The Mythologized Story of Our Births - Part One

All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.

                        Diane Sutterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

            The story of my birth on July 25, 1945, a few weeks before the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and six months before the official start of the “Baby Boom,” has morphed into a drama of heroic proportions.  Well, maybe not heroic but courageous, gallant, determined.  It was, after all, a time of war when ordinary people lived extraordinary lives.  I have no doubt that over the years the details have been exaggerated, even modified to provoke suspicion in the minds of the most trusting of souls. What if the story has been mythologized?  It’s not the truth that matters but the persistent memories that count. Memories are like the whispered words in a game of “Telephone.”  By the time the last player repeats the words out loud, they are nothing like the original.  The fluidity of the game mimics the ever-changing stories of our lives—stories that create reflections of the past and decisions in the future.

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2

And do share your birth story with me below.

The Little Things

Maybe I'm trying to rationalize my return from two months in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Perhaps it's the leave taking of delightful weather, speaking Spanish, taking yoga from the best instructor I've ever had.

Or maybe it's the festivity of the place.  The fiestas left and right.  The chance to just let it rip.

But there are the little things I won't miss . . . the things one has to put up with when traveling in a foreign country like Mexico:

*     The cobblestone streets that look charming (see above photo) but that make walking a challenge.  Sturdy shoes and head down required.
*     The lack of central heating.  January and February mornings and evenings can be rather chilly.  The temperature can drop into the 30s.  But there's no thermostat to dial up.  Nope.  It's a gas fireplace(s), small electric heaters, piles of blankets, multiple layers of clothing . . . Still, with all of these accoutrements, there's no guarantee that you'll be warm.
*     The water, when sipped from the tap or accidentally used to wash fruits and vegetables, that often leads to "Montezuma's Revenge."  Bacteria.  A parasite.  Who knows?  But gulping down a cool glass of tap water is a no-no.  Eating fruits and vegetables that have not been washed in aqua purificado is also a big no-no.  And, dear me.  Don't dare swishing water after brushing your teeth or you risk spending a good deal of your vacation on the toilet.
*     The signs in most bathrooms, public and private, plead for you not to flush toilet paper but to put it in the available can or waste paper basket.  Now, I don't know about you, but the idea of putting used toilet paper in an often open container doesn't smell right.
*     Ah, and speaking of smells, it's the polluted canal that runs through the city that sends visitors and locals alike for cover, or, at least, a pair of hands over nose and mouth.  I've actually seen those in the know wear those face masks that are most appropriate for working in a hospital, not walking down a charming but smelly street.
*     While I'm at it, I have to mention the casa-shaking noise after every toilet flush (okay, we cheat and flush), every hand wash and definitely after bath or shower.  One night someone forgot to release the toilet handle, and we were bombarded all night long until my husband dragged himself out of bed, followed the noise, and lifted the handle.


My friends will kill me if they ever read this blog (They won't!) and all of my complaints.  After all, they were stuck in Chicago and suffered bone-chilling temperatures, dark, gloomy days, and piles of snow that required shoveling from morning until night.

What right do I have to complain about minor inconveniences?  I guess it all depends on your perspective.

Friendship

     Here I am in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, consumed by finding a vacation rental for 2016 and what I see as the end of a friendship.
     I met Alice (I'll call her that) and her husband in a Spanish class five years ago.  We became fast buddies and shared not only our desire to learn a second language but art, travel, food, and a love for the Mexican culture.  She and her husband were finishing the renovation of their casa in San Miguel and already talking about sending more time away from their home in the frozen tundra of the north.
     The next year, Alice and I became Spanish buddies and helped each other learn irregular verbs, direct and indirect objects, expressions not found in any Spanish books.

     I looked forward to our classes and to the social time we spent together --- enjoying Mexican restaurants, sipping wine on their terrace with a view of all of San Miguel, traveling to Lake Patzcuaro and beyond.  Alice and her husband were two of the most laid back, take-it-as-it-comes people we'd met in a long time.  We appreciated their patience and apparent lack of major stress.

     Then things changed.  We remained Spanish buddies but spent less and less time together socially.  I was hurt.  Confused.  Didn't understand why our friendship had changed.

     When I asked her about this and why, for example after bumping into them with another couple at the cine but not invited to join them for dinner, she became stiff, distant.  "I refuse to play the high school game."  I took that to mean that she was uninterested, annoyed at having to consider my feelings and unwilling to have me or anyone else suggest that she ought to be loyal or cage herself with one group or another.

     No matter the "I" statements I gave, she didn't budge.  No matter the "I" statements about how we valued her friendship, she wasn't moved.  Never once did she acknowledge my feelings.

     And this year during our two months in Mexico, nothing has changed.  Alice seems to see our time together working with a Spanish tutor as the extent of our friendship.  There have been no dinners, no drinks on the terrace, no jaunts outside of town.  Oh, there have been empty invitations from both Alice and her husband.  "We really should get together."  "We bought a new case of wine. You should share some of it with us."  And so it goes.  We have one week left before returning to the frozen tundra and have not once spent any time outside of class.

     So, how have I juggled my hurt and frustration?  I left our class together and am working alone with our tutor.  I wait to respond to her emails and make them short and sweet.  Even when she "vented" (her word) in a recent email about all the decisions she has to make to expand a second home with gardens the size of a small botanical and the apparent stress between her and her husband, I didn't respond.  Yes, I thought about it.  I even penned a draft.  But it's remained unsent.

     It pains me that I have been so disappointed, so hurt.  I'm almost 70 years old and should be spending my time on more important things.  But good friendships are hard to make the older I get, and I sure thought mine with Alice would last and grow.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

     Getting out of Chicago's winter for two months has saved me from Seasonal Affective Depression and made my life so much richer.  If only I could stay another month and avoid what is turning out to be one of the coldest and snowiest Februarys in the Windy City.  But no such luck.  

     This is our fifth consecutive year in San Miguel de Allende.  What a treat!  I've learned Spanish, met other Gringos and engaging Mexicans, traveled to several other cities, attended the annual writers' conference, and just plain hung out in what is now the glorious sun.

     Yesterday, my husband, son, and I took a day-long trip to Canada de la Virgen, pyramids occupied between 540 A.D. and 1050 A.D. and opened to the public just a few years back.  With Albert, our engaging guide, we walked the same path the Otomi walked all those years ago up to the currently excavated site.  The climb was a breeze in comparison to many of the hikes up streets in San Miguel, but the steps leading to and from the center vortex of one of the pyramids were narrow and steep. Like many of the others in our group, I clung for dear life on the way down.  But I'm here to tell the tale.

     After three hours of touring, we returned to the bus that took us to a nearby ranch where we were served a hearty lunch of rice, beans, potatoes with cheese, chili rellenos, quesadillas, a homemade cheese, corn and flour tortillas.  Delicious but not the best for a dairy intolerant woman like me.

     Today I'm off to Spanish class and to meet a friend who quite unexpectedly showed up in town.  We haven't seen other for probably 30 years!

      We're in the midst of a hunt for a place to rent for next year.  It's not easy.  Ever since Conde Nast named San Miguel one of the best cities to live on the entire planet, folks are flocking here and making us "regulars" search high and lo.  Keep your fingers crossed.  The last thing on my wish list is to weather a Chicago winter!

       

A Day To Remember

     I opened my calendar this morning and stared at the date.  December 11.  There was something I was supposed to remember or do or start.  Why hadn't I added it to my Spanish class at 9 a.m. and my physical therapy appointment at 11:30 a.m.?  That wasn't like me to forget items on my daily "To Do" list.
     I sat at my desk, staring at the calendar.  I don't know:  Maybe I thought this book of reminders would jog my memory.  Power up those synapses which, I must admit, have been a bit unreliable lately.  (Soon, I'll have to change the name of my blog.)
     Gracias a Dios!  I remembered how to say "Thank God" in Spanish AND why this day rang a bell:  My parents' wedding anniversary.  Married in 1940, they would have sealed the vows they made to each other seventy-four years ago.  The Great Depression had just ended.  World War II was just around the bend.
     Now I can be forgiven for the lapse in memory.  My parents have been dead for more than six years.  First, my mother, then my father three weeks later.  (Check out my post on August 21, 2008 for more details.  Or hold your breath for my memoir still under construction.)  Just like that, no more anniversaries or birthdays to celebrate.  No longer necessary to buy a card, a present, or to pull out the worm scrapbook with the faded wedding photos.
     Still, the memory persists and so does the emptiness of losing both parents in such a short time.
     Around their wedding anniversary, my husband and I would pack our bags and head to sunny Florida where my parents lived, first in a Gulf-side condo on Longboat Key, then in a state-of-the-art senior high rise in Sarasota.  ("Now, I can't predict the weather," my mom learned to say.  She didn't want me to be disappointed.  We were coming from the Midwest where winter had most likely already descended.)
     The four of us would toast with a glass of sherry before dining at an exclusive restaurant my parents were excited to share.  Their anniversary was a ritual, one that provided a sense of continuity and a meaningful past and hopeful future.

     For their 44th, my mom and dad took the entire family to the Galapagos Islands, then up into the Ecuadorian Andes.  My son, then eleven, can still mimic the whistle of the blue-footed Boobies and the huff hisses of the largest, most colorful iguanas in the world.
     In advance of their 65th wedding anniversary, our family traveled to France where my younger brother owned and ran a gites in the village of Villeferry, 90 minutes out of Paris by fast train.  If my mother had had her way, she and my dad might have retired there.  But by then, my dad's traveling days were over, and my mother had to settle for a part-time move to Ohio to be closer to my sister and me.
     Today, I booted up my iPhoto and savored every saved photo of my parents.  Photos taken in France.  Scanned photos of my mother and me when I was a newborn.  Photos of my dad and my son riding a tractor and cutting the lawn.  Shots of my mother giving a toast at my first of two engagement parties.  Images of family gatherings, three generations casually enjoying a summer day on Walnut Lake . . . And the last photos.  My mom lying in bed with oxygen tubes in each nostril . . . My dad sitting outside on a bench, old and defeated.  He wanted to die first, but it didn't work out that way.

     Here's to you, mom and dad.  I raise a glass of sherry and sure as hell wish you were here.
   
   


   

What A Difference A Wig Makes

     I have a friend (I'll call her Sabrina) who is no slouch.  She earned an BS in Mathematics and a PhD in Biological Psychology at the University of Chicago.  Sabrina is one of the country's leading experts on shift work, human circadian jet lag, sleep, and circadian rhythms.  She may know more about circadian rhythms than the majority of us combined, but her knowledge of rhythms in general has proved sorely lacking.
     Until last night.
     As a guest at an annual Thanksgiving dinner that traditionally progresses into a raucous dance party, Sabrina shocked us all when she donned a long, black wig that had been plopped on top of an African sculpture, and bounded onto the dance floor.  There, she pranced and shimmied and shook to the music like she'd been dancing with abandon her entire life.

     Her husband of some 32 years had never seen her shake her booty in the over three decades they'd been a married couple.  He's a quiet, undemonstrative kind of guy who sat there with a slight grin on his face, the only sign of his approving amusement.
     "Grab your camera," I yelled to my husband.  "Sabrina is wearing a wig and dancing!"
     Alan did as he was told, grabbed his cell phone, and stood in amazement.  Sabrina was an academic who liked her alcohol on the week ends but had never once gotten off her duff to dance, not even a little boogie down the hallway when she was sure no one was watching.

     The wig was magic.  It gave her cover.  Like an actress assuming a role very different from her natural personality, Sabrina became a newly-invented person  Whatever fear she'd had about displaying this playful, rhythmic part of herself melted like the ice cream on top of the pumpkin pie. For over an hour, Sabrina danced in the living room, sashayed around the dining room table, returned to the make-shift dance area to sometimes partner with another dancer or to boogie by herself.
     Several times, she tired, removed the wig, and sat back down.
     After a brief rest during which we encouraged her to get up and back on the dance floor, she jumped out her chair, replaced the long, black wig or chose instead a white out-of-control Afro, and hit the dance floor.
     "Alan," I yelled.  "She's at it again."
      Alan ran back to the living room, and the two of us stood there mesmerized as we watched our friend whom we thought we knew emerge from her self-imposed cocoon.
     Sabrina held onto the Afro wig throughout the rest of the evening.  She carried it everywhere.
     At the end of the evening when Sabrina and her husband bundled up in their winter coats and hats, our host and owner of the wig offered it to Sabrina.  "I'd like you to have the wig."
     "No, that's okay," said Sabrina.  "Save it for next Thanksgiving."
     Was she going to wait a whole year before letting go?  Was she going to retreat to her studious life in which she spent hours and hours researching and writing grants?  Would she travel the world to speak at conferences and never show her love of other kinds of rhythms?
     It seemed so.
     And while I honored her decision, it seemed a damn shame.
   

Seeing Purple

            Rhoda, her white fluffy bangs covering the top rims of her glasses, bent over me and tweaked the arrangement of my bolsters, blocks, and blanket.  It was a somewhat complicated design— one I’d not seen before.  The one bolster I’d put horizontally across my yoga mat wasn’t quite low enough to support the bolster that balanced on top and ran parallel to my spine.  The two blocks on either side of the mat on which I was to place my hands as I might on the arms of a lounge chair failed to (support) my wrists, an apparent essential in the pose.  Once the props and I were resituated, Rhoda walked to the prop room and returned with an eye mask filled with malleable flax seed that, once placed, molded over my forehead, eyes, and upper cheek bones like one of those bean bag chairs so trendy in the 1970s.              

            “I’ll guide you through to begin,” Rhoda said.  “Then you can continue on your own.”

            I didn’t like guided meditation.  (I still don’t).  I wanted to do my own thing which usually meant repeating the mantra I’d been given after taking a transcendental meditation class soon after my first seizure.  It didn’t matter that over the years I’d bastardized the two supposedly sacred words chosen just for me and repeated over and over two sounds that changed from one session to the next.  Marahirsi Mahesh Yogi would not have been pleased.

            That day, I gave in to Rhoda’s soothing but strong guidance as she encouraged relaxing every part of my body from my feet to my belly, from my chest to my third eye, the spot above the forehead believed to be the link between the physical and spiritual worlds.  

Now, I’m not sure I understand exactly what the means but often when I close my eyes, focus on my third eye, and concentrate on the in and out of my breathing, I see vivid purple which, I’m told is a “spiritual” color and, as it turns out, my mother’s favorite.  Whenever I “see” purple, I visualize her purple bedspread, purple stripes in the matching sofa fabric, the purple placements on the oak table, the purple bath towels, the bathroom rugs, and, most vividly, the purple silk pajamas my mother wore the day she died.   Now more than six years after her death, I’m convinced that she’s still hovering about, keeping an eye on me just as I imagined she would after noticing that half-opened eye of hers that wouldn’t close.

            Enveloped in purple and open to silence and thoughts, I flashed to the evenings long ago when, before going to sleep, I would bury my head in my pillow and “see” all colors, designs, and little people.  All these years later, I don’t remember much about these little people.  It doesn’t matter.  These special friends were my secret and not to be shared.  They made me feel special.  They provided something I could count on night after night.  They lulled me to sleep.   I imagine shrinks could have a field day analyzing what holes in my life I was trying to fill or from what traumas I was trying to escape.  So, let them have their fun.  As far as I see it, my night visions fueled a vivid imagination that has served me well. 

            And now all has come full circle.  I’m a sixty-nine-year-old student of yoga who lies on two purple bolsters with an eye mask over my eyes instead of a pillow and reconnects to a peace and sense of wonder that was me then and me now.