On the Road to San Pancho

The woman’s voice from the dashboard announces, “In three point five kilometers, turn right onto I 80 toward Qptlantapque.”

“What did she say? What is she talking about?” I ask. I’m driving, peering at the array of green signs ahead which look vaguely familiar. Not one comes close to matching any destination our audible guide has pronounced with such an unusual number of consonants.

Bill consults the Mexico map book spread across his lap. “Ignore her,” he says and takes the GPS from its special perch to enter new information.

“That’s not the route we want,” he says with authority. “It will take us out of our way. Keep going straight.”

I keep going straight, but I’m not sure how the GPS feels about being snubbed.

“Recalculating, “she says. Do I detect a little sarcasm? A new route has been established. She would be wise to agree with Bill, the navigator.

I’ll explain. We’re driving back to San Pancho from Chicago, being guided in part by the voice of our new GPS, Global Positioning System. Regardless of the number of times we’ve made this trip, we seem to find new and complicated ways to get lost each time. The GPS is our last, great hope. With our destination firmly set, from point A, Evanston, Illinois, to point B, San Francisco, Nayarit, we have only to set the cruise control and be guided across two countries.

Bill is in geographic love. I don’t trust her. We don’t share unconditional faith in all things electronic.

We manage to get through the U.S. and across the border with a minimum of contradictory information. It’s only when we’re in Mexico that doubts begin to surface. Bill checks the road map against the screen and continually points out the highways, tollways and towns that are missing from view. Where are the motels, restaurants and scenic points of interest? This does little to inspire confidence.

Our four day trip has little diversion; we drive ten to twelve hours a day listening to radio programs in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, more Texas, still Texas, digging out books on CD when our minds are numb from local color.

This year Bill is entertained by his new traveling companion. Second-guessing her keeps him busy whenever he isn’t at the wheel. I, on the other hand, find her less entertaining. Miss GPS needs too much attention. She’s like a petulant girlfriend whom Bill admonishes, while she stubbornly disputes his every word. And besides, she clearly has no soul and cares nothing for our wellbeing on the road.

As opposed to Mexican road signs, I am by struck by how often they worry about us.

The signs caution. “No maneje fatigado,” don’t drive when you’re fatigued or “no maneje cansado,” don’t drive when you’re tired. I like this caring attitude.

“Si toma, no maneje,” If you drink don’t drive. Obvious, maybe. But this message must need repeating and so it is, many times. “Cuando tomas, no maneje, “When you drink, don’t drive. This sounds like a more realistic approach.

We’re reminded to slow down, watch our speed, respect the speed limit, obey the signs, respect the signs, and keep the highway clean. All good suggestions, and we appreciate the reminders.

Most of all, we’re reminded, “Maneje con precaucion, su familia lo espera,” Drive carefully, your family waits for you.

No GPS will tell you that.

"Alberca Hoy? Swimming Pool Today?"

Refreshed after a mid-day swim, Skip and I were enjoying lunch on our pool deck. Abram, our six-year-old neighbor, was peering at us through the Cyclone fence between his backyard and ours. His little face squeezed between the links, he asked in Spanish, “Please, can I go swimming?” Who could resist? “Yes, Abram,” we told him, “you can swim, but only if you bring your mom with you.” Five minutes later he was back with his mom Teresa and four buddies.

Word got around fast that Abram and his friends had been swimming, and kids began stopping us in the street. “Alberca hoy? Swimming pool today?” they’d ask. Skip and I conferred. “It’s hot. We’ve got this nice pool. We miss being around kids. Why not? As long as they bring an adult to watch them.” So we said “yes.” Kids began to show up at all times of the day, but no adults were with them. Now what? Someone had to supervise, so we designated one hour, two afternoons a week, as kid time in the pool. Skip and I would supervise.

On swim days we hang a sign in Spanish on the front gate, “Children: Swimming Today, 4:30.” Kids with plastic water toys, towels, and goggles begin to gather outside the gate in mid-afternoon. At 4:30 on the dot, we open the gate, and Skip and I take our places in plastic chairs on the pool deck.

An explosion of energy ensues. Splashing, cannonballing, racing, teasing, diving, shouting – kids doing what they do everywhere in pools. As we watch them, personalities begin to emerge. Juan practices his cannonball for a solid hour. Kelly and Carla tend to the younger kids. Alonzo picks fights. Pablo is a natural leader. Erika always complains when someone takes her water toys.

Lifeguard duty appeals to Skip. He wears a whistle on a lanyard, and he doesn’t hesitate to enforce the rules: no running, no food or gum, no fighting, no peeing in the pool. At 5:25, he blasts the whistle and shouts, “Cinco minutos más!” (“Five minutes more!”). At 5:30 the kids collect flip-flops, towels, and toys and file out, saying “Gracias” as they go.

A lot of the Americans in San Pancho live on the outskirts of town, where it’s quieter and more private, but we like being in the middle of the action. Chances to be involved with Mexicans, like the pool kids, pop up, and that helps us feel we’re part of the community. We’re not just on a long vacation here. San Pancho is our second hometown.

It Was Just Like That

My husband’s mother was named Romance and her mother was named BonBon. They were easily colorful enough to deserve these names, beautiful and brilliant, alcoholic. It was inherited color—BonBon´s father was one of the Ringling Brothers, the circus entrepreneurs, but by some dark twist the only one not posed in the photos, the only one not rich and successful. BonBon never got over it.

I knew my mother-in-law well. I met her before her decline and I helped to care for her after the drinking and a benign tumor which compressed her brain had taken almost all her senses and faculties.

I knew BonBon, too. True, she was dead by the time I met her grandson, but her daughter Rome, as she was always called, made her live for me. Each Christmas for fifteen years or so Rome had written a story about her family’s adventures with BonBon, the queen of the house, all prerogative and no responsibility, or about tiny Baraboo, Wisconsin, where Ringling sisters-in-law lived in mutual distrust while the brothers took the circus on the road. Rome gave these stories as gifts to her children, her sisters and their children. When I joined the family these gifts were waiting for me.

What a fine writer Rome was. She made her living at it—screenplays, books—but these stories, ten or twelve pages each, were especially brilliant gems. She did have great material. BonBon was a colossal eccentric, as charming and difficult a human being as ever lived. And, of course, the circus. You can’t make this stuff up, as they say, and Rome embellished it with love and humor, originality and punch.

Years later, when we had put Rome in a nursing home, Jonathan and I visited her, explained who we were again and again, brought her ice cream and fed it to her, and searched for topics of conversation suitable for her tiny bit of consciousness. Then I hit upon the idea of reading her stories to her. One a visit and then start over. She was transformed. She came alive, laughing, shaking her head in wonderment, her eyes suddenly alert.

“How did they know?” she´d say every time. “It was just like that.”

What do you think, friends, San Pancho Writers? Shall we tuck away our Mexico stories in a folder labeled: Open in Case of Dementia? For a day when we no longer know we wrote them but perhaps can still marvel:

“Yes! It was just like that.”

Dia de los Muertos and Halloween: A Peaceful Co-existence

My granddaughter, Anna, 7, has announced her big decision --- she will be a ladybug for Halloween. Her sister, Lily, 9, can’t make up her mind as yet but does have it narrowed down to a polar bear or a pirate. Their mother the costume-maker says, “I’m pulling for the pirate.”

Mexican kids in San Pancho might not invest as much in what they’re going to be, but they sure have caught on to trick or treating. With or without costumes, they run from shop to shop in search of free candy, shouting, “Ah-lo-een!” and holding open plastic grocery bags or simply their own cupped hands. American adults in town try to crank up the fun. They decorate their houses, hand out fistfuls of miniature chocolate bars, and ooh and ah over the little princesses and cowboys who come to their door.

Some lament this intrusion of Americana. They fear it might overtake Mexicans’ traditional Day of the Dead. An unjustified fear, I think, if you go by the spreading popularity of the day’s traditional altars and artesania on both sides of the border now. Last year, my family alone, with no Mexican members, went to Dia de los Muertos gatherings and brought along photos of dead loved ones for altars in New York, Pittsburgh, Austin, and San Jose. My Mexican friend, Mini, born and raised in Cuernavaca, told me, “We city people used to see Dia de los Muertos rituals as superstitions practiced by ‘la gente indigena’ out in the pueblos. But now that it’s cool, we’re into it, too.”

Last year I also built an altar and, according to custom, filled it with bouquets of marigolds, photos of my deceased husband Marsh, candles, his beloved celestial navigation tools. Late in the evening on November 1st, I lit the candles and placed some of his favorite foods on the altar, the fragrances and light meant to guide his spirit home. I played some of the CDs he liked best and read aloud from a piece I had written about us. I felt sheepish, though, and kept it all a secret from my family and friends. No one could have been more surprised than I, however, by the joy it gave me to commemorate Marsh in this way. So this year my daughter and granddaughters will join me, and our altar will be bigger, better, and more inclusive.

The stuffed mussels, oatmeal raisin cookies, and old brass sextant will still be there, but we’ll also remember my parents and grandparents by adding their photos and mementos. We’ll nibble on Wisconsin cheddar cheese which always numbered among my mother’s Christmas gifts from home, and popcorn made from scratch, the way my father made it most Sunday nights. We’ll add more background music---Irish “diddly-ay” and German polkas would suit--- as the four of us share stories about these people we loved.