Life Style Refugee – The Ajijic Blog

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.