A Stressful Life

Some of you have been interested in the continued story of my teacher E and her love life. Now that I've spent an hour a day with her for the last month, I know her much better. I realize I mistook her initially for a young Mexican bimbo, because she seemed consumed at first with her love life dilemmas.

To correct the record: she is very proud of her Philosophy degree and even prouder of the fact that she is the first member of her family to earn a B.A.

Last week, she told me--offhandedly--that six weeks ago, she donated one of her kidneys to her mother. My mouth fell open. "What?" I said. "but you look so healthy."

"I had to take it easy for a couple of weeks, but now I'm fine," she said.

"Why were you the one, rather than someone else in your family?"

"My brother drinks too much, my aunt on my mother's side has high blood pressure, and my two half-brothers are just kids. So I was the only one who could." She shrugged.

I've noticed this in Mexico, how life events that in the U.S., many would consider hugely intense or traumatic are not that big a deal. What she does find "pesado" (the Spanish word for "heavy," which, like in English, can also mean stressful and emotionally draining) is all the post-operation details, including accompanying her mother back to Mexico City for further tests and dealing with the hospital administrators. Although there is national health insurance here, it doen't cover everything and she's helping to subsidize her mother's payments. As part of the post-op medical care, her mother is driven to Mexico City in a hospital vehicle, but E has to take the often-crowded bus back and forth, a five-hour trip each way.

In another session, E told me she used to be very depressed, but eventually she went to a psychiatrist who prescribed anti-depressants which have helped a lot. The psychiatrist is expensive ($50/session), and not covered by insurance, so she can't afford to go every week. "What is the psychiatrist's approach?" I asked her.

"You know the philosophy called 'Epicureanism'? This is her method."

I nodded, vaguely remembering something from my History of Philosophy 101 class about happiness. I wondered if that translated into cognitive psychology, which as I understand it, is about retraining a person's negative and limiting belief systems.

E also told me her family is not very functional and she has found that the best route to a healthy relationship with them is to keep some distance. She doesn't live with them, as most unmarried daughters would.

As for men, that's another part of her life that is "pesado." She finally gave up on the New Jersey ex-student boyfriend who, despite promises, rarely communicated. Meanwhile her previous ex from DF has been begging her for days to get back together, saying his life is nothing without her, he cannot live without her, his life is empty without her. He loves her, he needs her.

"He's a writer," she said to me, with a skeptical look, meaning: he lives with his parents, so can afford to call himself a writer.

He sounded to me like a classic manipulator. I arrived at class one morning to find her looking dark and worn out. She hadn't slept much, she told me, because, after a phone conversation where once again she told him she wouldn't get back together, he took 14 sleeping pills mixed with alcohol and had to have his stomach pumped in the emergency room. His mother called her, weeping. Only her girlfriends got her through the night.

Sad though it is, she isn't tempted to go back to him. I was relieved. We agreed she couldn't save him.

Stress surely has no cultural bounds, I thought as I left our class that day. What's interesting to me is how different cultures respond to stress.

Male workers, Female home owners

We live a fairly circumscribed life here. Monday through Saturday, the workers arrive at 8:00 a.m., when we normally close our door to our one-room sanctuary, for privacy and protection from dust and noise. They work here til 5:00 (except Saturdays until 1:00), at which time we re-open the door, and--like kids left at home when the parents are away--whee! We’re free again! We have to be out of the bathroom by 8:00, because the workers use the bathroom to change from their street clothes to their work clothes, which they leave here overnight. We can’t use the room that will be our future kitchen during the day, because they’re working on it.

The last couple of days they’ve been dismantling part of the roof, a messy business, chipping away at plaster and tiles with hammers and chisels. Barry and I were worried about their use of a ladder to get onto the roof. They climb onto the scaffolding outside the kitchen window to reach the neighbor’s roof, then up a steep ladder from her roof to ours. At different times, we each urged them to use the steps next to our room, which are also steep, but safer than the alternative. We assured them it was fine to go through our room to reach the steps. Each time they said, “OK. Sure,” but they never did. At least this time they ignored both of us, not just me.

A few days ago, the rubble that had collected downstairs was scheduled to be removed the next day. Coincidentally, piles of pavement stones line the street, because our callejon (alley), like many others in Guanajuato’s central historical district, is being replumbed and repaved with the help of a UNESCO grant. Destruction within and without! I suggested to the maestro that maybe the workers on the callejon would be willing to remove our rubble while removing the street rubble, at a lower cost than if we went the traditional route by hiring an independent contractor to transport the rubble. Geraldo nodded respectfully. “I will ask the street supervisor, Señora,” he said. I went away thinking, what a good idea, worth a try. Heard nothing else about it, until the next day—when the contracted worker arrived to carry the rubble away--and I realized the maestro had had no intention of asking the supervisor. But you never hear “no” in Mexico.

Realizing your suggestions are being ignored or dismissed, often because you are a woman, is, for me, a new and humbling experience. I’m not used to feeling so powerless. But it’s a reality here, and there’s not much I can do about it. A friend of ours who remodeled her home and acted as her own maestro (foreman), frequently, when giving her workers directions, would find them balking. As a woman, her opinions were irrelevant—even if she was the owner! (Just a detail.) Her solution was to tell the workers she would call her vet husband back in California (“el doctor”) and ask his opinion. Then she’d get on the phone and feign calling him and asking his opinion. After the “conversation,” she’d come back to them, nod emphatically, and say, “Yes, the doctor says this is what we must do.” And they’d get to work.

“Asi es Mexico.” Such is Mexico.

A Modern Mexican Woman

Yesterday afternoon V, our former teacher and friend, came to visit. V is about 33. Barry and I met her at the first Spanish school we attended in Guanajuato, on our first visit here in 1999. Since then we have followed her from school to school. (One of my axioms in Spanish learning is to be loyal to the teacher, not the school). But we've seen less of her over the last couple of years' visits, because she started teaching English in the city of Leon, about half an hour away, got married, and moved to a "fraccionamiento" (subdivision) in the suburbs. Married life in Mexico demands a lot of women and women's time. But we called anyway, hoping to see her, and she agreed.

It turned out she knew our house, or at least the first floor, because when she was a young girl, her family moved to Guanajuato from Mexico City. They lived at the top of the street, and she had a schoolfriend who lived here.

We sat and talked where we always do, at the large kitchen window (no glass yet) among all the construction materials, with the view of San Francisco Church that motivated me to buy the house. Barry asked if she was enjoying married life. "About 85% of the time," she said, which we thought was a pretty good percentage for the second year. (Our answer to the question "what is the secret to a happy, long-term marriage?" is: "skip the first year!")

"But," she went on, "I miss my parents, and--" she giggled guiltily--"my single life." Then she said, "I have a confession: a few weeks ago I was very depressed. I cried and cried and told my husband I wanted to die." She had been sick with various infirmities, which meant she couldn't get pregnant, and she was lonely. She works, but her husband works all the time because he is in the start-up phase of setting up an independent accounting business. They come home for the traditional Mexican extended lunch between about 3:00 and 5:00 p.m., the main meal of the day, but then he goes back to work til late, and she's alone a lot.

But last Friday, she told us, she and two neighbor moms got together one evening and drank vodka and brandy and opened up to each other. "We are like a club now," she laughed."We were very open with each other. They told me they thought before that I was stuck up and always in a hurry, rushing in and out of the house." Now, she said, she feels less lonely.

I told her about the recent studies showing that women's friendships and support systems are one reason why women tend to be healthier and live longer.

I reminded her of a time I saw her in the Jardin (the town plaza) all dressed up, looking very sexy, talking to some guy, probably her future husband. She remembered, too. "I was wearing the suit I wore to the civil ceremony," she said. In Mexico, a marriage has two parts: the civil ceremony, which takes place first, and the church ceremony. Sometimes these two events are divided by a long stretch of time. In another teacher's case, it was six months. And the marriage isn't official until both ceremonies are completed.

"So can a couple have sex after they've had the civil ceremony, or do they have to wait til the church ceremony?" Barry asked.

"They have to wait," V said.

"I bet they don't," I said.

V went into peals of girlish laughter. "No, of course they don't!"

"I bet they don't wait for the civil ceremony, either," I said. More laughter.

She really is a lot of fun. Because she's on vacation from her English teaching job, she has extra time, and she agreed to give us private classes three times a week at the house. We asked her what her price was.

"Whatever you say."

This is typical Mexican. From my American point of view, they need assertiveness training. I said, "If you want to open a Spanish language school (which she does), you'll have to set rates. You can't have student after student coming in and asking what the price is, and you saying, 'Whatever you say.'"

"I know," she said, hesitating. "OK. I was thinking 80 pesos, if that works for you."

Funny, that was the number I had in my mind. This is slightly less than $8/hour. Teachers in the schools around here get an abysmal $3 to $4/hour.

Barry and I are proud of her for setting a price. Classes start Wednesday. I'm looking forward to more conversations with my modern Mexican woman friend.

So who's doing the work?

Although remodeling a house in Mexico feels like a full-time job, Barry and I are not doing much of the physical labor. So who is? Here are the players.

David (Da-veed) -- our architect. He´s 37, speaks understandable English, and is a joy to work with. Has his own ideas, is very creative, but also open to ours. He dresses in jeans, shirt tail out, very casual--the opposite of stuffy.

Geraldo Flores – the “maestro” (foreman). David addresses him as “Maestro”; he calls David “Arquitecto.”

Then there are three albaniles (workers): Juan, Hector, and Juan Angel, a.university student for whom this is a summer job. In three weeks, they’ve enlarged the kitchen window, built concrete countertops, built the concrete bathroom walls, dug into the walls to create the space for the future bathroom sink and cistern, enlarged the living room window, added an interior window, stucco-ed two exterior walls, and done a lot of finish work.

Barry and I are staying in the room adjacent to the street, our future patio. We recently learned this room was a patio/terrace when the house was built, and we like the idea that we are returning the house in some ways to its roots. For now, the room is our combined office, bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and hang-out room. We have a phone, desk, 2 laptops, a modem, two plastic tables, several chairs, a set of temporary shelves resting on bricks, a fridge, a range top, and a plywood door to keep out the dust. The door is an important addition! Dust seeps in from the rooms where the workers are working and from the new kitchen and bathroom windows, so far glass-free and open to the air.

In the room next door, the workers mix cement. It's sticky and messy and we have to carefully step around the pool of cement to get to our room. Downstairs are huge mounds of sand to be mixed for stucco.

At the end of each day the workers clean and organize everything. What's noticeable is what there isn't: no power tools, no trash, no loud music (no music at all), no beer bottles-- all things we've been warned about by other gringos. I attribute this to David's leadership style. He is understated, soft-spoken and modest, unfailingly courteous and respectful and never orders people aound--but he clearly lets Geraldo the maestro know how he wants things done. The workers respect him because he’s a working architect—his dad was a mason, and he was a mason in the family trade before he became an architect. So he knows his stuff.

Every Friday we buy bottles of cerveza and at the end of the day sit around with the guys getting to know each other and talking. We find out things like the fact that Giraldo worked on this and the neighboring houses 40 years ago! Hanging out helps to break down the “us” and “them” barriers.

Shopping, Guanajuato-style

I went to Guanajuato's only chain supermarket this week, Comercial Mexicana. It's not that far a walk, so I was trying to understand why I felt so tired once I got home. There's the heat, of course. Even at almost 7000', it can get quite warm. But other factors are also part of shopping stress.

1. The noise. In the supermarket, a loud male voice shouted items for sale. You hear selling spiels at supermarkets in the States, of course, but this guy's voice sounded louder, faster, and more breathless. Plus there was music, of course. Loud music almost everywhere--one of the realities of Mexican life.

2. Groups. There are more people walking in Guanajuato (a town with few cars, and a large pedestrian area), but in addition, you usually see larger groups made up of 2, 3, 4 and more people. Frequently I see a mom, I'm guessing her sister, and their combined kids. In the U.S., I rarely see more than one or maybe two people shopping. Mexicans are a group culture, not an individual one. They are defined by groups.

3. Order. In the U.S., people seem to have more of a sense of direction and order. They know where they're going, and they go there; then they get in their cars, and they drive home. Here, it doesn't look like people are so goal-oriented. They may be, but they seem less linear. Especially the kids, who zigzag and wander this way and that, screaming up and down the aisles, picking up products, playing, parents nowhere in sight, though I know they're around. Kids seem to have more physical freedom here (not sure about emotional/mental).

4. Different flow/orientation. As I walk down the sidewalk, frequently I almost bump into someone walking out of a shop or stepping off the sidewalk. I expect the person leaving the store to look left or right and pause, because, from my perspective, the pedestrians on the sidewalk are the "main current" and have the right of way. I'm assuming that people entering the "river" from outside it will yield before entering, like cars on an on-ramp. Wish on! People don't look either way; they just walk right in, and someone like me, who isn't used to it, has to quickly come to a stop or I'll bump right into them. I wondered if it was just me who had this sense? I checked with Barry, and he agrees; people don't seem to look where they’re going. I shared my observation with one of my Spanish teachers, and he laughed and said. "Well, I never thought about it, but it's true."

On the other hand, they must intuitively understand the flow, because they're not the ones bumping into each other, like I am.

5. Crowdedness and body space. Buses and taxis exist, but even so, the streets and narrow sidewalks are thick with people from mid-morning til late at night. People rub shoulders with each other.

6. Waiting. In many shops there will be only one cashier operating, while other cashiers are talking with each other or attending to other tasks, not focused on customers. Mexicans wait patiently. This doesn't seem to annoy customers as it would in the U.S.

So this is why after an hour or two of shopping, the Mexican way, I come home and want a siesta!

Neighbor Courtesy

I finally ran into D on the street. She said she'd like to drive to San Miguel, she has her own reasons for wanting to go. And yes, she does have a cellphone, but doesn't use it, so there is no way to reach her except through R, unless I wave at her while she walks on her terrace. D exercises by walking back and forth on R's upper-story balcony, listening to music.

De agrees with me: she learned from her Spanish teacher that it would be rude to drop in on R and ask for D without visiting with R first.

I asked my Spanish teacher if I had to visit with R when who I really wanted to see was D. She frowned. "Mexicans are very passionate and emotional and jealous," she said.

"Men and women both?"

"Women more. I have two aunts. If I call one, then I have to be sure to call the other, because the first one will tell the other I called, and the other will be offended."

Barry and I discussed R's request for the albaniles. "I watch them during their lunch break, and they're really resting. They need the time off," he said. "If she uses them, it will end up costing us." We agreed that I will call David, our architect/contractor, and tell him that we are going to tell R, if she asks again, that David has said he wants the albaniles to focus just on the house, it's such a big project.

Normally at home I would resist relying on a third party to assume responsibility, but I think here it would be better for R and me, and more credible if it comes from David.

Meanwhile, Barry and I invited R and her son over for drinks on Saturday to see the progress on our house. Hopefully, that will smooth things over, if they need to be smoothed. I hope any minor cultural infractions I make will be forgiven. But for one who who can fuss endlessly over possible mutations in relationships, and stay awake at night interpreting the subtlest of signals, Mexico is a wild card!

How to Say No in Mexico?

A couple of days ago I finally made it over to my neighbor R's house to visit. She arrived at the door on the phone, very distracted. She got off the phone, and, barely greeting me, said she needed someone to carry a stove to her cousin's house, it was urgent. Could she borrow our workers?

Her abruptness worried me. It would be so simple at home. I'd just say, "Is everything OK?" I'm a little uneasy being so straightforward here. And it bugged me that she wanted to use our workers, for the second time.

R offered to sell me her elderly stove back in January. I took a brief look at it, though it was hard to inspect because it was covered with a pile of towels and linens, and said tentatively yes (that is, I saw my response as tentative, it turned out she interpreted it as a definite yes). A month later she dropped off the stove at the house while we were in California. I wasn't very happy to hear this when T, our friend and "project manager" while we were away, wrote me that a stove had arrived unannounced on our doorstep. I was afraid I might be stuck with it.

Happily, when I arrived this time, R told me that her niece was buying a house in Guanajuato, and if I didn't want the stove, she would take it back. When I looked closer at the stove I saw that the burners were missing and would have to be replaced. I'd rather get a new stove down the road; we don't need one right away because we bought a rangetop and don't use an oven very often.

When I politely refused the stove, R asked if our albaniles (workers) could carry it up the street to her house, and she'd pay them. I hesitated. The workers don't work for us; they work for David, our architect, and I think it's important to respect the system of working. This wasn't like Barry asking them for something related to the house (like moving the gas cylinder). So I called David and he said it was OK, that they could carry it during their lunch break, he would inform the maestro (foreman).

It's OK, once, I guess. I assume she paid them, I never asked.

But now I stood on R's doorstep, and she kept murmuring, "This is urgent, this is urgent," and she asked me again if she could use the albaniles to carry this damn stove to her cousin's house.

"Well, maybe during their lunch break," I demurred. This was my way of saying no. It is very difficult to say no in Mexico. She kept looking up and down the street for a couple of husky guys, murmuring how urgent it was. It was about 10:00 a.m., and lunch break was four hours away. I was pretty sure she was hoping I would change my mind, but I said nothing. I was struck more by her lack of greeting me. Was she just distracted, or was she being less polite because I had failed to greet her on the phone when I asked for D, my Canadian friend who rents a room from her?

Neighbor Worries

I've been worrying about my neighbor up the street, that I may have offended her. Neighbor relations in Guanajuato can get very tricky. She is not my next-door neighbor, fortunately; she's across the callejon (alley) and up the hill about four houses.

R provides room and board to Spanish-language students. Barry and I, and I alone, have stayed with her for 2 or 3 months, all told, in various visits over six years. The last time I stayed with her, in December, was when I was searching for the house we bought. While with her, I met D, a Canadian woman who is renting a room in R's home long-term while divorcing her husband and re-examining her life. D and I hit it off immediately.

I do like R, too. After my early-morning run most mornings in December, I'd sit in her kitchen drinking coffee and chatting with her while she cut up fruit for breakfast. R is Barry's age (early 60s), divorced, and lives with her single 40-something son. Mexican children live with their parents until they get married, all their lives if they don't marry.

D has a car down here. She told us if we wanted to go to Leon, the nearby city where people often shop because prices are lower, or other places, feel free to ask. So this week when I found out I had to go back to San Miguel (1 1/4 hours away) to pick up my residential visa, I wanted to ask her for a ride. But this week here has been so overwhelming with house details that I avoided going over or calling because I had the sense that I would, to be courteous, need to visit with R first rather than just ask for D. I just didn't have the time or energy to visit with R. I'm pretty sure D has a cell phone, so I can hopefully in the future reach her directly, but I don't know it.

One day, getting more and more anxious about my impending deadline to pick up the visa (a deadline, I later learned, that was not as rigid as I had made it!), I picked up the phone and called R's, and without saying who I was or greeting her, asked for D.

"Is this Louisa?" R asked. "Yes," I said.

"D is in Leon today."

"I'm sorry I haven't been over to see you, I've been overwhelmed with the house," I said.

"I'm here when you have the time," she said.

I still feel uneasy.

My Spanish teacher

My 23-year-old Spanish teacher was telling me about her love life. One boyfriend, an ex-student (she hung her head briefly, admitting the unprofessional nature of it, though Barry and I notice that teacher-student liaisons happen all the time at Spanish-language schools) is back in New Jersey. He's very cold, she complained. He doesn't write much; he's busy. Work, work, work. "The American way," I agreed. She also has an ex-boyfriend in "De Effe" (i.e., Mexico City; they refer to it as DF (District Federal), the way Americans refer to Washington as DC), who also was very cold, which is why he's an ex. But he has been writing her soulful emails, eager to get back together.

"I don't know which to choose," she sighed.

We discussed the pros and cons of each guy for a couple of minutes. Then I said, "I have a bigger question. Why must you have a novio [boyfriend] at all?"

She looked thoughtful. "I am a passionate person! I love to be involved with someone!" She doesn't like "frees" (Mexican slang for a fling). She prefers long, intense relationships. Later she added, "In Mexico we are very community-oriented. We are not loners. We are social. This is why I like a boyfriend.""

"The opposite of Americans," I said. "We are probably one of the most exaggeratedly individualistic cultures on the planet, right next door to a very community-minded people."

I told Barry about our conversation on our weekly Saturday hike. "It sounds like her euphemism for sex," he said.

Mexican girls and boys seem intensely sexual at a very young age. We see these barely pubescent teens--12, 13-- on plazas benches and in alley corners, entwined. A couple of days ago I saw a young girl, sitting upright on a bench, looking out ahead while a young boy swarmed all over her. I felt sorry for her; she looked so uncomfortable. From the outside, sexuality looks much more pressured than in the States, but maybe it's partly because Mexican teenagers have nowhere to demonstrate their affections except in public places. They can't neck in cars. They don't have large houses to host parties in. Family members, from grandparents to younger siblings to babies, are everywhere. Privacy as we know it doesn't exist here.

I decided at my next meeting to ask her more about sex in Mexico. This is one of the wonderful advantages of one-on-one Spanish learning. Time and again Barry and I find that the teacher becomes a source for all kinds of cultural information. Also, she was going to talk with her various boyfriends this weekend. "I'll wait to hear the news," I told her in our last class.