Columns

“I know why you’re not learning Spanish as good as me, Grandma. It’s because you don’t say the words very good.”

When I opened a used bookstore several years ago, I knew I’d need some days off, but I also knew I needed to be open on at least one weekend day. I ended up closing the store on Sundays and Mondays and spent the next few years never knowing what day of the week it was.

TGIF lost all meaning and I was always a day late turning on “Monday Night Football.”  Starting my work week on Tuesday kept me perpetually disoriented. 

It was four days before Christmas and traffic was heavy. Car after car was idling with people waiting for the light to change as they headed to the Costco on the left or the mall on the right.

My daughter has a habit of taking lots of pictures. With two young kids and a camera phone that’s always at her fingertips, it’s to be expected. 

First smile. Click. First bath. Click. First day of pre-school. Click. Thirty-seventh picture of a boy in his wagon. Click. Every single holiday. Click, click, click. 

Move her to a foreign country with a whole new set of backgrounds and holidays and things get out of hand. At a restaurant, she’s the one taking a picture of her fish taco. If you drive by a mural, she’s the one stopping traffic to get the picture. If there’s a colorful parade, she’s marching along.

Don’t get me wrong. I can be identified as a newly arrived expat by my ever present camera too. I have more pictures of manicured trees than I’d like to admit. 

The difference is that I keep my pictures to myself. My daughter shares hers on Facebook. And because I’m here to help out with the kids and tend to tag along on outings to interesting places, all too often, somewhere in her viewfinder is me. Never looking quite as photogenic as the kids or the country,

“I want editorial approval before you post your pictures online,” I tell her when I start getting “likes” of a picture that shows me chasing down a one-year old on the hills of Tapalpa.

She just smiles. I made the mistake of saying this while standing in front of a house with an ornate gate. Click.

I don’t consider myself particularly vain. I can wear the same clothes two days in a row without thinking much about it – even when I’ve slept in them. I let my younger daughter cut my hair once when she was 12 years old – a mistake, but one that I lived with without running to a salon for correction. I can get out of the house fully dressed for a wedding in under 15 minutes. For a trip to an outdoor market in under three. I don’t have any make-up or beauty products that can’t be bought at a farmacia.

But ever since I passed 50, I find that I’m a little vain about pictures. To the point that I’ve made rules.

No candid shots. No shots from the rear. Or of the rear. No profile shots. No shots from up above or when I’m looking down. No close-ups. “A swimming suit?! What were you thinking?!”

Basically, I want to be warned. I look better with a smile and a little preparation. And from a distance.

My daughter mainly ignores my rules. She was clicking away the other morning as two little boys climbed on my bed  to wake me up and welcome me home. I had slept in my clothes after spending nine and a half hours of the previous day in airports or on airplanes. 

That picture will probably go on Facebook too.

And my daughter and I will have a repeat of our continuing conversation.  

“Look at me! What were you thinking?” I’ll ask her.

“But that’s how you look,” she’ll reply.

“Not in my mirror!”

Jeanne is a transplanted Illinoisian who arrived in Guadalajara hoping for siestas. She was sad to discover that siestas are a thing of the past, but is still finding lots to love about Mexico.

The holiday season is a time for making lists. Wish lists, grocery lists, lists of presents you’ve bought and presents you haven’t, gifts to return and gifts to keep, New Year’s resolutions. The list goes on.

If someone had asked me a week ago what I miss most about the midwestern United States, my list (excluding family and friends) likely would have included Target, Fannie Mae chocolates, after-Christmas sales, big slabs of red meat, front porches and back yards, and the changing seasons.