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It’s easy to step back in time in Mexico. A walk through the Centro Historico or the Panteon de Belen cemetery in Guadalajara can take you there in minutes. So can a stroll down the cobblestone streets of Gaunajuato or crossing the threshold of  any of the colonial churches that dot the skylines.

Sometimes I have little floaters in my eyes – those tiny black specks that flit around in your field of vision only to dart away when you shift your eyes to look at them. And sometimes I have little black gnats that fly in aimless circles around my head and across my line of sight. Both are irritating. But that’s not the problem. The problem is knowing which ones to swat.

“When you’re dead, you turn into a snake,” my three-year-old grandson told me the other day as we walked home from school – a walk that takes us by at least one house with an “Ave Maria” plaque at its entrance, stores and restaurants that close on religious holidays, and several houses and businesses with Catholic shrines or statues out front or in yards that we catch glimpses of through gates. 

Years ago, my dad went to the woods surrounding our small town and brought back a redbud sapling and planted it at the rear of our house. Too close to the house it turned out, as Dad and I watched that sapling take root and then turn away from the house and grow out at a near ninety degree angle. I lived in that house every day of my childhood and returned to it often for another thirty years until my parents passed away.   

My grandson’s preschool makes announcements on a dry erase board set out by the sidewalk where I drop him off each morning. Even with my limited Spanish, I’m usually able to figure them out. 

Sometimes I pretend my Spanish is better than it is. Which basically means that I pretend I’m not still stuck in Chapter One of my “Spanish for Dummies” book. I do this by answering with a confident “si” any time someone asks me a question in Spanish.