What Do You Love About Mexico?
The food? The people? The music? The beaches? Their taste in pinatas? Their pina coladas? Taco trucks on every corner?
A woman I know swore she’d leave the country if Dolt45 got elected. Unlike most people she’s actually making good on her threat. She just returned from an 8 week tour of Mexico and areas of Central America and is putting her house up for sale and moving to the Lake Chapala region of Mexico. This is the largest freshwater lake in Mexico with an active ex-pat and artistic community on the north shore and more isolation and privacy on the south. It’s the same latitude as Hawaii, the same elevation as Denver, and boasts the “second best climate in the world,” being springlike year-round. This type of climate appeals to me, as I break out in sun rashes in the tropics or on the coast.
The Lake Chapala area also boasts excellent and inexpensive healthcare with a prestigious teaching hospital in nearby Guadalajara, and I’ve spoken with ex-pats who have gotten treatment there and enthusiastically recommend it. We’re definitely going to check this area out. In retirement I’d like to live closer to more people, not further away, and be within walking distance of shopping and local culture.
I’ve always loved Mexico, ever since I was 17 and my brother Richard took me down to Tijuana to get my ‘64 Volkswagon reupholstered. The front seats, back seat and side panels were covered in black Naugahyde fir only $65, and we walked the raucous dusty streets for hours while it was being worked on. Deeper forays into the Rosarito Beach area in college were followed by a flight to Arizona and a bus trip down to Hermosillo and on to a small fishing village on Bahia Kino.
That was the life-changing trip that opened my heart. The platonic male friend I traveled with knew that as an acupuncture student I had very little money and offered to pay so long as I didn’t mind traveling on the cheap, which I didn’t.
But after several days of sharing separate rooms in a tiny cabana-like house on the beach he suddenly turned cold and aloof. I was baffled— we hadn’t argued, we did Chi Gong on the beach every morning and I made no demands on his time the rest of the day, so what had happened? When I asked if we could talk about it he refused, sneering “That’s what Americans do; they talk about everything.” (ere we no longer Americans, then?) He announced that we were no longer friends and that I was to go my own way for the rest of the trip. He gave me $10 a day to subsist on. I could still sleep on the couch in the main living space but he didn’t want to deal with me any further.
So there I was, stunned and wandering the village, hiking two hours down the beach to a small mariscos restaurant where I could stuff myself for $2-3 and then hiking back. Along the way I carefully avoided eye contact with the various locals— construction workers, fishermen, the occasional ironwood carver walking the beach. I was afraid of them, couldn’t speak the language, and felt exquisitely vulnerable and alone. I’d recently been dumped not once but twice in a row, and now on top of that even a normal friendship seemed beyond reach, and I seemed fatally flawed.
One afternoon as I sat on some rocks at the far end of the bay I started crying my eyes out wondering what was wrong with me, when suddenly two dolphins leaped out of the water in tandem, right in front of me.
I gasped, and whispered, “Do it again!’ my tears and self-pity vanquished by such playful beauty. The two dolphins continued leaping and splashing together back and forth in front of me for about ten minutes before finally swimming away.
Something in me cracked open, and I knew as a basic truth that friendships or partnerships didn’t have to be all work and struggle— relationships were also supposed to be fun and joyous, and that when the right people came along we would effortlessly recognize and love each other. Only my own fear was holding me back from the connections I wanted. I realized I was so tired of being afraid of everyone.
As I walked the miles back towards the village some fishermen pulled their small boat up on shore. They smiled and waved at me to come look, and I smiled back and approached them as they held up their catch, which I extravagantly admired. Further down the beach I encountered the man with the carved ironwood statues bowed and handed me a small carved owl and wouldn’t take any money, cheerfuly saying “De nada, linda dama!” I suddenly realized that these were just people, my own species, in fact, and not scary at all. I had been the rude person by refusing to greet them or even acknowledge their presence in their own village. The rest of my solitary trip was a joy as people in the village smiled and greeted me and showed me their lives. My former friend had done me one of the greatest favors of my life. When we got back on the bus to the states he gave me an odd look and said, “Where’s your sleeping bag?” I told him I’d given it away as I met someone who needed it more.
Six months later I met John, and our connection it was as easy and open and effortless as I‘d expected I would find some day. Shortly after we got together he bought me a stained glass piece from the Greenpeace store. I hadn’t told him about the dolphins in Mexico, but he said, “I got them because they remind me of us.”
What do you want to talk about today?
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