Columns

Most of the time when I write something, I have a point to make. Not necessarilly anything deep or thought provoking. But at least a beginning and an end, with some sort of resolution.

There are days when I hardly realize I’m in Mexico – when day to day life takes on the same rhythm as life in Illinois and I lose the feeling that it’s extraordinary to find myself living in a foreign county.

Every time I go shopping or drive down a street with stores, I go home wondering where it is that all these women go. Not the women on the street, but the women who are buying all of the formal gowns I see in store windows all over town.

My daughter wrote a blog post last month listing five things she liked and five things she didn’t like about Mexico. By her own admission, she had to stretch to come up with the five things she didn’t like. 

If you put a thousand monkeys in front of a thousand typewriters, at some point they’ll write the entire works of Shakespeare. Or so goes the theory.

If you put a lone woman in front of a keyboard to write about all the interesting things she’s discovering in Mexico, a pithy little column should write itself at least once a week. Or so goes my theory.

Which is why this morning, the day of my deadline, found me sitting on my enclosed patio, lap top open, coffee close at hand, staring at a blank screen, waiting for the words to come. 

Before I had even taken that first sip of black coffee, a loud, “Hola,” greeted  me from somewhere behind the high cement walls that surround the patio. I didn’t know the origin of the greeting, but being a friendly midwesterner who sometimes misses the frequent “hellos” hailed across low fences or open back yards, I returned a friendly,”Hola,” of my own with no idea of to which neighbor I was saying hello. 

Back to my blank screen, with no words forthcoming, it wasn’t long before I heard another greeting. This one a loud wolf whistle, again coming from the direction of some back patio neighbor – a neighbor that I was now thinking was perhaps a little more friendly than I’d like.

Not that a sixty-something woman wouldn’t occasionally find a little acknowledgment somewhat flattering. It’s just that this sixty-something woman with unbrushed hair, no make-up, and wearing the sweat pants and oversized t-shirt she slept in knew that any whistle on this particular morning would be wholly undeserved.

Which is why I didn’t respond to the whistle in any way, but sat in front of my lap top with a school marm’s posture that was sure to dissuade any further disturbance of my morning and any further interaction with my neighbor, whoever and wherever he was. 

Unfortunately, the productiveness I was hoping to gain from this new seriousness was again interrupted by a very definite laugh, reminiscent of the type you sometimes get when walking past a construction site trying to ignore catcalls. A laugh that said, “we know you heard us.”

It was about this time that I started thinking that the high patio walls weren’t such a bad thing after all. I was, however, questioning the wisdom of all the second story windows overlooking the private patios and thinking that maybe we needed to get some of those shade sails to block out nosy neighbors. 

If I hoped  to make any headway on writing a column, I knew it was time for this Nancy Drew to do a little reconnaissance and find out exactly which neighbor I needed to avoid in the future.

I left the patio and walked to my own upstairs window to peek into the neighboring patios and windows to see who was breaching my morning peace and productivity. 

As I looked from house to connected house I saw nothing indicating the culprit. No shadows, no curtains quickly closing upon my appearance, no construction workers taking a break, no neighbors at all. 

Nothing but empty patios.

And one possible clue ... two big, bright green birds in a fancy cage on a nearby back patio. Both of which soon let out a friendly, “Hola,” and a hearty laugh at my expense.

Mystery solved. And theory proven.

A Visitor and a Resident

It’s been a busy week. One that took me to Tlaquepaque, el Centro, a Tequila brewery, two malls, three markets and numerous cathedrals and parks; that found me venturing out to Tonala not once but twice, sitting in the second row of  my first Mexican wrestling match, stepping through the doors of at least three museums, eating out  for all but a few meals and discovering that tacos are a little bit different everywhere you go.