Life Style Refugee – The Ajijic Blog

“Churchill said,”  our thirteen year old intoned  as he reached for the  basket of bread on the table,  “  When you’re going through Hell, keep walking.”

Because this was said so solemnly, as though he was getting ready to start a lecture to a classroom full of Harvard students, we automatically  put down our silverware, and turned to face him. He continued, “MY personal Hell was my last year at the Grammar in England, before I changed schools. What was yours? Shall we go around?”

My personal Hell, while colorful, and generally thought by recovering alcoholics to be worth hearing about at a meeting, is not the kind of thing I’m likely to be discussing with someone who hasn’t hit puberty yet, so we observed a moment of silence while absorbing this kid’s request. Mom put down her Kindle. She had it with her because we were having  Sunday lamb at Tony’s after church, and she has the Book of Common Prayer loaded on it. Don’t think that didn’t create a stir at St. Andrews Anglican. The nineteen year old squirmed restlessly, but it wasn’t because she searching her soul in response to her cousin’s question. Over the weekend she had had the Rolling Stones lips and tongue tattooed on her butt cheek, and sitting made introspection unlikely.

Doesn’t everybody have one of those stories that they’ve told so many times they think it’s true? But it’s maybe not? For me, it’s that I’m allergic to bumblebee stings. I know that was my excuse, one of them, anyway,  for an absence from 9th grade biology. Looking back, I can’t reconstruct any actual memories of having ever been stung by a such a creature, leaving me with the vague suspicion that I  made it up under the pressure of trying to pass off  another visit to the dentist with Mr. Rose. He was, after all, a man of science, and there wasn’t any credible reason that a fourteen year old would need daily oral surgery.  However, the only way to establish once and for all whether I have such an allergy is to go out and mash a bee against my foot, so I guess I’ll keep putting down on medical forms that it’s an allergy.

I also say, along with everybody that I know, that nothing is more important than family, that I love my family, that I miss my family. But up until recently, these haven’t been closely examined truths.  Now, though, I’ve spent a month mashing that particular bee with my foot. And guess what? Turns out I love my family. Love them, miss them, nothing’s more important.

Not once during July and August did I answer anyone asking after my health by saying ” Fine thank you. How are you?”  No. regardless of how casual the question, I managed in each case to answer  “I have my MOTHER,  and my NINETEEN year old niece, and my THIRTEEN year old step-son visiting for a MONTH, “  making sure that whoever I was talking to had plenty of opportunity to admire me for surviving this burden of hospitality. I received lots of welcome sympathy from my friends down here. ” A month!” they all cried. “Wow, you’re a saint! And all those different ages, too!” I never turned any of these compliments down, but the fact is,  I wasn’t really earning them. I was having too much fun.

Part of this fun, a lot of it, in fact, was succumbing to the enchantment of my village all over again, or maybe in a new way.  I got a recent facebook greeting from my most glamorous and jet setting friend who commented on my indulgent lifestyle. It’s true, I guess, although I certainly don’t see myself that way, struggling along in a spotty real estate market as I am.  But when I look at our life through the lens of facebook photo albums,  I get it. In them, Max is flying through the air, about to land in the pool in Linda’s uber glamorous back yard. Or we’re all mugging with the Mariachi band on the boardwalk, or lounging at the table of one of  the dozen different restaurants at which we lunched with my girlfriends. The pictures show us strolling in Tlaquepaque and riding horses in La Floresta. Richest of all are the nature shots, the mountains, the tropical flowers, or the kids posing in a tree on the lake shore with the ridiculous colors of a Mexican sunset behind them. If I’d been looking at those pictures, I would have been pretty impressed, myself. It reminded me of one of the driving forces behind our decision to live in Mexico, which is the low cost of high living.

More fun than the places were the players;  My Mother, who spent as much time with her i-phone as a  Sony music executive.   My stepson, who had deplaned in Guadalajara as a thoughtful courteous boy of the type that would pose discussion questions at Sunday dinner and who was sent back with  shaggy hair and a new taste for obscenities, along with an keen insight as to what he can look forward to in the next couple of years from the lay-dies, developed from sharing our guest room with his cousin.  She herself, who uncovered a raging nightlife in our little world–who knew?– rolling in at odd hours of the day and night dressed in scraps of lingerie and skirts that consisted of the pockets of a pair of levis.

I know better than to think it will be adorable if I write about the funny things my mother said during dice games, causing everyone to crack up, or how I laughed at the way  my chihuahua/dachsund would launch herself into Mom’s lap, or what a kick I got from watching the kids gradually learn all the players in our village, and their  progress from being afraid to leave the house unescorted to babbling away in Spanish with local folks who greeted them by name on walks between my house and Mom’s casita and the taco stand on the Plaza. It’s not anything special. It’s just my family.

Love ‘em, miss ‘em, nothing is more important.

OW! That’s me, holding my jaw and whining about the toothache that descended just before my beloved stepchild boarded his plane for Old Blighty. Since he left, I’ve had the offending molar yanked out, taken antibiotics and flirted with a little codeine, tried to write, failed, and have opted for a postcard to you, my faithful readers. I’m back, I’m working on it, and I’ll post next Monday.

My visitors?

My mother does not succumb to the challenge that small tasks present. She takes in stride that things that should be easy–sitting, standing,  tedious little exercises that were automatic once but have the nerve now to be major undertakings, each movement requiring it’s own strategy session. She meets these pain-in-the-ass negotiations with valor. “Never surrender!”  she seems to say.  Or actually does say, thumping the floor with an African spear she borrowed and is presently using as a hiking stick.   “Shit a fat brick!” she may holler when she’s in a less Churchillian mood.

She is saved from being just another courageous old lady- ho hum!- by her delight in technology, and idles away the hours fiddling with her i-phone to bring up google earth or take her turn at international online backgammon.  Much more interesting, in my opinion, than one of those tiresome old “rappin” grannies that wear converse sneakers and hang out in discotheques.

My niece is here with her, she of the gold skin and gold hair, hair that makes anything she sticks or clasps into it, no matter how innocent, instantly  look like it was purchased in a sex shop in Amsterdam. If she were to tie a black velvet ribbon into a bow in that hair, she would be arrested.  My stepson, who is thirteen, isn’t sure he’s allowed to be in the same room as his step-cousin, although he doesn’t know why, any more than a herd of buffalo knows why they have the urge to stampede before an earthquake.  She likes to travel with my Mom and is perfectly comfortable with the assortment of innovative approaches that Mom employs to get out of a chair, displaying not a trace of embarrassment,  something I find charming in a nineteen year old.

The last time my niece visited, she lugged a steamer trunk with her that cost the price of a new wardrobe at the airline counters both coming and going in extra weight charges. I was pleased to see her strolling out of customs this time with a more modest suitcase, thinking that she had internalized my lectures about how to pack.  Now that I ‘ve seen the collection of Ed Hardy string bikinis she brought, I can’t think why she needed a suitcase at all.

As miniature as they are, they weren’t small enough to satisfy the wardrobe requirements of a “Pimps and Ho’s” ball that she was somehow invited to attend her second night here. She borrowed some trashy lingerie from a friend to wear to the party. Not because she didn’t bring any underwear, although it’s entirely possible that she didn’t, but because whatever she did or didn’t bring wasn’t sufficiently “ho-ish” to be her costume. Fortunately,  her local friend had a sufficient supply of bustiers. I don’t spend too much time wondering how it’s possible that she was invited to such a ball, or that she has such a friend, several thousand miles from her home.

The thirteen year old is in a class by himself. He lives with his mother and stepdad in England.  I entertain him and myself by finding other thirteen year olds, and studying them with an anthropologist’s eye, wondering how it’s possible that a kid from Brighton Beach and a kid from Ajijic, Mexico can start talking gibberish before introductions are even finished. “Pixels!” they say. “Call of Duty 4! GTA, Halo!, ” This much I sort of can make out. The rest sounds like football signals or spy code.  “OPM! Megabytes! 42! ” and then once in a while a word that I can definitely recognize, along the lines of  “Boobies!” and oh boy, then we’re back in a world that technology has touched not at all, the world where a word like “pencil dick” will get them rolling in the aisles, just like it did when I was thirteen, and when Mom was thirteen.

These characters are in my world this month, to my great joy. I may not get much blogging done.  This month I may spend living with my beloved knuckleheads rather than writing about them. But next month will be here soon enough.

Our little village abounds with urban myths of well heeled widows taking up with strapping young Mexican gardeners. One minute these guys are sweating in the sun, laying their, er, sod. I can’t even picture it without hearing imaginary porn music.  The next thing you know the senora is coming out on to the terraza with a big glass of limonada and a gleam in her eye. Chapter Two? The gardener moves into the big house. His latin machismo soon surfaces,  and he starts bossing the senora around. She is such a slave to passion that when he starts staying out all night all she can do is beg, clutching his leg and being dragged across the floor while he sneers in contempt and shakes her loose so he can go spend her money on some tart at the cantina, and the senora  starts drinking straight tequila. The next thing you know, you never see her for lunch any more.  According to the local grapevine, this pattern repeats itself all the time.

As common as these tales are, there seems to be a little something extra in the water at the moment. There’s been a recent spike in the number of stories regarding single women and their gardeners. It seems that the notion of  this kind of big house/ field hand carrying on doesn’t have the salacious firepower that it once did, and the local gossips are trying to make up for in quantity what they are missing in quality.  Last week, I heard three different gringa-and-the-gardener stories, which is pretty hot for the local demographic. We’re  kind of a small town to be having  this widows gone wild action all over the place. Frankly, I’d have a hard time swallowing three patronas falling for their gardeners in greater Los Angeles, never mind  the village of Ajijic.

Perhaps I’m not the only one to raise an eyebrow at the sudden uptick in ravenously horny homeowners who can’t watch their lawn getting watered without dropping their negligees.   I notice that recent stories include the addition of  details that are getting juicier all the time. One thrilling variation includes the added twist of the faithful servant caring for the senora when she twisted her ankle, and subsequently getting her addicted to heroin! How awesome is that! Now he is rumored to be keeping her docile with regular injections  of  exotic drug cocktails, and is moving her hand across the signature lines of various deeds and titles while she is nodding out in an opiate  coma. Once he gets the combination to her safe, well, I wouldn’t think much of her chances then….

Some of these chestnuts come my way in my job as a realtor, usually with the hopeful notion that it will result in an undervalued property, as in “I heard about a house in Chula Vista? where the woman is having an affair with her gardener? and she’s signed over all her property to him because she’s mad at her children for not coming to see her, and he doesn’t know how much it’s worth, so when she dies, he’s going to sell it for cheap!” Hope springs eternal, is all I can say.

Believe me, if you can’t take this level of small town drama, you are not ready for Lakeside. I  personally thrive on it,  the more lurid the gossip, the better. Unfortunately, the element that  interferes with my ability to suspend reality long enough to enjoy these stories is the fact that’s it’s always the gardener. Jesus, not my gardener! Nobody in their right mind would have an affair with him, no matter what kind of drugs he was packing in his truck along with the WeedWacker and pruning shears. All the gardeners I know are completely retarded, or have glass eyes, or —in the rare cases where they are under 50–would rather shoot themselves up with drugs than have to throw a schtup into one of the old babes I lunch with. Give me a break. There are a few brown eyed  hunks with flashing white smiles driving around in Chevy Avalanches, but believe me when I tell you, they know how much the land is worth. They know what they’re worth, too, and it’s usually a bundle, owing nothing at all to any dame in a negligee with a dope habit.

There is, of course, a kernel of truth to these stories. Somewhere along the line, some gal with a taste for margaritas in the afternoon probably did start a little something with her gardener, who was probably close to her own age and may have been with her for thirty years, and maybe her kids did neglect her.

The other dramatic structure that local gossip is likely to take involves lesbians, usually on motorcycles, who come into town and  break up marriages with their irresistible lesbian powers. Like cobras hynotizing helpless birds, these black leather clad fembots have only to crook a finger and cast a certain sort of glance, and wives who are about to celebrate their golden anniversary are unable to prevent themselves from packing up and moving into the poolhouse with them, a slave to unnatural sex that couldn’t be imagined before these mighty sapphists rolled into town.  A key element of this story is that everyone has sex with the ravishing seductress, who isn’t particularly fastidious about gender preference. Obviously, sooner or later the husband loses his mind and kills the lesbian, the wife, himself, or some combination of the three.

That story actually has a little  more than  a kernel of truth, happening pretty much just that way back in the ’80′s, when all the good stuff was happening around here. Frankly, the real story of that episode is even more sensational than the recycled fiction that gets handed around along with the gardener gossip, as it had the added zest of communism and theatre people.

There are local webboards that supply us with a cyber version of the back fence, but I never get any good stories there. The gossip on the internet is not more reliable than the stories I hear from  flesh and blood nut jobs all over town and it  seldom has the color and dash that I love so much. Who can get worked up over exterminators and visas? Bah. The internet isn’t always such a giant step forward.

But I’m sure glad to have it, so that I can share the really good stuff with you. Just between us, right?

My adventures with the furniture salesman last week are only the latest chapter in an ongoing saga with our refrigerator. Some months ago, it started behaving badly. The ice in the freezer melted, and the refrigeration compartment, while perhaps a degree or two cooler than the outside temperature in the hottest month of the year, was obviously struggling.

I was raised by intellectual parents in the gleaming atomic age. By the time I was old enough to own my own appliances, the world had divided into them and us, them being qualified to keep things running, us… not.
I know that at the first sign of trouble with anything significant, I’m going to have to initiate diplomatic relations with an alien, but necessary, group of redneck fix-it types who know about repairs. Members of this intimidating nation are free to tell me–and charge me–whatever they like, because I’m completely at their mercy. It has always been a more comforting option to just go buy a new car than to live with the anxiety of trying to keep one running after it starts having problems,and staying awake at night wondering if the guy in the jumpsuit is laughing at me behind my back.

People who move here and then complain about the “manana” attitude and whine about a shiftless work ethic strike me as highly suspicious. In the States, as a realtor, I was held hostage by workmen too numerous to count, plumbers, electricians, heating-and-air-conditioning guys, repair people of all stripes. As for the Manana attitude, well, the only way I ever knew where any of my handy -man type guys were is because I happen to attend AA meetings myself. It took precision timing, but I developed a strategy that involved catching a painter on his way back from a binge. If they’d been attending meetings and managing to accumulate some sobriety for a few months, I’d give them a wide berth, so great was the likelihood that they were about to pick up a bottle and go on a bender. None of this would have been so harrowing, if it weren’t for the fact that it cost hundreds of dollars every time one of these characters got involved, and you were never sure what they were doing, or if it would work, or if by the time you needed some warranty work you’d be able to find them again without calling Dog the Bounty Hunter. And the idea that they were more likely to show up when they said they would than the guys I’ve dealt with in Mexico is just ludicrous.

My observation here in Mexico is that there are three possible phases involved in a repair. If you’re lucky, the problem will be resolved in Phase 1, which is the guy that you called shows up on time and fixes the problem, charging a miniscule amount, thirty pesos or something.  I’m here to tell you, that happens far, far more often than not, and a whole helluva lot more than it ever did in the States. If it doesn’t, you move on to the second phase. This only happens if the original repair was unsuccessful. The repairman returns. After this, things can go in a couple of directions. People here are awfully, awfully good at what they do, and they will do it right the first time if they know how. There’s some wiggle room here for human error, of course. If that’s the case, it will be immediately spotted and corrected. If it’s not, you enter Phase 2b. This is where the gifted repair guy has taken his best shot and is about to start making stuff up,and down the rabbit hole you go. We had been stuck  in 2b for a while with the extended family of father, brothers, sons, and wives– They are the Flying Wallendas of major appliance repair –that are responsible for keeping local refrigerators running.

The problem with this phase is that most Mexicans would rather commit ritual suicide than give you bad news, so they’ll try anything, but at some point, they move into Phase 3. That’s when the repair person has exhausted what he knows and what he can make up, and the object still doesn’t work. At this point he’s smart enough to quit showing up, even though we’re not smart enough to quit calling and bitching. It is probably the uninformed gringotard who has been graduated to this phase without receiving the memo that is responsible for all the kvetching about “manana.”

There came a moment when the refrigerator had been muscled out onto our front terrace so that it could be worked on by repairmen who, having entered Phase 3, abandoned it there. The freezer was stocked, not with ice cream and frozen vegetables, but with milk and fruit. In other words, it was now being used as an auxiliary refrigerator. Which made a total of three, because there was also a blue igloo chest sitting in the kitchen where the fridge was supposed to be. It was a low moment. Generally, I am perfectly convinced of the rightness of our move to Mexico, but cut me some slack. I’m a 52 year old woman, and subject to, er, fluctuations in mood. The multiple unsuccessful attempts to fix the refrigerator were making me feel anxious,  helpless.  I would have liked to go buy a new one. However,we had just gotten back from ten days at the beach. It’s not a great time to be replacing big ticket items. While I was mulling this over, a prehistoric looking spider, probably imported from the Puerto Vallarta jungle in the trunk of Bruno’s 1991 Taurus, ran across the porch.  Worse! Now I was a person with a cooler in the kitchen, a refrigerator on the porch, a car from the last century, and giant hairy spiders running around loose. I felt that moving to Mexico was a colossal mistake, that I had sacrificed any chance of every achieving anything, taken a left turn when I should have gone right. I felt broke, a failure, and that, more than a loser, I was a loser living in freaking Mexico. Uber Loser!

In a scenario that didn’t need any help to depress me, there was a pair of jeans sticking out of the fridge and revealing a healthy slice of ass crack, but neither belonged to Javier Castellenos, the local appliance repair man who had gone missing. No, the jeans, and the crack, belonged to my husband, who–coup de grace!–was trying to fix the ice box himself. For some reason, that was the last straw. Something about my husband trying to fix a broken refrigerator made me feel as though we were teetering on the brink of disaster.

Ah, don’t worry, there’s a happy ending! Like I said, mood swings.

Bruno has more experience than I with this whole pattern, because he drives a 20 year old car that has been driven into a horse. At this very moment he’s chasing down Chui, who is responsible for the day to day upkeep of our valiant 1991 Ford Taurus, in spite of his complete lack of qualification for such a job. Or any job! He lives outside the network of competent repair people that are the subject of this post, believe me. He tends to leapfrog into Phase 3, but he’s been with us for a long time.  Chui obviously neglected some vital step when he painted the car, as that paint is now peeling off in long strips.

For some reason that has never bothered me, but the whole refrigerator thing caused me to  panic. Here’s the happy ending; Bruno fixed the refrigerator. Returning to some joyous boyhood passion for tinkering, forgetting that we don’t have the necessary clearance from the brotherhood of redneck repair guys to do this kind of work, using some common sense, he fixed it. It’s sitting back where it’s supposed to be, making ice cubes like crazy–we both grin at each other every time we hear another batch thunk into the receptacle. It makes me feel like he, like we, can do anything. That we are self sufficient, that we are not intimidated by guys showing their butts. We  show them ours!

That, no I didn’t miss my chance by moving to Mexico. Far from being my undoing, is the making of me.

On Thursday, June 24 of the year 2010, at approximately 2:30 pm, a Mexican man was rude to me. I know the time and date because, in a country that values courtesy as much as Mexico does, to be treated badly by a salesperson is on the level of a total eclipse of the sun.    I don’t think I’ve ever even met an impolite Mexican,  so bumping into a rude salesperson had a lot more impact than if I was shopping in New Jersey for example, or Paris.

Traffic around here is kind of a separate category, of course. To the uninitiated, drivers in these parts might seem a little rude. But then, to the uninitiated, professional wrestling might look like fighting.  Once the new motorist in Mexico understands that driving is a sport, like paintball,  the existence of rules of engagement become clear.

Generally speaking,  Mexicans are  gentle and well mannered to a fault.  So you could have knocked me over with a feather when the kid in question, an employee in a local furniture store who was obviously having a psychotic break, started having a big conniption at me. I stood frozen in horror as  he made a spectacle of both of us,  hopping around like that cowboy cartoon character Yosemite Sam and hollering nonsense about how business is done in this country, using one hand to hitch up the brown polyester pants that kept slipping down to pool around his thick soled shoes  while he stabbed the finger of his other in the general  direction of my bosom.  He was short, too short for the pants,  and way, way too short to be feinting and jabbing in the neighborhood of any obstacle so formidable as my bosom, especially when it’s corseted up for a day in town.

” Do I want you to call the police? Is that what you said?’  I couldn’t believe my ears.  ” Dude, get a grip on yourself! Why would you call the police? I just want to buy a refrigerator! Stop jumping around!” Behind him, Bruno twirled a finger at his temple in the universal sign for crazy, and mouthed the words “World Cup” at me.

I don’t think it’s FIFA fever though, as rampant as that is.  Everyone around here is in a pretty good mood about World Cup*.  I felt a momentary cold twinge of  sadness when it occurred to me that maybe we were going to start experiencing hostility from the local folks over the whole Arizona thing, but in general our hosts here are able to separate us from our knucklehead countrymen up North. No, I’m definitely leaning toward psychotic break.

I have been re-introduced to the joys of good manners since we moved here. Etiquette of the kind that I remember being taught from childhood books, and that was later replaced by “entertaining.” It’s a lovely thing, elegant and satisfying for it’s own sake. It makes you remember that civilisation has more to offer than making money and humiliating retail personnel.

There is a wave that is used, a gesture that seemed somehow aggressive before I was familiar with it, like something Ralph Camden might do with his hand as he bellowed “To the Moon, Alice!”   It involves a carefully calibrated rotation and the use of the back, not the palm, of the hand. It is a gesture of respect and acknowledgement.  Now that I’m used to it,  I am thrilled whenever I receive such a wave, which strikes me as being as  refined and dignified as a court curtsy. I like to give it, as well, and my arm has a bobblehead quality to it as I rotatate and wave my way around the village.

If I have the blues, a stroll to my village plaza is a guaranteed cure. The friendly nods, the tip of cowboy hats, the knots of villagers who sing  “Buenas Tardes” in unison, that cool hand gesture when I let a driver have the right of way, the  gracious bows delivered by old abuelas in their flowered rayon skirts and mantillas and knee high support hose. No matter how sour my mood when I leave the house, immersion in the good manners of my village will soothe me.

So what went wrong in  the furniture store? It was just a negotiation that took a nasty turn, and I extricated myself  as handily I could.  The price on the appliance didn’t match the one in the computer, it was one of those things, and I admit I got a little pompous. The salesman was out of control, and although it’s hard to resist the desire to one up an opponent in that kind of confrontation (I’m a big one for rearing back and puffing up my aforementioned rigidly corseted chest and saying something stupid like “Do you know who I am?” as if I might actually  have some leverage in a Mexican furniture store, which I most certainly do not).  I knew the event was an aberration, so it was easy for me to avoid getting caught up in it, to let it go.  In addition, as empty as the threat was, I wasn’t about to let the police get involved, even though we both knew they probably would have delivered a beating to the guy for calling them and interrupting their poker game.  I’m less interested in being right than in being happy,  and  keeping a low profile, in my opinion,  is one of the secrets to a contented life in Mexico.

On our way down the street to purchase a refrigerator at Coppell, the arch rival of Muebles America (oh, come on. it’s one thing to rise above, but I wasn’t about to give any money to those cretins) I said to Bruno, “Wow, that guy was  having a really bad day.”  “Eh,” Bruno responded with a shrug. “He’s probably from California.”

*they were when this happened, I should say. The Argentina match was yet to be played

I fear that I must be harboring  unconscious  hostility toward my husband, buried deep below the tickled affection that is all that I’m aware of when I look at him.  What other explanation could there be, if not a wide streak of passive aggression,  for travel plans that year after year  either bring us home the day before the village fiesta begins, or have us scheduled to depart the day after it ends? This year Bruno looked at me, unbelieving, when we got home just in time for the first barrage of cohetes in the plaza a block  from our house that announces the beginning of the nine day spectacle. I couldn’t believe it myself. After a week with two college girls in Puerto Vallarta and a long drive home, the last thing we wanted to hear was the communally owned loudspeaker system crackling to life with  brassy ranchero music .

Yes, I know I sound like a party pooper.  But listen, a Mexican village fiesta doesn’t have romantic guitar trios on the stage playing “Cielito Lindo.“   I wish. No, to get the village whipped into a party mood, thirteen or fourteen flashy Mexican men decked out in leisure suits over nylon shirts depicting lurid desert sunsets will take the stage and arrange themselves into a big brass section that features, for the love of God, an effing sousaphone.  And that is along with trombones, trumpets, clarinets, saxes, snare drums, cymbals, and an accordion,  and the music they play is….well, if you can imagine a salsa band and a polka band both playing  simultaneously, you’ll be in the ballpark.  I like  guitars and I like Mariachi music. I like Cumbia and Salsa and Bolero. I’m actually kind of a Mexican music aficionado. But Jesus, when they get that sousaphone  involved, and the squeeze box, when they start mixing the traditional Mexican folk music with German oom pah pah,  I draw the line.

My friend Anita gave me a pitying look  at my birthday lunch yesterday—  I showed up wearing all the largesse showered upon me by my darling friends, the earrings and fans, rebozas, a necklace to hold my reading glasses. Wanting to show my gratitude, I draped it all on myself until I looked like a dowry being delivered to some far eastern court, but the finery couldn’t hide my exhaustion.  When she heard me describing how I had heard the rattle of the Aztec dancers outside my gate, and been too apathetic to even investigate she nodded wisely and observed that “The bloom is off the rose.”

But no. My love affair with Mexico is as passionate as ever, it’s just that I’m getting old.   This curmudgeonly attitude toward music signals my age more powerfully, I think,  than the network of creases and lines on my face that bear witness to a whole lot more than sunbathing. But even if I still had my taste for loud discos and rock concerts, a Mexican fiesta patronales is in a class by itself. It not only the music. The whole nine days of  fireworks, rides, the peddlers stalls filled with smuggled and pirated goods in colors that make you squint and throw your hands to your eyes in the manner of shielding them from a nuclear explosion,  the barking dogs.  By the time the parade danced down the street outside my house, I was numb.

In my defense, it was the last day of this annual jamoboree,  and it had been extended for tw0 days to accommodate the weekend. I was sitting lethargically on an ottoman in my living room, too exhausted to think of anything to do when I heard  the gourds  rattling–from their sound, I guessed they were at the top of our block. There was plenty of time to get to my gate to see the desfila, and I felt guilty for not being able to muster up the energy to go look.  I love the miniature Friar Tucks in their brown  robes that represent our St. Anthony. I love the teenage beauty queens in hoop skirted prom dressed waving from the back of some uncle’s pick up truck.  I especially love the indigenous dancers wearing feathered headdresses and moth eaten leopard skins  and, bringing up the rear, our village band with it’s beloved tuba playing a bouncy mash up of who knows what.  Really, I love all these things, but on this occasion, I had just had it.

Not to worry! In high school, my Dad would comfort me during the meltdown of one of my great loves by reminding me that boys were like buses , another one comes along every twenty minutes. Had we lived in Mexico then, he could have freshened up the analogy by using parades. And there is indeed, another one coming along, if not in twenty minutes, certainly very soon. I might organize one myself, just to celebrate the end of the fiesta.

Oh dear. Beach vacations have historically had the  ability to cast a spell that drenches the lowest rung of  service workers in sex appeal, transforming restaurant sailors with fish sticks on a tray into navy seals and fishing guides that wear bathing suits as underwear into rock stars. That’s just the way the beach is, and although, with the wisdom of maturity,  I am mostly immune to the condition these days, (inoculated, no doubt,  by the dozens of  unsuitable love affairs that made my youth so much darn fun ) given the right conditions I can still feel symptoms.  Going to Puerto Vallarta with two dazzling brand new college graduates constitutes the right conditions.  Celebrating their achievement with a sunset ride on a pirate ship that has an open bar and boy dancers doing sword fights, well,  all I can say is that the wisdom of maturity has no place on a pirate ship.

Some years ago, my older step daughter was shopping for a formal,  an event which inspired the first of many moments of the vertigo that comes from aging ungracefully, when you realize civilization has actually made some dramatic advances in your lifetime. It occurred to me that neither the fabrics that prom dresses were being made of, nor the lingerie to go with them, had been invented when I was in high school. I had the same sensation on the pirate ship. Boy, there was nothing like that around when I was looking for it, I can tell you that! Good looking Mexican twenty somethings swooping around with daggers in their teeth and a deejay spinning Sex on the Beach (with it’s compelling chorus;  ” Champagne! Mojito! Tequila! Boom Boom!”)  while the sun sets in the Pacific and fireworks are sent up off the bow. If you can imagine a higher goal than getting one of the swashbuckling staff to run your panties  up the mast along with the Jolly Roger in a situation like that, I defriend you.  Not my panties, obviously, because I’m past all that, and also because my foundation garments are made of stern stuff these days.

It turned out that my darling girls  are themselves made of pretty stern stuff, and had no problem whatsoever keeping their wardrobe in place . They don’t have anywhere near the degree of toxicology required to get up to shenanigans like I did back in the day, and it turns out, they have wisdom of their own. But they still felt the love! By the end of the week the three of us were exhausted from falling in love with ATV drivers, zip line tour guides, waiters at Senor Frog’s, jet ski rental clerks, time share salesmen, and of course pirates whose English vocabulary consisted of the word “Yar”.  Which, looking back, they may well have thought meant “Nice to meet you.” My husband watched all this with amusement. And amazement, I’m sure, that his middle aged wife, charged with chaperoning his precious daughter, could regress so horribly into her own round heeled and rum soaked juventud.

Luckily, the girls didn’t travel back to my village home with me. The first week of June is when my village celebrates its fiesta patronales, the nine day hootenanny celebrating St. Anthony de Padua,the saint for whom our pueblo is named.  And although I hate saying good-bye to any of my step-children, I  admit that I’m relieved not to be gambling with my precious baby’s virtue on some of the characters that are loitering around the village square right now, especially not if she’s got margaritas and pirates on the brain. The enchantment of our week at the beach is powerful enough to make even the wretches who operate the tin tilt-a-whirl that travels from village to village for fiestas  look kind of  sexy, and if there’s an animal out there more raffish and uncouth than a Mexican carnie, I’d like to meet it. But only in broad daylight.

I’m glad the fiesta is here, although these parties are normally a hideous thorn in the Gringo side, with their 15 piece bands cranking up at 11:00 at night and drunken cowboys napping on the sidewalks. But I know what it’s like to rejoin the real world after a vacation like the one we just had, to cry all the way home on an airplane, to wake up surrounded by responsibility instead of ocean.  I didn’t have to suffer the shock of re-entry because I live in Mexico, and when the band took a break to allow the stage to be set for one of the endless beauty contests or  raffles for pick-up trucks that go on night and day during fiesta time, the DJ took over.  With his help, on my first night home, I was lulled to sleep by the catchy rhymes— “Mama, she say roly poly, Papa, he say holy moley,”— of  this song,  number one on the pirate ship hit parade.

If you are actually checking here to see if I have updated, Thank you! Some of you have checked in to see when I’ll be back in action, and the answer is Monday, June 14th. See you then.

Honest to God, this is the longest I’ve gone without posting in years, and I know it. Every time I log onto facebook my sister has put up a cheery status announcing that her blog is up to date, tra la, not like her slovenly sister South of the Border. She doesn’t actually say that, but I know it! I know that’s what she’s thinking! Hmph.

My biggest fear?  That the magic of Mexico has finally overcome my yankee sense of purpose, and  I’m just going to go through the rest of my life as a contented flounder, never achieving any of my goals, never hitting the ground running with my eye on the tiger, no. Just lying around eating fresh fruit or arguing with friends about the merits of various pool floats, and wondering where that mariachi music is coming from.

I know that I have many faithful readers, and I thank you, and apologize for my lethargy this month. But it’s MAY and it’s HOT and I’m going to PUERTO VALLARTA, and there you have it. Thank your for reading. Please come back.   I promise I will.

As soon as I get back from the beach. XO!