeled or won’t be cooked in water mixed with 8 drops of iodine for at least 30 minutes. We really haven’t figured out how to wash dishes. Can we use the water with a bit of bleach and detergent? Do we have to boil the water each time? Do we have to mix our wash water with iodine?
We’ve been trying a multitude of different things. Mostly, we use bleach and detergent for washing, and boiled water for rinsing. We reserve the iodine treatment for treating food. (Within a few months, we’d dispensed with worrying about washing the dishes and just did it with detergent and water and we let things dry thoroughly before using.)
Washing our bodies and brushing our teeth takes another kind of system. We don’t use tap water for brushing our teeth and we don’t sing with our mouths wide open in the shower.
Friday, January 18, 2002
Did I mention the part-dog, part-coyote next door who fills the nights with mournful howls from dusk to midnight? Last night as I lay awake, listening fitfully, I wondered how the neighbors stand it? This is Mexico. People are very polite but also, they don’t stand on ceremony. Why doesn’t someone just slip over the wall and shoot the mangy thing in the head?
We found a wonderful park today. Parque Benito de Juarez. Impeccably maintained with grassy paths to stroll, gorgeous flowering shrubs and most importantly, a playground for the kids. We spent an hour there this morning, smiling awkwardly at the other parents, attempting a word or two in our lame Spanish and playing on equipment which would have been banned as too dangerous in the states. Each piece of equipment has a “surprise” as Michael calls them. A too narrow walkway, a hole in the center of the platform, a high rope bridge with no railing, a large metal Tortuga sizzling hot to the touch…kids learn quickly here to be attentive, agile and fast.
Avocados…
We’re in avocado heaven. We found several different varieties at the open-air market and the seller assured us they were perfect for eating hoy, today. She was right. They are perfect. Yielding to the touch, they’re neither mushy nor stringy with a consistency like thick cream and a rich, almost cheesecake-like taste. We top them with a sprinkle of salt and spoon them in our mouths hungrily, like kids eating ice cream. Only better.
Tortillas…
Fresh, corn tortillas, prepared right in front of you by wizened old women and their nursing daughters, handed to you by the media kilo wrapped in waxy paper and best if taken right home and eaten immediately. Fresh flour tortillas are more like crepes, thin and flaky, Cleome’s favorite when filled with beans, lettuce and cheese.
Early days…
Finding food always seems harder than it has too when you enter a new city. With children, restaurants are either inhospitable, expensive or too much work (or all three). Finding a grocery store is the next step, to build up supplies. The tiendas here are small and familiar (imported) items are expensive. Until the unfamiliar becomes familiar, we lug home heavy plastic sacks of canned peaches, cream cheese and yogurt. We eat sandwiches of bad packaged bread and peanut butter dragged from home.
Until we find the panaderias and buy fresh-baked loaves of sweet white bread and rolls which we eat for breakfast.
The open-air market is next, verdant with flowers, and fruits and vegetables. Old women serve delicious tamales out of white buckets. We sit down to share them between us. Spicy red sauce and chicken, salsa verde and onions. She opens the other buckets and offers us a drink of a viscous brown liquid, a viscous white liquid and something else that I can’t even describe. We hesitate and watch a man come up and order the brown liquid, and watch holding our breath as he downs the glass with relish. We think we hear her say chocolate and assume it’s hot chocolate. It’s not. It’s cinnamon mixed with corn syrup, molasses and probably mashed up corn.
The views are magnificent.
Domingo, January 20, 2002
Last night…the kids watched a DVD upstairs and we drank wine downstairs with candles lit at the table in front of the open garden doors. Soft Latin music echoed in the terracotta rooms as a wind blew gently through the orchids, lilies and palm fronds in the garden two steps away.
The night was clear and the stars shone bright above. We put the kids to bed and lit a fire in the living room and sipped more wine in the dark cool of the evening. How did we get here? To this magnificent house and city? What forces magically came together and set us down here in this warm and friendly place?
Warmth…sun, people, chilies…San Miguel is filled with warm things.
We found a jardine par los ninos yesterday for Asher. The caretaker let us in to look around. Two large play areas; one inside and one outside. Lots of toys; both large and small muscle activities. Climbing structures and ball pits. It’s a ten minute walk from our house, right near the Institute Allende. Monday- Friday 8:45-1:45 for 450 pesos a month. We’ll go tomorrow to get all the details and to talk with the director. That would free us up to write each morning and spend the afternoons, after nap together. The next challenge is to figure out what to do with Cleome…I think we’ll put her in school if we can find something we all like and it’s affordable.
We saw our first humming bird in the garden yesterday. It was early evening and we saw it hovering near some orange-red flowers blooming on one of the potted succulents. It was bigger than back home, iridescent green. The odd thing was that it kept flittering over to the lemon tree and actually perching on its branches. I’ve never seen a hummingbird perch before. It looked like a real bird, rather than a large, odd butterfly as it does back home.
Although I do get woozy in the sunshine here, it’s not hot enough to totally incapacitate me like I feel at the beach or during the summer in Minnesota. There is no humidity, so it’s not that energy-zapping mind-numbing warmth that stultifies your brain and leaves your limbs like jelly. This is a nice, calming warmth that invites a siesta of reading and writing. I might actually get some writing done in the afternoon here.
We took the city bus to Gigante, the supermarket, this morning. We made our way down to the bus stop near the church where they bless the animals. They charged us .65 pesos, for two adults and two kids for the 10 minutes or so that it took to get there. We climbed to the top of the hills surrounding San Miguel and got our first view of the city in daylight from that height. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It looked like there were 50 or more churches and the colors of the buildings in the clear light made it look magical and somehow European.
I was pleasantly surprised (being the wimp I am) to find that the supermarket was surprisingly familiar and easy to navigate. We also found a number of bargains and it’s clear that we’ll be headed there once a week for staples and filling in with fresh tortillas, bread, cheese, vegetables and fruits from the local markets and tiendas. Basics such as cereal, bread, snacks, pasta, diapers, wine and a six-pack of Coronas came to about 350 pesos. Not bad. If we do that once a week and spend another 30 or so to fill in, we’ll spend about $70 a week for food and we’ll eat and drink quite well.
Thursday, January 24, 2002
We buy cups of strong coffee and walk to the zocolo. Find a bench in the sun and spin tales of now and future possiblities. If and what if. How can we stay here? How can we come back? We’ve only been here a week and already we can’t imagine returning to the chill and “nice” of Minnesota. We’re here for months longer but it’s hard to believe that reality. We’re still adjusting to the length of days here. The hours that feel like years and the minutes that move like days. Time is peculiar here. The day stretches on and on. It feels like weeks since we’ve arrived. We fit so much activity into each day yet we’re surprised when the cloak of evening falls and we nurse our wine and breath deeply into sleep.
Moving to a new place; the pace slows and the mind takes a deep breath and expands as it exhales. We inhale the colors: vivid blues and dusty ochres, pastel pinks and bloody burgandies…the Mexicans aren’t shy about calling attention to their doors, their clothes, their art.
At the fiesta on Monday evening, the square before the church is filled with people celebrating Allende’s birthday. There is music all day and night long. Mariachi bands and women singers with big voices and loud dresses. Near the church, a small group gathers around two men preparing large paper balloons prepared to be sent skyward into the deep black night. The colorful paper is stretched and slowly filled with air heated by a small fire set in the base of each balloon. As the air warms, the balloons expand and suddenly, the men let go and the balloons lifts gracefully into the night and sail over the church roof and the trees, fiery gifts to the gods and to the people. You can see the balloons for a long time, tiny fires, sailing on the deep black waters of the sky, marking each town’s devotion to la Patria, Mexico.
Buying school shoes for Cleome…
Black leather shoes are part of Cleome’s school uniform. She brought only sandals and blue sneakers from home and that won’t do. They dress extremely conservatively here and she has already been told to remove her fingernail polish and to always wear her hair in a ponytail. So we spend several days on the hunt for appropriate footwear. There are many small Zapaterias here and we plan to set off after school to find shoes but we quickly discover that most tiendas close in the afternoon and open again in the early evening. Michael and I find many shoes at the Tianguis Martes but we need Cleome with us and she’s in school during the day. We plan accordingly on the third day and set off after dinner to search but every tienda we find has shoes that are too ugly, too expensive or the shop seems abandoned. We find shoes but no one around to open the glass cases or to answer any questions. On the fourth day we head to the covered mercado. More like an Arab shouk, we wind our way through the maze of vegetable vendors and tamale sellers. Each small shop has a blaring television with newscasters bleating the latest political intrigues in Mexico City and Mexican soap opera stars discussing their lovers and newest pets.
We arrive at the calle Zapaterias. Ten or so shops line the dim, narrow alleyway and we quickly scan the offerings and finally…what luck!…we find them. Black leather with a buckle, mini Doc Martens made in Leon, perfect for the rocky, pitted streets of San Miguel. The price is 1300 pesos. A bit overpriced. Should we negotiate? No. We’re too tired and too relieved to be done with this task to worry about a dollar or two. Let the young owner of the shop, the daughter of the shoe seller next door, go home happy tonight. She made a tidy profit off the Norte Americanos estupidos. We leave and she turns her attention back to the handsome Mexican soap opera star.
Thursday, January 31, 2002
Exhausted today. Asher not sleeping, climbing hills morning and afternoon, hot sun, dehydration, too much wine last night, general mental and physical decompression after two weeks; affirmation and realization that yes, we really are here to stay in Mexico for a long, long time.
A brief summary of tasks accomplished up until now:
Registration with local authorities nearly complete. There is a great deal of paperwork around immigration issues and here in Mexico, everything is quite decentralized. The man who checked our papers at the immigration office made many loud official-sounding thwacks with a special seal on a multitude of papers and then told us to come back with…more photos of all of us, a letter discussing why we want to register, originals and copies of our passports, lease, FM3’s etc. Ok. More bureaucracy. Now, can you do any of this in the immigration office? No. You have to go into this little teeny storefront office where one man with a desk, a computer, a typewriter and a single file cabinet will fill out the various forms and make the various copies. Can anyone else do this for you? No, only this one man. Which is why there’s a line stretching out of the office every single minute the office is open. Also, this man is responsible for completing all sorts of similar documents for Mexicans and foreigners in all the surrounding towns and villages. San Miguel has the only immigration office for miles around. People ride on buses for hours to find this little teeny storefront so the man can complete all their documentation. We felt blessed that we actually lived here. And, he only charged us the equivalent of $35.00. He could have charged us a hundred bucks and we would have gratefully paid it. Just to be done with all this crap!!! (By the way, I did resort to forging our name on the water bill so one of our Spanish documents would have our names on it. Our lease is in English and they won’t accept it as proof that we’re actually living here.)
We went down to the water office and prepaid our water bill for six months. And, we went to the main government office and paid up our landlord’s yearly tax bill. All of this was good preparation for dealing with the immigration issues.
Our kids are both in school here and that’s going very well. We quickly abandoned the idea of homeschooling Cleome when it became obvious that she needed to meet friends and to learn Spanish in a structured way. So Asher is in a half-day Spanish daycare and he’s definitely beginning to pick up the language. He probably understands a lot more than Cleome at this point. They do a lot of reading of stories and he listens and follows along without any problem.
Cleome seems to be doing fine as well. The whole social thing is a bit more intense for her. There’s one day a week where they have gym class and they’re supposed to wear sweats and tennis shoes instead of their uniforms. We couldn’t remember which day it was and made the mistake of sending her in her uniform on a gym day. She was mortified and on the edge of tears when I showed up. We walked around the city that day and realized that everyone had gym class on the same day everywhere. Thus, she was the only one in the whole city to have her uniform on. Personal mortification happens on a large scale here.
We are of two minds about having a television. We actually have two of them but we haven’t connected either. Watching Spanish television might be a good way to learn the language and we mull over whether we want to hook them up. The programs we’ve seen thus far caught in glimpses in the ubiquitous TV’s in every shop and tiny office look abysmal. Each seems to have this odd comic character who is a short, strange looking woman always wearing pigtails, large pink bows and clown-like clothing. But this same character seems to be present in talk shows, news shows, kids shows. It doesn’t seem to matter. It’s rather irritating. And the problem with having TV available for Asher is that he’ll watch it, utterly slack-jawed and completely hypnotized, no matter what’s on. It’s that old Marshall McCluhan thing of the medium is the message.
We do have Michael’s laptop DVD player but it won’t play Mexican dvd’s so we can’t rent any here. We’re going to plead with anyone who comes to visit to bring a DVD for the kids as part of the cost of visiting.
I have an idea for a book. It would be non-fiction and it would be about the benefits (and challenges) of living abroad with kids. Because the experience of being here with children and meeting others who are here with children has been fascinating. And the way we’re encountering this place is so different than it would be if we didn’t have children.
March 18, 2002
This morning, on my walk back from taking Asher to school, I encountered a tall, silver-haired man strumming a guitar while strolling through the streets. The music was so gentle and beautiful, echoing against the cobbles and ancient walls. It was a perfect Mexican moment. He didn’t acknowledge anything except the music, on some pilgrimage to some temple in his mind.
San Miguel is a city of pilgrims (defined as a person who journeys to some sacred place as an act of devotion). Everyone seems to be on some journey to or away. The greatest gift would be to realize that you have found your destination. That it is always your own mind and your own skin. It takes so many years of walking and running, and performing great acts of devotion to reach that temple, that place of rest.
We are entering an intense period of religious revelry and worship here in San Miguel. Semana Santa, holy week and the period leading up to it. There are fireworks nearly every night and early morning, the bells toll for what seems like hours to welcome pilgrims of every description to the city and to the places of worship. There are processions every day that depart churches and snake through neighborhoods bearing statues of Christ and Mary.
April 12, 2002
Let’s talk bugs. Here’s a list of what we’ve found so far…cockroaches the size of small garages, scorpions both large and small, rats (how many sizes do they come in?) loads of red ants, and lizards of various sizes. And this assortment has all been found in our “luxury” dwelling in the center of town. Who knows what we’ll find once we move to the outskirts.
I’m glad we happened upon the scorpions first (actually they happened upon us). It’s made everything else that’s come after seem a bit more benign. Cockroaches seem almost lovable when you’re contemplating something with armor and a poisoned tail. Luckily, scorpions move slowly so if you do see them, you can usually kill them. It’s the ones you don’t see, the ones that creep into your bed or your shoes, that cause trouble.
There are also all the usual insects and beetles and spiders. The mosquitoes are impressive even for Minnesotans and we’ve tangled with the best. Large, aggressive and leaving welts the size of half dollars (or ten peso pieces), Asher seems to be getting the worst of it.
Something really irritating happened on the walk to Asher’s school today and the truly irritating part is that it’s so common everywhere. I was carrying Asher along a sidewalk and we passed a guy, maybe 15 or 16 years old, messing with his bike. Asher and I turned into a cobbled alley called Calle Suspiros, the street of sighs (also fondly known as “poop alley.”) We have a certain ritual each morning on the way to school that involves guessing how many cats (gatos) will be sunning themselves on the roof of a little hovel we pass each day. Sometimes there are none, and sometimes there are six or seven.
We then sing the “Gato Song” which begins “Senor Don Gato was a cat. On a high red roof, Don Gato sat…” Well, we were deeply involved in our ritual; Asher was in my arms and we were singing our song, when the guy on the bike crept up behind us and grabbed my ass really hard before riding by. It hurt both my ass and my pride. I yelled at him the best I could really loud and angrily without using any of the swear words jumping up and down on my tongue. I didn’t want Asher running around yelling “Asshole,” or “Shithead” at everybody on a bike so I used the utmost restraint and just screamed at the guy that it wasn’t OK to be disrespectful etc. All of this in English because I didn’t want to risk trying out swear words in Spanish either. Having Asher swearing at Mexicans in Spanish would be even worse, plus, I’m not sure I know any appropriate Mexican swear words.
Anyway, Asher of course was upset because I was upset and we had a long discussion about men and boys who don’t use their brains and who are very disrespectful to women etc. I tried not to generalize too much, nor did I mention the small brain/small penis correlation. Such a bummer to have to deal with it at all. And of course, predictably, Michael’s comment was “At least you have an ass somebody wants to grab.” Disgusted sigh.
We signed the lease on the new house and forked over a bunch of dough to Armando this week. We gave him $1050 dollars in cash (for 1 ½ months rent) and a check for $700 for a security deposit. I’m excited about the move. It’s still three months away but I’m looking forward to living out of the center and away from such a heavy concentration of Gringos. We found a great little school for Asher in the Centro, which will require a bus ride but minimal walking and we’ll check into the neighborhood school for Cleome next week.
We’ll be saving at least $500 a month on rent by moving to this house and having my mom move down. That’s about $5000 if we stay a year, which is significant given our paltry savings. It would be nice to actually go back with a couple thousand bucks in our pocket at the end of this trip.
I have a job interview today, unbelievably enough. It‘s for a reporter position to cover a Tourist Convention in Acapulco next week. It feels like a bit of a longshot mostly because it’s not terrific money ($150 per day) and it requires a long bus ride to and from Acapulco, which, according to the information I’ve been given, is paid for, but only in terms of the fare, not the reporter’s time. If I’m interested in it after talking to this guy, I will of course require to be paid for my time on the bus and to have all my meals and expenses covered. Mostly, I just wanted to make contact with this guy and let him know I’m here in San Miguel if they need a writer in the future. It could be fun and I could make a few bucks now and again which would be nice.
It feels like we’ve been here for awhile now and interestingly the only one who seems to be missing home is Asher. He’s been talking a lot lately about Minnesota and “our home back there.” He’s been talking about our deck and his friends and the videos he used to watch. I would have thought he’d have very little memory about any of that but it’s in his brain and it’s starting to come out. I’m not really homesick except for spring. I do miss that incredible smell of earth thawing and the surprise and pleasure of finding bulbs shooting up beneath the ice. Every once and a while I’ve gotten a whiff of that memory and it’s so interesting how smells can ride in our brains and emerge for a moment, washing over us like light or water.
Cleome and Michael don’t talk about Minnesota at all. Cleome in particular really seems to live in the moment. She doesn’t have many friends here, but she’s turned into such a reader that books are her friends (very much how Michael and I grew up). There’s one boy down the block, Derek, who’s a couple years older than she is. She really wants to play with him and she calls him every day and he’s yet to say yes. It doesn’t deter her, she just keeps on plugging away. I’m really glad she doesn’t take his rejection personally.
The work on my novel is progressing. It feels like I’m moving in a solid direction and every time I go back to it, I’m excited by it (which is of course critical to its completion). That said, I better get back to work on it.
Monday, April 15, 2002
Well, I got the reporting job so I leave for Acapulco on Thursday. It’s supposed to be in the low 90’s the whole time we’re there. Yuck. But, I’ll be on the ocean, without children and it’ll be wonderful.
I’m exhausted today. Cleome was up half the night with nightmares related to Harry Potter. Dumb. No more Harry Potter books for her.
Asher is at such an amazing stage. Not too far away from 3 and a combination of irritatingly whiny and unabashedly loving. He’s either on the floor screaming or in my arms cooing.
I’m too tired to write. More later.
May 12, 2002
Mother’s Day. This is a huge deal in Mexico. Every school does a formal ceremony, presentation, dance, song, parade thing on May 10. All the private schools include “supplies for May 10” in their required tuition payment. At Cleome and Asher’s school, they presented dancing and poems and a play. At the end, each mother was given a gift handmade by the students. Cleome sewed a cute little mother and baby duck with eggs and other things around it.
The whole mother cult here…the Virgin and La Madre this and La Madre that…the mother works like a drudge here but she is accorded the highest honors. She doesn’t receive any privileges or formal power in the political or economic hierarchy. But in the family hierarchy, mother is all-powerful.
In our little family hierarchy however, it’s mother’s day and I made breakfast and sit here writing with the kids now plugged into a video while Michael sleeps. No gifts, card, flowers. Typical. At least there’s no pretense of honor or privilege or power here. (Well, power yes…)
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