One Day in Xalapa, Mexico

Dear Friends,

Barry and I are in Xalapa, a medium-sized Mexican city about an hour inland and uphill from Veracruz on the Gulf Coast. We are taking a road trip by bus around some new parts of Mexico.

We caught the bus to Naulinga, a small mountain town some 23 km from here but less trendy, much cooler (I wished I had worn my down vest) and ‘muy tranquillo’ compared to busy, car-infested Xalapa. It was Sunday morning, and that probably added to the lovely quiet. “This has to be Wales,” Barry kept saying, as we saw the rolling green fields. Naulinga turned out to be very pretty, with narrow geometric streets all fanning out from the main church. The cemetery (one of our favorite places to visit, wherever) was filled with row after row of carefully-maintained pastel-colored mini-cottages, like slightly larger dog houses. The colors were softer than the colors of the living, though not as gauzy and luminescent-looking as you see in traditional Biblical pictures.

A couple of hours later, we were ready to head back to Xalapa and decided to hitch-hike. I know, I know; hitch? I would never do it alone. But we find, maybe because we’re in our 50s and 60s, we probably disarm people by our age and end up having great conversations with folks. Within a minute a large SUV, Mexican plates, pulled up. “Mom” hastily got in the back with the two kids aged about 6 and 8. Dad spoke English. The family has lived in Madison, WI for ten years, but was back for an extended winter break visiting their families. Martin, the father, looked in his early 30s, and had worked in the distribution center of Famous Footwear and in different restaurants. He spoke English, not perfect, but quite good, and had a surprisingly good accent, too. The kids said their names with seamless English accents. “They speak English in school and Spanish at home,” Maria, their mom, told us in Spanish (who, we think also speaks English but was less forthcoming). I told them that my sister lives in Madison and teaches Spanish to young children.

They asked about our children, of course (question #1 in Mexico). “I find it odd,” I said. “People always ask us our where our kids are, and I always think, isn’t it obvious? They’re working and raising their kids at home. I could understand the question if we were in our 30s, but at our age?”

“See, grandparents are never alone in Mexico,” Martin explained. “They’re always with the grandkids, helping, babysitting. They’d never be by themselves.”

“But what if the kids are in school?”

“Even so.”

Actually, people of all ages are much more frequently in groups, than alone, in Mexico. Barry and I have observed that whole families go shopping together, with everyone but the family dog in tow. I sometimes wonder how introverts manage in Mexico; it’s such an intensely interactive culture.

He told us about a guy he had met in Madison who was ready to get rid of his kids, tired of paying their bills. In Mexico, you’re never rid of your kids. It was, we agreed, probably the biggest difference (among many) in the two cultures.

“Were you legal when you went to the States ten years ago?” Barry asked.

I was glad he asked. I also wanted to know, but felt embarrassed to ask, though the stigma is an American one, not Mexican. People here feel sympathy for those who fled to the States in search of a job, but not shame. Martin and Maria were not legal at first, but they are now. “If you want to emigrate to the States legally, the authorities always want to know what property you have, savings, money, and so on,” Martin said. “But if we had all that, why would we leave Mexico?”

This is something I’m always trying to explain to fellow Americans who seem to think that Mexicans are all hungering to live in our country. They want to survive, yes, and many of them feel unable to do that in their own country, but they don’t yearn to live in the U.S. for reasons other than economic.

“What is that?” Barry asked suddenly, as we passed a church whose entire roof was covered with exuberantly colored crowns and flowers.

They told us that the crowns were brought by people to celebrate el Dia de la Virgin, Dec. 12, the day Mexicans celebrate Guadalupe, their patron saint. “Do you want to see inside?” asked Maria. We all tumbled out and went into the church to see a rock painted with the image of the Virgin. Outside, the kids climbed up a pole, and Barry joined them, taking better photos of the roof, while I talked to Maria.

Back in the car, Martin said, “A guy in Madison asked me to go have a beer with him. I said, ‘Won’t your wife be upset?’ He told me, ‘She’s not my wife, she’s my girlfriend.’”

“Here, wife, girlfriend, it’s all the same. Papers, no papers, she’s still your wife.”

But they liked Madison, they said, though Maria, when I looked at her after I asked the question, looked a little uncertain. “Do you miss Mexico when you’re there?” I asked.

“Family,” said Martin. “That’s the one thing you can’t buy.”

They let us off on the fringes of town. I was glad they hadn’t tried to take us further when I saw the piles of traffic, even for a Sunday afternoon. We caught the bus to el centro, reading the advisory that today all buses would be on strike in the state of Xalapa, in protest against the federal government’s steady increases in diesel fuel.

Many Mexican towns we have visited have city centers that Americans can only dream of: safe, beautiful human-scale squares filled with people “paseando” (strolling), benches, trees, spacious sidewalks, pedestrian areas. I often daydream of U.S. cities sending their public works directors down here to learn from Mexico (dream on!). Xalapa, however, is not one of those cities, though it had enough cachet to draw us here. Some of its cachet is because it is the heart of Mexican coffee cultivation, and you actually get good coffee here in restaurants rather than the instant you’re often served elsewhere.

After we got back to town, I went off to get a cappuccino at the café that Ana, the 25-year-old Physics student who we met yesterday through couchsurfers, had taken us to.

I settled into a corner and began to color in my art journal. I was totally engrossed by the woman with an enormous crown of hair emerging on the page--hair curling in every direction like winding country roads, plants sprouting from her head. Judy Wise, a web artist who unbeknownst to her is one of my art mentors (and who is indeed wise) says every picture you color is in some way a self-portrait. If so, who is this woman and how is she me? I pondered. I often ask the question and never get a linear answer; my task, according to Judy, is to “study that vast mystery and absorb it.”

Meanwhile, below her, what was this? A bra! A pink bra with rhinestone, starry nipples. Jung with would have a field day with my art pages. They undeniably express the Feminine: breasts, nipples, vulvas, pelvises, all things rounded, soft. But I’m also obsessed with frames and borders. Always have been, ever since junior high school when I would doodle connecting cubes on the margins of my Algebra 1 pages.

Suddenly I looked up. “Oh! Are you closing?” I asked the waiter in Spanish. Yes. Unfailingly, sometimes oppressively polite, they hadn’t told me. “Waiting for me?” Almost, but there were a few other customers. “I’ll get my stuff together,” I told him. But meanwhile a young boy of about 10 was eyeing my woman on the page, my “Mother Mexico,” as Barry later pronounced her. “Are you painting?” he asked, very seriously.

“Not painting,” I said. “I use color pencils, colored pens, and I glue pictures from magazines. A mix.” I showed him a couple of pages.

“Collage,” said a man sit nearby. They use the same word in Spanish.

“Do you have an art teacher? Do you take classes?” asked the boy.

“No,” I said. “Well, I’ve taken a few workshops, but never any long courses. It’s taken me years to develop an approach.”

“Do you speak English?”

“I do.” I smiled.

“Will you tell me some English words?”

I helped him with, “how are you, my name is, what’s your name, how old are you, where are you from.” Unfortunately, English in Mexican schools seems to be pretty hit-or-miss.

He was an interested student. Last week, in another town, I inadvertently stumbled on a group of youngsters waiting for their English teacher, and I gave them an impromptu ten-minute English class. When they would practice a statement in English, I would make them speak up, because they spoke almost inaudibly, similar to my experience with Latinos in US trainings. “Voz alta!” I exhorted the group as I left.

I sometimes wonder if I should teach English to kids when I’m in Guanajuato. The business consulting I had hoped to do in Mexico is not jumping off much, and I feel anxiety/pressure about it on many levels (questions about the business itself, my good but inconsistent mastery of Spanish, and my own chronic self-doubt), but whenever I’m with kids, I feel relaxed, light-hearted, and easy. Is there a message here, I wonder?

I left the café and joined Barry at VIPS, a tacky Mexican chain restaurant similar to Denny’s or Shoney’s or Hardee’s on the East Coast, its saving grace being that it has wireless. Barry’s carrot cake had just arrived, complete with tufts of real carrot on the icing. It would be a café night, which was fine, since it was now raining seriously with temperatures that felt like Humboldt County. I called my sister Arabella in New York on Skype (yeah, technology). From VIPS I adjourned to the pasta/pizza restaurant we had found a couple of days earlier, where I found that the non-house wine cost half what the “house wine” we had ordered before. I guess “vino de la casa” doesn’t mean the same in Mexico. I finished my coloring there, thick into the tendrils of Mother Mexico’s hair and the question of whether to add a border to the page or not.

And from there, back to our Hotel Limon, where we have the best room in the house, the only room with a balcony and fresh air. Many Mexican pensions are built around a lovely courtyard, which is aesthetically pleasing, but which means the rooms have windows facing in with air from the larger hotel space, but not necessarily fresh air, and a lack of privacy. Our hotel room with private bathroom and balcony is costing us a mere $16 a night. One of the curiosities of the economic crisis (“la crisis,” as it’s called here) is that the Mexican peso has fallen against the dollar, which is good for Americans but terrible for Mexicans.

I settled into bed and my nighttime reading, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, by Anne Fadiman. A heartbreaking, beautifully rendered story involving culture, medicine, psychology, and international politics, about a child with epilepsy, as we would define it, but named, understood and treated radically differently by her Hmong parents.

At times I find it difficult to be on the road, I worry that I’m being self-indulgent, that I “should” be doing something more worthwhile, though what exactly that is, I’m not always sure. But after a day like yesterday I feel grateful. It is good to be outside Guanajuato, a place I love, but where I feel somewhat insulated, where I too easily can convince myself that I know Mexico. When I’m away I remember I’m just a beginner, and that’s good.

A Mexican Family Watching TV

I visited my friend Lupita yesterday. Lupita runs a pension in Guanajuato with one of the most spectacular views in a city filled with spectacular views. She's a good old girl. About 40, she was married for years to an abusive husband, finally got up the gumption to leave him, and now has a full-time clerical job while managing the pension. Her recent erstwhile partner was nice enough, but a freeloader, so awhile ago she ditched him. I remember once he took us to the airport, waxing romantic about an upcoming pilgrimage he was going to walk, how it offered time for reflection. "What about Lupita?" I asked him. "Is she going?" No, she wasn't. She would stay back at the pension, washing and cleaning and readying the rooms for the next guests, while he "reflected." Why wasn't I surprised?

We sat at her dining room table and caught up. I admired how she had rearranged furniture.

Next to us sat a family from Mexico City watching TV. They are staying at the pension for two months while the dad has a short-term business contract.

While Lupita went to the kitchen to get me a glass of water, I inconspicuously studied the body language of the family. The armchairs and sofa were in a U-shape configuration. Dad sat in one chair, holding a boy of about three. At right angles to him, on the sofa, sat Mom, holding a baby swaddled in a blanket. Her and her husband's fingers just reached between their seats. Next to her perched a son of about six, sitting close to Grandma on his other side. In the armchair opposite Dad, sat a daughter of about 12.

Six of the seven family members were touching or sitting close to each other, if not on each other.

Even while watching television--that great enemy of intimacy--this family seemed to be a tableaux of warmth and affection.

On the Other Hand...

Oh dear. Once again we are leaving Guanajuato and I am filled with ambivalence.

I love hiking and being places, like Guanajuato, where I have both a regular everyday life, and I can start walking in beautiful hilly country right from my front door, no car, no bus, no nothing necessary. It's not like I'm on a special tour or a vacation set up for it-- it's just ordinary life. This is freedom!

While in Guanajuato, I feel less alive thinking about Eureka. On the other hand, I like the area around Eureka. Barry and I can venture out on fun van outings and go cycling on our cool folding bikes. We can go backpacking. The fall season is within spitting distance and I daydream of bicycling and hiking amid glorious fall colors.

And I am not ambivalent about having my new wetsuit and swimming in the bay.

Still, I hate leaving here and wish I had set it up to stay longer. Yes, I could stay longer, but it would cost a bundle to change the airline reservations, and flight costs are so high as it is. If I stayed much longer I'd also have to change several appointments in Eureka which I am reluctant to do. One is with a client who is notoriously hard to schedule with at all. I'm ambivalent about the contract I hope (?) to set up because it would tie me to Eureka on a monthly basis. On the other hand (I have a lot of hands), I always enjoy doing the work. Meanwhile I'm also ambivalent about getting the Mexican work visa I'm applying for because the process is long and tedious and filled with pitfalls and I'm not sure how commited I am anyway.

I'm ambivalent about being ambivalent, at least. Isn't that an oxymoron?

Shopping Everyday

My sister Jane and my 16-year-old niece, another Louisa, visited us in Guanajuato last week, and the subject--as usual in my family--turned to food and related topics, like cooking and shopping. We discussed the dramatic differences in our kitchens. Jane, who is raising three children, keeps much more food around than we do: baskets of fruit, dried fruit, cereals, bread. Not a lot of starch or junk, but a generous amount of food you can nibble on without having to cook or prepare. Our kitchen looks anorexic by comparison.

But it's not that we deprive ourselves. If I want munchies, I will go out and buy it, but I don't routinely keep stuff like that lying around the house because I'm likely to eat all of it. And we don't buy a lot of fruit at one time because it goes bad quickly.

The beauty of Mexico is that within 2-3 minutes of our home are a variety of shops selling the foods we like. They are open early and late. I buy my almost-daily 35-cent bag of raisins at one shop, Barry buys his granola-based cookies at another shop. We can buy an ice cream cone at various shops, fruit and vegetables at a produce store, rolls for Barry (I don't eat bread) at the bakery.

It's the ideal way to have your snacks and eat them too.

Towards Life

I went on my first early morning meditation walk in three days this morning, choosing the street called "Terremoto" (Earthquake) and some of its side alleys. As I walked along, I mulled on the friend who is visiting us. In 1977, when I met her, she was the girlfriend of one of my housemates in a group home I shared in Vancouver, B.C. We met when we began chatting one evening, only a day after I had returned to Canada from my father's home, where I had been for six weeks since my mother died. All she had been told was that the upstairs bedroom was occupied by an American who was away. No one had told her the circumstances. I was deeply disappointed that no one had deemed it important enough to explain my absence. But my hurt feelings were extinguished by her interest, her concern, her questions. That evening we ended up sitting on the shaggy rug in the house bathroom talking until 3:00 a.m. And thus was our friendship born.

Fast forward thirty years. For the last three years, she has been severely depressed. She has suffered through a harrowing series of medications, dosages, psychiatrists, hospital stays, electroshock treatment, and more, seeking a solution. Nothing has helped; she still suffers from acute and severe depression. At one point she overdosed but did not succeed at ending her life. She woke up deeply disappointed.

It has been a long journey for Barry and me, too, waking up to the severity of her depression. It is difficult to explain the jumble of feelings that co-reside within me about her situation. Some moments I accept that she probably will kill herself one day, and maybe that's better than waking up (as she does now), morning after morning dreading the long hours and wishing she could sleep forever. Other moments--like yesterday, when I heard her laughing, or watching her swill a cold beer after a long hike--I argue with her in my mind, saying, "See? You do too like life! Prove it to me that you don't!" Still other times, I feel an unbearable sadness at the emptiness that seems to fill her, an emptiness I cannot, no matter how much I wish I could, lift.

We were thrilled that she made it down to Guanajuato. None of us, herself included, was sure she would make it, so deep is her inertia.

So there I was this morning, on my meditation walk/sit, walking down Terremoto, watching the way the street curved, admiring the newly painted red/orange church, catching the sun just emerging from the hills, puzzling over the aquaducts below and where they were located. I watched a young mother as she wheeled her stroller along a steep incline, then carefully tilted the stroller backwards to negotiate a few steps. A man balanced in his arms a large wicker basket of baked goods. A woman in her bathrobe swept the area in front of her doorstep. A white-haired, delicate-framed woman passing the red church made the sign of the cross.

Later, I sat high on the steps of the large square of the Alhondiga museum for the meditation portion of my walk. I watched a train of young people below me jogging around the square. "Uno!" called the coach. "Uno!" they cried in unison. "Dos!" "Dos! "Tres!" "Tres!" "Cuatro!" "Cuatro!" "Uno, dos, tres, cuatro!" A man, dressed in a navy suit, strode briskly down the steps and crossed the square, just missing the joggers.

Life, I thought. I spelled it out in my mind: L, I, F, E. Everyone is expressing life. Ordinary scenes of life. Tears came to my eyes.

After a few more minutes, I got up off the stone step and headed in the direction of home. I passed a road worker adjusting the roadblocks of a street being repaved, a shopkeeper opening her door for the day's business, a guy walking his motorscooter along the sidewalk. Even the taxis cruising by seemed full of positive purpose, taking people to their meetings, destinations, connections, callings. Simple purposeful actions affirming life.

Everyone moving along their life's trajectory. I affirm life, I thought. That we have life, that life is at all, this is good. That I am life, and have life, this too is good.

Being an Expat in Ireland, Amsterdam, Mexico

Mexico is the only foreign country where Barry and I have bought a home, but it is not the only country where we considered living, and stayed for several months to try it out. I have been musing about our experiences living in different cultures and why I'm happy that in the end we chose Mexico.

In 1999, we spent four months in Ireland: two months bicycling the West Coast and two months renting an apartment in Clifden, one of the towns we had visited while cycling, a village about 50 miles west of Galway. Our apartment on the "High Street," which we rented from Eileen, the butcher's wife, had a view of the ocean. Almost every afternoon we would go on a beautiful bike ride along the Sky Road or the Bog Road, beneath the majestic Connemara mountains. We joined a writers' group, I went to a 12-step meeting, we hung out at cafes, we invited people over for drinks or meals-- in other words, we planted the seeds to nurture friendships, but the friendships themselves did not grow. We began to wonder if the historic clannishness of Ireland still had a modern-day form. When the November rains arrived in full force, we decided it was time to leave. We were glad we had savored the many beauties of Ireland, but it was never a place where we thought of actually settling. Of course, we were in a small, remote village; maybe things might have been different in a larger town.

In 2005, we spent three months in Amsterdam, first house-sitting for friends while they went on vacation, then subletting apartments. Our friends helped us get started by introducing us to a few of their friends. I went to professional women's networking events and writers' groups. I joined a gym and tried to get to know my Pilates teacher, who I made a good connection with, but she was busy and not available much. I contacted every referral I had, even the more remote ones. But once again, we didn't find it easy to make friends. We found the Dutch politically liberal, but not particularly open to strangers. I thought it might be because we were American, but a Danish woman told me she had had trouble fitting in as well. I felt intimidated at times by the brusqueness I experienced--most of the people we met seemed efficient, self-contained, busy, and impatient if you didn't get to your point right away. Once again, Amsterdam was a beautiful city to explore, but it never felt like a place to settle.

Meanwhile, both countries were expensive, cold, and wet. That too had an impact. Barry and I love to be outdoors and don't want to huddle next to a gas fire (racking up huge heating bills) for months on end.

We had already visited Guanajuato when we lived in Ireland and the Netherlands, but had never considered buying a home here. Now that we have, I ponder why Mexico feels so "right." In some ways, we aren't a particularly good fit with Mexican culture. We don't like crowds, we aren't fans of loud music, we don't stay up late, we don't dance a lot, and despite our ongoing efforts, we still struggle to understand Spanish.

But the warmth of the Mexican people is a powerful factor. People are kind, patient, and forgiving. Despite the poverty level here, Mexicans are, according to one study, among the happiest people on the planet. We find them welcoming to foreigners. They may resent our government, but they have never showed resentment to us.

Psychologically, I feel in some ways closer to Mexican culture than that of Ireland or the Netherlands. Perhaps it's because we're on the same continent; perhaps because of living in California, with its large numbers of Latinos... I'm not sure why. Geographically we're positioned on a north-south axis rather than an east-west one. We are only two time zones away from California rather than the five, had we moved to Europe. I'm happy that we are no further away from my family members here than in Eureka. I like feeling accessible and close.

And of course, the fact that Mexico is much more affordable than Europe, and has great weather--you can't argue with those.

"Que Sera, Sera" Enshrined in Concrete and Stone

Yesterday, while walking in Guanajuato, I climbed a series of steps several feet high, with no guardrail and no warnings of danger. It didn't surprise me, because I see potentially hazardous spots like this all over town. A five-year-old or even an absent-minded 55-year-old could easily miss a step and break their bones, if not more.

Sometimes I see a gaggle of schoolkids pushing and shoving and walking several abreast, the way schoolkids do, inches away from a dramatic drop-off, and my hearts beats a little faster. I think, "Accident waiting to happen!"

It's not that the government can't afford to erect guardrails or put up signs; it spends plenty of money on maintaining and restoring the colonial churches and other historic buildings that gave Guanajuato its UNESCO cultural heritage stamp. You could argue that the city puts its money in the touristed areas, and this is true, but I've seen dangerous drop-offs even in highly-visited parts of town.

I've noticed that city engineering codes in Mexico, and many other countries outside the States, Canada, Western Europe and Australia, are just much more relaxed. The engineering codes seem to reflect a more permissive cultural attitude of "que sera, sera," enshrined in concrete.

Reviving an Old Tradition

Sunday mornings I see dozens of amas de casa (housewives) shopping for food for their family's mid-afternoon Sunday meal. The main meal of the day in Mexico is always around 2 or 3, but seeing them shopping on Sunday, with their bulging plastic bags of food, always reminds me of how when I was growing up, we'd have our main Sunday meal during the day, after church.

Wanting to be in the rhythm of the community, I decided I too would plan a Sunday pot roast--metaphorically speaking. I don't eat meat, but I would cook a more elegant meal and serve it midday.

Yesterday I made a delicious--even more delicious than usual--and bountiful salad made with chard, tomatoes, zucchini, sliced onions, mushrooms, pasta, walnuts, goat cheese, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I cleaned the dining room table, set a place mat, and poured myself a glass of wine.

I didn't mind eating alone. Ever since 1971, I've felt pretty comfortable eating alone, whether at home or in a restaurant, and going to movies and other performances alone. That was the year I was attending the University of North Wales in Bangor, and my friend Kim and I planned one Saturday evening to go see They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Before the movie we strolled down to the pier to eat fish and chips out of newspapers. "I've changed my mind," she said. "I don't want to go to the movie."

"But I do," I objected.

"Well, you can go," she said.

"By myself?"

"Sure."

Her confidence was so unambiguous, I thought, well, why not? Off I went to the movie theater and got so engrossed in the film, I didn't give my solitude a second thought. And I never looked back.

My Sunday dinner yeterday was a feast, as was the company. Me.

Rumblings

I said to two friends of mine recently, only partly in jest, "After expats finish working on their houses, what do they do here?" (This assumes, of course, that people finish working on their houses. In many cases, that doesn't happen. Ongoing "arreglos" on the house become part of the landscape).

I can't figure out what our life here is really going to be. Making inroads into friendships with Mexican women seems a slow process.

There are two big volunteer projects here: Amigos de los Animales, which offers support to Guanajuato's huge number of stray animals; and a domestic-violence shelter. Neither of those organizations draw me much. I am sorry about abused women and abused animals, but neither issue is where my heart lies.

Among the gringos, there's a craft group, a bridge club, a wine-tasting club. Nope.

I keep following nudges. I called a woman who leads a breast cancer support group. I'm interested in body issues, healing, mortality, support, and facilitation, so this sounds promising. She sounded very happy to hear from me, and asked me to call her the last week of July. Of course, I leave Guanajuato on July 30. (Sigh!) I called another woman, who I have met before, someone who coordinates workshops for people with cancer and their families. I invited her to have coffee. She asked me to call her back next week.

I have the same frustration here as I do in the States. I find out about a person/group that sounds interesting and call them. Usually I could meet that very day. They never can, of course. Not only are they unavailable, they often don't even want to set the date yet. It just seems to take forever.

I am applying for my work visa, but I'm not sure how commited I am to working here; it's more that I want to keep my options open.

I spend a lot of my days here moving physically, either hiking or walking around getting things done. Of course I love movement, so this is one of the great draws of Guanajuato. But I can't build my whole day around movement. Or can I?

I keep plugging away at Spanish. I have a new tutor, a funny, eccentric, old-fashioned man in his late fifties. But even with Spanish, I do wonder: for what practical reason am I hoping to better myself? I can navigate fine with the Spanish I have.

Guanajuato is an ideal place to work on a book. And my blog writing does flow much more here than in Eureka. These last two weeks on my own here, without Barry, have felt very much like a retreat. Is that what it will be for us? It's a great retreat environment, though a costly one if you consider airfares. We have chosen to live in a remote and not very accessible part of the USA, and an equally not very accessible part of Mexico!

I have all these rumblings, and then I decide, well, sufficient unto the day. Today's task is to support Girardo, our tile layer, in furthering the tiling of the downstairs rooms.

Every once in a great while, I worry: oh dear, has the Guanajuato project been a mistake? Investing all this time, money, commitment in this house, and then -- what if we don't spend much time here? Barry takes a larger view. He says, "It'll be what it'll be. Maybe we won't spend that much time here. That's OK, too." And if all else fails, it is a good investment.

In the past, I have felt guilty and even defensive admitting I wasn't sure about Mexico, and awkward that I spent more time in California (or traveling elsewhere) than in Mexico. It's silly. I keep reminded myself that the lock of focus I feel here, which I also struggle with in Eureka, is a situation I face, not a moral failing.