These days I wake up wondering if I have just lived a lifetime in 24 hours, some days I have. This year has begun with endings and I would be grateful for a beginning in the near future, just in case anyone is answering prayers. My last 3 weeks in San Miguel were more painful than the time I caught typhoid there...I deal better with strange temporary diseases than saying goodbye to this temporary permanence.
How, I don´t know, did I accumulated so much in 2.5 years in Mexico? That question was asked alot when moving it. My time left, in this place others come to enjoy, was spent in labor of moving; people, boxes, lives. During this time I was able to visit my iPod with beautiful sites and beautiful people and I became attached to a song, of course, during all this shuffling of everything-and-nothing-at-once. Twilight has always been my favorite time of day, the closure and the beginning, with soft golden blues that make me shed tears when I see the sky spreading out before me. One night as I drove down the mountain at twighlight time "Set the Twighlight Reeling" by Lou Reed came on. Now I know lots of people that find their comfort in God, but nothing put me at comfort that twilight time like Lou Reed´s cracky, edgy voice...he saved me from many bad mama incidents in my last weeks. Though this video version isn´t the sound quality of my iPod and Lou singing to me, Elvis Costello is a nice consolation prize and I hope you all enjoy a musical adventure.
My gift of strength while I packed up a formerly happy life into boxes was to gather this woman of strength in me. I did dread moving but part of me looked foward to it also, to get on with this life and not live in these disjointed boxes of life alone and married life every once in awhile. Now I am finding it difficult living with another adult after all this independence. Perhaps I should say all this dependence, on only myself, to make it through the next moment, which leads to the hour, day, week. There were moments I needed a guide and there was no manual for success or failure, surely there are years of therapy involved for my children on the dreaded move from Mexico...but we all found bravery.
When you leave something you love and you know it´s this slow departure, you have time to taste the sweetness. Things you once found negligible begin to take value. Since I was driving most of my days, my delicacies come in one line on scraps of paper: cobblestone roads, a cantalope moon, the Parroquia, losing Roarke´s glove and retrieving it from the mirador, giant ficus trees at La Concepcíon, tiendas, a dusty construction worker blowing me a kiss, the all permeating dust , sweet tears, kissing lovers, twirling batman acrobats in the last circus, yellow huizache blossoms, Guadalupe (always Guadalupe) and twilight. My sweetest last moments driving on the obnoxiously bumpy roads of San Miguel de Allende. Of course always my children, with me, sharing this journey. How did I earn the blessing of these three beautiful humans that I am supposed to care for? Simultaneously I am irritated and brought to my knees in thankfulness.
So many times it was commented, *you can´t do all this by yourself*, *you have to do it this way...*, *you need help*. Advice given in love and sometimes as if to say I wasn´t capable of delivering. Times came when I accepted help and then you simply have to step up, for yourself and the people you love, and say I will do this and I can. At the end of it all; the shuffling of things, boxes in Mexico, vehicle left in Mexico, still plans to arrange...I did what had to be done. Nine hundred miles between children and their father was covered to give them a family and some security and to let go of the regrets at leaving geographical points on a map. Yes, I did set the twilight reeling.
Showing posts with label Hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hope. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Friday, August 29, 2008
Fortitude
We live out in the country, about 10 minutes from town which means I do a fair amount of driving: getting kids to and from school, picking up Martha (our personal saint that just happens to keep our home organized and clean!) and all the errands to do in a day. In my daily comings and goings there is a woman that is also going about her day on foot with her children. This other mother is a tiny Mexican woman, you can see the Indian influence in her face, there are no Spanish features about her, she is short, dark, with jet black hair and has the most beautiful cheekbones. Generally she is carrying her baby in her rebozo, holding the hand of a 2 or 3 year old, while her other three chidren are older and walk on their own.
This is where I see her walking with her children: To school, about 1 kilometer away but on narrow dirt and cobblestone roads with a fair amount of traffic. To get water from a local pump, she crarries two 5 gallon buckets, attached to a limb, across her back full of water, I would say that is about 50 kilos, or around 100 pounds (her son also takes the wheelbarrow and pushes 100 pounds of water, he looks to be around 10). To wash the family clothes in the nearby alfalfa field. Her oldest daughter carries the wash tub, the second daughter tends to the toddler, the 10 year old boy pushes the wheelbarrow with the clothes and the baby in it and she carries more clothes in her two 5 pound bucket yoke. I've watched them all go into the field and help their mother wash their clothes by hand or tend to the little ones making sure they stay out of the road.
One day the family was in their usual laundry spot which faces another field, it is wide open to the western sky and the Sierra de Guanajuato Mountain range. There was a particularly beautiful sunset that night and the oldest daughter was facing west, transfixed by a moment. Disclaimer: I don't profess to be a shaman! But suddenly everything in this young girls life opened to me as I watched her, she was absorbed in the last embers of the day and looked so fiercely fragile, like she was longing to jump into the sky over those far away mountains. The way she looked at her landscape seemed to fill her with hope and this crazy otherworldly glow was all around her head. When I drove by I said outloud to myself "I have just seen her hopes and fears and the solace that she seeks". This was a rare moment, I was driving completely alone and going very slow so I could savor quiet moments and what a gift I received in those precious few moments. When I see her now I want to weep because she represents to me the proverbial flower in a hailstorm, something so beautiful but with such fortitude she cannot, willnot let herself be destroyed by what is ugly in this life.
More often though I see her mother, walking, walking, walking, always in the opposite direction of which I am going, which adds to the juxtaposition of our lives. I can tell you her entire wardrobe; 1 black skirt, 1 khaki skirt, 1 white blouse, 1 tan blouse, 1 red sweater, 1 black rebozo, 1 pair of dusty black shoes. Her legs are always dusty from the walking, her hair a bit disheveled. Her expression is never one of joy, sorrow or anger, she looks indifferent to the world, this world simply is, nothing more or less. When I drive by this Mexican mother I feel so guilty in my life of relative priviledge, guilty for the fears I have, shame for every time I speak harsh words to my children or refuse to take three children somewhere by myself, because it's a hassel. Everyday this other mother walks the road with her children and her children recognize they have to work with their mother, they cannot survive without each other.
Please don't think I am romanticizing their life, it must be hard beyond my belief. I am trying to understand why this is still how the majority of the world lives, it's real, it's in my face and I cannot stop thinking about this family. The world I inhabit has running water, washing machines, maids, concrete floors, cars to drive, I feel like her evil twin when I drive by. We are polar opposites and I wonder, if I am faced with her level of poverty could I even stand up in a day and walk half of the miles she can with such grace?
This is where I see her walking with her children: To school, about 1 kilometer away but on narrow dirt and cobblestone roads with a fair amount of traffic. To get water from a local pump, she crarries two 5 gallon buckets, attached to a limb, across her back full of water, I would say that is about 50 kilos, or around 100 pounds (her son also takes the wheelbarrow and pushes 100 pounds of water, he looks to be around 10). To wash the family clothes in the nearby alfalfa field. Her oldest daughter carries the wash tub, the second daughter tends to the toddler, the 10 year old boy pushes the wheelbarrow with the clothes and the baby in it and she carries more clothes in her two 5 pound bucket yoke. I've watched them all go into the field and help their mother wash their clothes by hand or tend to the little ones making sure they stay out of the road.
One day the family was in their usual laundry spot which faces another field, it is wide open to the western sky and the Sierra de Guanajuato Mountain range. There was a particularly beautiful sunset that night and the oldest daughter was facing west, transfixed by a moment. Disclaimer: I don't profess to be a shaman! But suddenly everything in this young girls life opened to me as I watched her, she was absorbed in the last embers of the day and looked so fiercely fragile, like she was longing to jump into the sky over those far away mountains. The way she looked at her landscape seemed to fill her with hope and this crazy otherworldly glow was all around her head. When I drove by I said outloud to myself "I have just seen her hopes and fears and the solace that she seeks". This was a rare moment, I was driving completely alone and going very slow so I could savor quiet moments and what a gift I received in those precious few moments. When I see her now I want to weep because she represents to me the proverbial flower in a hailstorm, something so beautiful but with such fortitude she cannot, willnot let herself be destroyed by what is ugly in this life.
More often though I see her mother, walking, walking, walking, always in the opposite direction of which I am going, which adds to the juxtaposition of our lives. I can tell you her entire wardrobe; 1 black skirt, 1 khaki skirt, 1 white blouse, 1 tan blouse, 1 red sweater, 1 black rebozo, 1 pair of dusty black shoes. Her legs are always dusty from the walking, her hair a bit disheveled. Her expression is never one of joy, sorrow or anger, she looks indifferent to the world, this world simply is, nothing more or less. When I drive by this Mexican mother I feel so guilty in my life of relative priviledge, guilty for the fears I have, shame for every time I speak harsh words to my children or refuse to take three children somewhere by myself, because it's a hassel. Everyday this other mother walks the road with her children and her children recognize they have to work with their mother, they cannot survive without each other.
Please don't think I am romanticizing their life, it must be hard beyond my belief. I am trying to understand why this is still how the majority of the world lives, it's real, it's in my face and I cannot stop thinking about this family. The world I inhabit has running water, washing machines, maids, concrete floors, cars to drive, I feel like her evil twin when I drive by. We are polar opposites and I wonder, if I am faced with her level of poverty could I even stand up in a day and walk half of the miles she can with such grace?
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