Dad grew up loved in a two bedroom house with Grandpa, Grandma and a beloved but wild, younger sister, Wilma. They lived happily in working man’s St. Johns, the northern most part of Portland, heating the cozy house with coal and surrounded by Grandma’s carefully tended gardens. They were a part of a big, sweet, close-knit family that spread out from Portland to Rainier.

Grandma’s nine sisters and brothers and her mom and dad, Ida Belle and Egbert Womack, came out to Oregon from Kentucky before the turn of the century, traveling the long distance by train. Great-grandma was the grand-daughter of one of Kentucky’s infamous plantation owners. They said of him that he was as kind to his slaves as he was to his race horses.

 

Great-great grandpa’s enormous house slave was a favored character in Grandma’s stories of her childhood. The stories of her past were my favorites; I could see the people and places in my mind’s eye as if I’d been there. My memory has faded and I lament that I can’t remember her marvelous name, but I remember that she had twelve children. Grandma and her siblings would dance around her, pulling at her skirt and the ties of her apron as she washed their laundry, begging her to recite all of their names, names that were strange to their ears. Ethelile is the only one I remember. When she tired of their foolish game, she’d holler, “Get out of here or I’ll grease you with this bar of soap and swallow you whole.” Even though they loved her, they believed she would swallow them whole. They’d scatter out of her reach only to return later to madden again like a bunch of yellow jackets on a picnic ham. Tobacco had made her grandpa’s fortune.

Grandma said all the kids cried all the way to Oregon, heart-broken to leave their grandma and grandpa and their favorite nanny. But after a long journey, they arrived at their destination, Rainier, Oregon, located on the mighty Columbia river. There they set up home on some acres in the barely settled territory.

Logging and saw mills were a way of life then in the verdant Pacific Northwest. Young men worked, felling virgin forests with gigantic handsaws and using big chains to pull trees by horse and oxen to the river for transport. Grandma’s young brother, Gilbert, lost his life dancing on a log jam on the wild Columbia.

After finishing school, Grandma became a phone operator and eventually met Grandpa, a cooper. When I knew Grandpa, he died of a stroke when I was still young, he was missing parts and whole fingers on both hands. The huge saw blades in the wooden barrel mill took many fingers, hands and arms of the men that manned them and sometimes would take a man’s life.

The two of them, Edward and Jessie, moved to St. Johns many years even before the beautiful bridge was built. After Dad was born, they lived on Leonard St. until dad was four or five.

Dad watched Theodore Roosevelt high school being built. His black lab followed him in his wooden wagon around the block to watch the men at work.

Dad passed through James John grade school and graduated from Roosevelt, that lovely school building he witnessed appear from the ground up. He was a letterman, a dancer, a joker, he loved the girls and he was a good son.

They moved from Leonard to Jersey St., just a few blocks away, where Dad and Aunt Wilma grew up in their tiny house with the lovely garden. Grandpa converted the garage into a small house that we all called the “little house”. Just about everyone lived there at one time or another. We spent many happy days in this garden.

Grandpa taught Dad to hunt and fish, so a passionate hunter and fisherman he was until his dying day. As kids, we’d go fishing with Dad on slippery, muddy slopes, crawling over large, wet boulders to get to a spot on a roaring, fall swollen river for Steel-head or for spring Chinook. Or we’d be out in a boat on a lake or in the Willamette and Columbia rivers or over the bar for any salt water catch or on the beach at the coast where Dad cast his line from his largest poles. We’d wake before dawn to dig for clams at low tide. We grew up dirty, sandy, sunburned or sopping wet and freezing cold and happy. We camped in a canvas army tent, in canvas and flannel sleeping bags. We suffered mosquitoes and bee stings. We dug for night-crawlers with flashlights out in the cool night air, our shoes getting soaked as the dew settled on the grass, just so we could go fishing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can still smell the banana oil he used to clean his hunting guns in our living room. It probably wasn’t banana oil but it smelled like it to me. Dad was an excellent shot and bagged deer, pheasant, geese and duck. He grew up alongside his dad and his black labs.

Mom never questioned that Dad readied for fishing and hunting in the living room, though we had a full basement. Guns and fishing poles were spread out, resting against the fireplace and tables; and tackle boxes filled with lures and bobbers and line and weights and bullets and shot gun shells were common sights in our house.

After high school, Dad went to work for the Union Pacific Railroad. And then the Army called him up and sent him to fight in the Phillipines, just barely 18 years old.

He had only one story to tell us kids and I don’t think he meant to tell us. Maybe I overheard him as he talked to some of his friends. Or maybe I asked him about the Japanese sword in the dark corner of the closet in his bedroom and the Japanese flag that was folded in his handkerchief drawer and the US military ribbons and medals in his jewelry box on his dresser. Or maybe it was the old, small book in German, covered in black leather with a hole driven clear through as by a nail that piqued my curiosity. Or was it the red bound Mien Kampf on the book shelf that caused me discomfort. I don’t know… but the uncomfortable, distressing story goes that out in the jungle, Dad came up on one side of a log just as a young Japanese soldier rose on the opposite side. With one look into each others eyes, they realized that one of them must die. The Japanese boy lost his life there. Dad brought home his flag and sword.

After the war, Mom and Dad met, standing in line at a liquor store and were soon married and after came three children, Steven Larry, Karen Lea and Kristi Louise. You could say that we lived happily ever after until Dad was killed in a car accident at 52 years of age. Happy yes, but life is more complicated than that.

Dad loved to bowl, play golf and as you know, hunt and fish. He and Mom went out dancing.  We had family vacations and loving large families on both Mom and Dad’s side. Mom was one of ten, so we had family galore with reunions and holidays spent together.

But…

After the war, Dad went back to work again on the railroad, but not for long. He tried sales, he tried being a longshoreman, he tried a stint in the office of Acme Fast Freight, but it was pretty obvious that Dad was dissatisfied with work. We had a house, a boat, seemingly everything a family could need or want. There were some hushed disagreements. Some not so hushed arguments. Dad liked his beer and his scotch maybe a little too much. But our family stuck together like glue. Nothing was more important to Dad than family.

My memories of Dad are good. He was fun, sometimes dangerously so. He was a strict parent. He was loving. He was always there. All of these traits were good for bringing up a family. It was only after I grew out of childhood that I saw Dad as a man, separate from us, Mom and us kids, and that man was not simple, but complicated. There was something wrong. Was it the war that disturbed his peace? Was it the general absurdity of life? Was it unfulfilled hopes and dreams?

Since Dad is gone, since he left us so young, we will never know. But one thing I know for sure is that he loved us, he met our needs and we all had a short, relative post-war carefree childhood bubble… at the expense of our father’s well-being.

Though I have left out many, many stories about my life with Dad, I  have written this short and insufficient tale to say you gave us everything you had to give, Dad. I love you.

So this is where we begin before we end. This is not as hard as it might at first seem if you think rationally. You still believe in love and that love is defined in your mind and heart as a monogamous thing. And why shouldn’t you, it is what you were conditioned to believe.

Sex, love and monogamy are what I am talking about. Sex and monogamy are easily defined but love with all of its expectations is not. But for the sake of getting through this, let’s say that I will talk about love as a “feeling” between two people, not family love or friend love, but a physical and emotional tie between two people, something that starts out based on a surge of hormones, somehow foolishly hopeful that, in our society anyway, it will lead to a monogamous relationship. I am his and he is mine sort of a thing.

We are brought up in our society to believe that if we “fall in love” the next obvious thing is that we ought to solidify the relationship in some way. Make a commitment; promise a lot of things that have been proven impossible to keep. We are only human, for god’s sake. Our so called “Christian’ based society founded on patriarchal, puritanical precepts has built a structure of laws to protect those sacred vows that boil down to “I will have sex with only you” professed during civil and religious ceremonies and we believe that those “laws”, if you will, extend to a committed relationship between two people. “We will be faithful”, meaning that we will not flirt or fuck other people and if we do, the result will be that civil law will back us up and the laws of support promised and given to us by our family and friends if we are the “victim” of an unfaithful partner. We have become the victim if our partner has sex with someone else. In the heat and passion of sexual ardor, people make commitments unwittingly. “I love you; this is mine and no one else can touch it; o.k.? Promise me.” And then when the object of our desire gives “it” a way to someone not in our committed relationship we are all undone. Come on now! You know what I’m talking about.

If you look at the statistics and if you are to believe what you read and hear you will see what I am talking about and will begin to come around to my way of thinking. The reality that monogamy is a choice, that is not often chosen, is clear. If you are not convinced, pick up a newspaper, turn on the television, or listen to the radio. The media has a cruel way of bringing reality into the open. Man indulges in sex with people other than those with whom he has promised to be faithful, and that in spite of the consequences that result in a society that says that it believes in monogamy and that is the truth. And if we are honest with ourselves, it has always been that way. How many news stories, novels, songs, tales, legends and myths are written to tell the story of sexual betrayal? And we can all relate. It is a rare person who can say they have not experienced the pain of betrayal even if imagined and even though it might have been the tiniest painful pinch. Let’s talk about jealousy if you are still resisting. You see your partner’s glance linger a bit too long, a conversation that seems a bit too intimate, a phone call, a slip of paper, a none too convincing excuse for coming home a little late a little too often.

Woman will remain monogamous for multitudinous reasons. To name just two: she is feeling “loved” which I will put into quotes because love is a completely subjective term, if she needs the security of having a man who can provide for her or for her and her children, (now she will remain faithful in this situation even if it is not good) she will feel satisfied enough to not seek other men. She will need attention, tenderness, support and the most difficult for a man to give his woman is a friendship. Men on the other hand do not equate sex with love. Yes, men write love songs, even cry when there is a breakup of a relationship (or a breach of confidence) in which they felt secure. But this is mainly need and not so called love. A man alone cannot stay alone for long. As my ex-son-in-law, puts it, a man has “a need to spread his seed”.  They do not need love to have sex. They’re not wired this way. They just need a woman, any woman. And not even necessarily a woman, right?

Man does not want to be monogamous. Everything in his biology says that it is wrong. He might think it is a good idea when he is drawn to a woman. He wants to possess her, make her his and his alone so he will promise her anything. He will tell her whatever he thinks she wants to hear. He is tricked by what he has seen in romantic movies, what he has heard in church, what he has been taught at home. But it is not long before he begins to wander in mind and body. It is in his nature. It’s a biological thing. I once had an intensely religious man tell me that given the right circumstances and feels assured that he would not be found out, any and every man will have sex with women other than his wife. Do we need to have someone tell us that this is so? It is happening all around us.

Believe me. This is not what I want for my life or for the women that I love, but when my heart is burning with jealousy or my heart has been broken once again, I must face the truth. And it hurts to know that because of what women believe, that we should have a monogamous man, we will be hurt again and again. If this is so, then why does jealousy exist? Our body and mind react: anger, sadness, confusion, sleeplessness… thoughts of revenge, feelings that only lead to actions that we will regret or even will suffer grave consequences for which we will pay dearly. Is it nature or nurture that we care at all where he is or what he is doing?

I conclude that the only real “love” is the feeling that a woman has for her children, but not even every woman has this so called love or attachment; there are anomalies.

Then there are changing societal mores… women’s rights, for instance, women who are much more independent in this new world. Monogamy is just among the many types of relationships extant today. Perhaps this will all be moot in the not too distant future. But for now, betrayal in a monogamous relationship at the least can lead to a breakup and at the most can lead to murder.

 

This is a never ending conversation…

Never felt so out of control… There are times when I am face down in the grass. I’m not quite hairless… yet. I lay in my own wool and it pokes me. Lightening strikes and I writhe helpless in its power. Its target… muscles and joints. My earth is shattered. I thought I knew what was happening. I come crashing, no defense.

Owww!!!! I cry out and I am ignored. It’s taking me to the edge. I know it. They say I will come back. It doesn’t feel like it. Food, any kind of sustenance tastes like metal. I call Cappucini but his nurse doesn’t respond. Owwww! I cry into the phone and I get no response. They are used to hearing people cry. They’re thinking… Do you want to survive? I’m thinking… but is it suppose to hurt like this?

The colors are brilliant right now… the greens are mind-boggling. The wisteria makes me crazy with its heady fragrance…

Hold me, I say with tears in my eyes… don’t let go or I’ll fall, I’m falling anyway. Blow my hair away in clouds. Put it in and make me feel warm, alive. Don’t be afraid, I’m not contagious. I smell of gunboats… petroleum and cast iron, but I’m still a woman. How long will you stay? Until you feel only bones? I’ll come back… I promise. My hair… my muscles… my eyes, without tears.

I am happy to be alive… I might die. I can do that. It’s hard to come here and easy to leave. Stay as long as you can. Leave when you have to. I’ll walk slow and determined.

I’m planting a garden. I want to go to a wedding in Ojai in July. I want to see how much he loves me. I want to see Ancel and Enora grow. I want to love them and be loved by them.

I love my scar that runs from my pussy to my heart. It curves around my belly button, a map from here to there. What do you think that says about me?

I am better than I have been in two weeks but they shoot me up again on Thursday and then I go down again. Down again. Five more times…. I will go down again. Now I am frightened. I know what’s coming… It waits for me in a shining bag that hangs above my head. I lie in a nice anatomically designed chair. They try to find a vein and it hurts… everything hurts. Then I lay there trying not to think about the poison that drips into my vein for 6 hours. I taste it on my tongue. I am sedated so I don’t scream, “What the FUCK!”, and scare the other patients.

I am at the shamans. He knows what he is doing. I lay at his feet while he streams a potion of tree bark into my open wound. I’m O.K. now… in good hands now… kill a rooster, dust me with ashes, blow smoke in my face, sing your songs. Turn the fucking T.V. off. Don’t you know what is happening to us? “Are you O.K. Mrs. Peterson?” “Fuck no. I’m not O.K.” I shout inside but smile with blind eyes so as not to see the people with hair, full face, and quick gait. “Sure, I can drive”, I’ll say as I stumble out of the office. “I can fly. Can’t you?” I certainly hope that somebody can.

This is miserable. I am miserable. But in my misery I see god in everything. My life, though it hurts and is scary, is good. I am still here. I have a friend lying in a hospital dying. Children hurt everywhere for millions of reasons. My suffering is small. I am fine. I am following the “slender threads”.

Post Script: 2016

I wrote this piece sometime in 2005 when I was undergoing intense chemo therapy for a possible death sentence type cancer. Without chemo, I had a 1% chance of surviving the rare and aggressive disease. It has been, almost to the day, 11 years since beginning an equally aggressive treatment. Maybe I am a couple of weeks early.

Six weeks after traumatic, invasive surgery, I spent one eight hour day, every week for eight months sitting in a chair with two types of chemicals dripping, first into the veins in my arms, and eventually into a sorely placed port in my chest. Infusion chemo took my hair away after the first treatment. It took away my strength. It took away clear thinking, my sense of well-being, my strong immune system. It took away many things, but it gave me more time on planet earth… to see the garden grow.

As I read this essay this evening, I decided to share it. Who knows, it just might ring a bell. It might be timely. It might be interesting.

I’ve been home now exactly two weeks. Each time I go to the grocery store I spend from between $50.00 to $80.00 and I’ve been to the store about four times! Each time, I think to myself, “What a a major rip off.” I want to tell everyone what I paid for a papaya in Vallarta… what I paid for tortillas, tomatoes, garlic, rice… I really want to scream. Why is this happening in Portland… and throughout the US? In Vallarta I spent about $20.00 a week, if that, for food; fresh food right off the trees, bushes and fields, and I ate high on the hog!

It doesn’t seem right to pay so much for things that grow on trees. I know, you would say to me, “We pay for growers, pickers, packers, truckers and grocers.” But we have statistics that tell us how many children in the US are malnourished in this country of wealth. Wealth… not my family. We struggle to put nutritious food on the table in sufficient quantities for the four of us. I’m not talking in abundance. When we splurge and buy something other than the necessities, that money comes out of somewhere else. Some bill has to wait. Something doesn’t get paid in order to have a “treat”.

We, our family, are better off than many others. We have steady money coming in. Others do not. Some children go hungry everyday and right here in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. And we call Mexico poor. We are poor. We are poor at heart. We are poor in compassion. We are poor in knowing how to feed our citizens.

Oh, yeah. There’s enough food being produced. We just make it hard to get at. We make it too expensive. We make it unavailable. We make it inaccessible. WE need to let people sell food out of their houses. Let vendors sell in the streets. Let people fish without an expensive license. Let people truck food around in the neighborhoods in the back of their cars, from the beds of their pickups… Let there be free lunches and dinners and breakfasts for children in the schools, in the parks, in the streets.

I lived cheap in Vallarta. Why does my rent in Portland have to be nearly 3 times what it was in Mexico? Why do my utilities have to be more than double and triple here in Portland? Why does food cost 8 times more? Why does a house cost $500,000+ in North Portland? Why is rent for a simple, old ranch style house or a tall-skinny over $1500.00/month? This is a crime against American citizens whose minimum wage is $9.25? You do the math and figure out how we are suppose to live.

Yes, I found the foreign investors exploitation of the Mexican people and their land intolerable. I could not understand the acceptance of usurping culture for entertainment. I couldn’t, for the life of me, get why people who have free garbage service still throw their garbage all over the streets and in natural areas. I didn’t get why when all the spay and neuter clinics are free, people still allow their dogs and cats to breed like rodents.

Living in Mexico was a revelation. We think we’re not free because of big government and too many regulations. Try living where there is no DEQ. Coming back to Portland is a marvel of an experience. Little to no garbage in the streets, most animals fixed and on leashes, less environmental pollution that even 10 years ago and we’re still trying to make it better. There is open protest against coal exportation, oil drilling, fracking… But we are a mess, nevertheless.

Education should be improved and affordable. Racism is one of our biggest unresolved issues. No one should go hungry. Everyone should have access to health care. Everyone should have a roof over their head. Bullying should end. War should end, just stop sending money and weapons around the world to support war. We should not be participating in religious or cultural hatred. And there’s so much more.

In talking to many Mexicans, the question was always, “What are you doing here?” My heartfelt, inadequately compassionate and embarrassed answer was, “I can sit my big, fat American ass down anywhere I please, even in your neighborhood whether you like it or not. I can, as long as I can pull down $1500.00/month, move anywhere I want to in Mexico. But nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. You can’t cross our border and we’re making it ever harder for you to come.” Resentment? You can bet your big, fat American ass on it! In every Mexican neighborhood are large signs painted on walls along the streets demanding, “Be nice, your livelihood depends on it.” How would you like these types of signs in your neighborhood?

I knew from my first week in Mexico that I wanted to come home. I found it hard to lounge on the beach while Hannah was struggling to find affordable housing for her and Ancel and Enora while I could make a big difference in their lives just by coming home. Secondly, my tolerance for heat and humidity had greatly diminished since living in Mexico 21 years ago. But the biggest impetus for my return was that my tolerance for observing the disparity between the tourists and ex-pats and the Mexicans was just not there. Perhaps if I hadn’t plopped myself down in a Mexican neighborhood and had lived nearer the ex-pats and those amenities developed just for them, it wouldn’t have been the daily slap in the face that it was.

All this to say that I am glad I came home. I love being with the family and my friends. I see the US in a new light but that is not to say that I have donned rose colored glasses; to the contrary. There is a lot to say about being in the familiar. And this is not to say that I will not return to Mexico someday. I am thinking that it might be better to have extended visits… perhaps a month or two at a time in different locations.

Stay tuned.

<!–more–> If you have been reading my posts previously, you know that I had a totally uninvited and unexpected awakening. As usual, this epiphany had to break down my door and bowl me over. Of course, I would have preferred for it to be not quite so scary but sometimes we’re not given the choice.

I like visitors. I’ve never expected that people or spirits would have to wait for an invitation from me before showing up at my door. As is my experience, good things usually come with their arrival regardless of the tidings or appearance. And if I were to be totally honest, I would have to say that the totally unexpected part is not completely accurate; the uninvited, yes, because I prefer to be oblivious if I can help it… but it rarely works out that way. I had a feeling that my time was well over due for a visitation.

I want to be honest with myself but when I’m not being transparent, I usually don’t know it. Like my moving to Mexico for instance; this is the perfect example. Maybe if I had been more willing to look at myself and my dream in the light of my age and circumstance, I wouldn’t have had to go through the falderal of packing up my life and flying down here, just to move back in two and a half months.

You know when someone says, “I told you so”, and you think, “shut the fuck up, I’m learning as fast as I can “? Well, that’s where I’m at. And it’s not been in vain.

After a week of cleaning, eating and sleeping, I got over my drug induced physical weakness and panic mode. I was still as determined as ever to go “home”. I emailed Rebecca and told her what had happened and explained to her that I wanted to get out of the lease. “I’m afraid that I physically can’t manage climbing the stairs to do laundry, getting onto the buses, walking on the streets, being so alone”, I told her. I got no sympathetic email back. I got a terse note, reminding me that I had signed a lease. If I wanted out of the lease, “find someone to take it over”. Period. No mention of the chocolates just a “good luck finding someone now that it’s the low season”. Having rented to who she thought would be a long term renter, she was justified in her response. Well, as it turned out, someone rented the house right away and July 18 for a move in date was perfect for the new renter and for me.

So, at that time, I gave myself about seven weeks here in Vallarta. I didn’t want to just fly out of here. Although there are moments when that’s exactly what I want to do. What should I do with my time that I have left? I won’t stay at home and cry, protecting my knees, I’ve got to go out and see what’s going on.

I have this nagging feeling that I might regret going home, but I have a clear sense of joy that I will be able to help Hannah. I also know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my dream to move to Mexico was an old one. It was a dream that developed so long ago and was no longer relevant. But I would have always wondered if I should have retired here if I hadn’t come and tried this.

There are still so many questions I have that will never be answered with surety: What if I came down here with a partner? Would I be so lonely? What if Hannah didn’t need me? Would I stay? What if I’d moved into an ex-pat community? Would I have been so conscious of the disparities between the vacationers and those that make the vacation what it is? But I believe that I can answer them fairly easily: Nothing I do can change the discomfort I feel around the exploitation of Mexico and worse yet, nothing I can do can change the situation at all. More than anything, I need and want to be close to my roots, to my friends and family. And I still think could die in this house, in this city and no one would know for several days.

The following posts to this blog will be about Karen at large in Vallarta. I invite the unseen guests of my past hopes and dreams to dialogue with me consciously. I want to “show up and face the reality of my life” as it is, not in false hopes and aspirations, otherwise, I might have to have another rude awakening and that was not fun.

I spent the day cleaning. This was my first day alone in the house. This house, this beautiful, colorful house located on the coast in Mexico, was what I had longed for, for decades.  I wanted to make it feel like it was mine. I wanted to cleanse it of everything that I could that, for me, was not aesthetically pleasing. I wanted to possess it. It would become my safe haven. I, within moments of waking on my first day alone in the house, was overwhelmed with a profound sense of being really alone.

With a year’s lease,  I had plenty of time to explore the city, the beaches and the neighborhood. There was plenty of food in the house, I still needed to get completely unpacked and I needed to listen. I needed to hear what was going on in my head. There was no need to go outside at the moment.  This time,  this time in Mexico,  I was thinking,  just might be the time to still my heart and thoughts enough to know what was going on inside.

Besides, cleaning, for me, is cathartic. While I was in school,  it was also a way to procrastinate against the inevitable,  generally a paper that I needed to write or needing to study for a test. Nothing called to me so urgently as a dirty oven or toilet as an impending deadline loomed. It seemed, oddly enough, that cleaning took precedent over any scholastic endeavor. But here, at this time, I would not and could not avoid the inevitable. I was going nowhere. I know not a single soul in this country, so my only company would be my own voice.

I, probably like everyone else,  have a steady stream of mostly gibberish going on in my head. When I really listen,  I might be counting the stairs as I climb up to bed,  I might just as likely be going over and over a vision of an embarrassing encounter with a colleague where I should have said this and not that, or promising myself as I have for the last twenty years that tomorrow I will eat less sugar and exercise more, I forgot to get this or that at the store, what time does swimming start on Wednesday… it goes on and on in this way.  You get my drift. But now, I wanted to slow that stream of nonsense so that I could hear perhaps what’s rolling down under the deeper water. There has to be more.  I know there is more because sometimes I can hear it and to say the least,  it scares me.

I’ve had a colorful, interesting and very full life: I was married for twenty seven years, had children, divorced, traveled, had lovers, spent years becoming educated, had a career I loved and am now retired and living in Mexico. I’ve taken huge risks, some which were calculated and some which were not. My decision making process has always been walking through the next open door. This has mostly served me well. But has it really? This is the question that is rising to the surface.  Has it really? Maybe I wasn’t just cleaning house.   Maybe I was doing some deep cleaning of a different sort. So,  I hauled out bags full of garbage,  swept down walls, cleaned windows,  oiled furniture, cleaned out the refrigerator,  washed floors… and I stood on the balconies and looked down at my neighborhood.

I stared out at Banderas Bay. Dogs were barking, clean laundry was flapping from nearly every rooftop, Banda music was blaring and the sun was going down,  setting the sky on fire.

After a full day, I smelled like a pig. I was hot and sweating and I wasn’t near to being done. But it was time to stop and give myself a rest. I showered, ate and settled onto the couch. But what was to come,  I could not have dreamed up in a nightmare.

I had been picking on the delicious roast beef and tuna all day that Rebecca had cooked. I wasn’t hungry but as usual,  I wanted something sweet.  I was bushed and thought I’d watch a movie before going to bed.  I rummaged around in the refrigerator remembering that Rebecca and I had been snacking on some really good ginger,  salted peanuts and dark chocolate candy that a friend had made for her.  If I was in luck,  I thought,  she won’t have taken them. Low and behold,  I found in the freezer some chocolates.  Yes! There were two big chunks and I decided to eat it all.  It was perfect.  Though they weren’t the same,  they were still yummy.  I started the movie and settled back to relax for the first time all day.

Between half an hour and forty five minutes, I started to feel sleepy and really thirsty. I got up to get some water and my heart was beating a little too hard,  I felt shaky and weak all over.  I made my way upstairs thinking I should lie down.  I had to hold on to the walls. By the time I got upstairs,  I was afraid that I was having a heart attack or a stroke. I was drinking glass after glass of water but could not quench my thirst. I started to get very scared. At one point I thought I might be having a mental breakdown.

And then my mind awoke as if from a deep sleep. I sensed my situation in bright and living color. I am 66 years old, going on 67. I don’t know anybody.  I could die here in this house and nobody would know for days, probably. I could fall down the stairs,  I could have a heart attack or stroke. I have fucking 3rd stage osteo-arthritis in both knees and I have to climb a spiral staircase to the roof to do laundry.  I have to catch the bus to go anywhere and the streets are called cobblestone but are really large river rock to walk over.  The buses don’t kneel,  the stairs to get in are tall, narrow and uneven.  To walk means navigating the streets and climbing up curbs that are broken and of every height from toe to knee.

My predicament flew in my face. It began to dawn on me that my dream of retiring to Mexico was based on a dream of 21 years ago.  My perceptions of me in the world had changed drastically in that time.  I am still healthy and get along fine regardless of a nearly useless right arm,  aging knees and the residues of surviving cancer and chemo therapy 10 years ago.

My mind began to reel with these realizations and I woke to the fact that there is a lot to be said for being around people who know you and love you and care about you. Being near people who you care about might be one of the most important things in life and that being planted and staying where your established roots are is to be really known.

As I was contemplating all of this,  I was looking at the horizon and and at all of the big hotels built along the beach. I looked at the millions of lights and thought about the tens of thousands of workers it takes to keep this vacation paradise working, most of whom make little money.  And what about the foreign investors who exploit sand, sun and surf and make billions of dollars from the billions of tourists who come to be treated to food,  lodging,  adventure and relaxation. The culture and history of this country and any other tourist destination is usurped as show,  as entertainment. The people are reminded at every turn to, “Be nice. Our lives depend on tourism”.

And here I was.  I had plopped my big American ass right down in the middle of a Mexican neighborhood, a neighborhood where generations of families have lived.  They cannot simply choose to drive north and relocate in the United States, we don’t let them. But I can,  for less than $300.00 USD, move in next door to them and expect them to be my friends. I began to understand their looks and questions. “Why did you move here?  How long are you staying?”

I don’t have to work.  I come and go as I please. It’s an unfair,  unjust and unbalanced system. I am a part of this exploitation,  as are all ex-pats around the world,  living on foreign dollars (at least to begin with)  and benefiting in that relationship. Cheap rent, food, healthcare, etc.

Oh, my god! What had I done? Had I really thought any of this though?  Like so many of my decisions,  this decision had been a bad one, maybe the worse decision of my life and based on thin air. I walked through the next open door. Now what? The door was not so easy to open from the other side.

I have a year’s lease.  I’ve given up my house in Portland,  I’ve put all I own into storage. How do I get out of this mess I’ve made for myself? At that moment, if I had had the strength, I probably would have started packing; I wanted to leave right then. I was embarrassed by my privilege.

I tried to call Hannah thinking I should let her know that I might be dying. She couldn’t be reached, so I called Dhillon.  As they say, any port in a storm. This is never a good idea,  but I thought he should know that I was having a crises,  an episode. All he could say was, “I told you so.” But his response was based not on what I was telling him, but based on his need for my assistance. It meant nothing. And at this moment was not going to save me as I felt myself slipping into darkness.

I was shaking, I could barely walk, I couldn’t sleep. I would wake up thinking someone was talking to me or touching me and I knew without doubt that I needed to go home. This is not my culture, these are not my people, and no matter how much time I have spent here, or how well I speak their language or how many years I spent studying their history, I would always be a foreigner, a visitor.

Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep. I cleaned the house for another week, though I continued to feel shaky and weak for many days, I knew that I would do everything I could to go home. But how?

Postscript: For two days I struggled to figure out what had happened to me. After wracking my brain, I realized that it was the magic chocolate. I would not have freaked if I had been aware nor would I have eaten so much. I am accustomed to tripping hard but I would have known what was coming. Knowing this does not negate what I learned on this mystical night. I am forever changed and grateful for the revelation.

Of course, I was homesick. And, on top of that, I had not ever felt like I knew for sure that moving to Mexico was the right thing to do nor was it the right time to do it. It is perfectly natural to miss friends and family and I know I’m not the first person to move to a foreign country and wonder what the hell I had done.

Rebecca had asked me to come early so that she could personally hand off the keys, talk to me about the house and utilities and so we had some time to get to know one another a little. She was going to leave the day after I arrived, which would have made it the 28th of April. Hannah, and at least Nori, was going to come with me, spend a couple of weeks, help me get settled and have some time to enjoy the beach. With Rebecca leaving, that would have been perfect. She had packed up some of her belongings that were still in the house and they were stored in the second floor bedroom, named the Frida Kahlo room. The next day, Hannah and Enora would have the room.

Rebecca had an arrangement with the previous tenant to stay in the house during high season. She has a business selling these amazing dolls that she and women in prison make by hand. Now, the Rebecca Roth story is a long story and I will tell it, but not now, but be assured, you will be mad, sad and shaken by it. The markets are very active here during the fall through spring. I had already discussed with her that I expected visitors during the high season and my agreement with her as a tenant was not to share the house with her, so she would not be staying here. She would look for other lodgings  when she came back. For now, she was moving to a small town near Guadalajara where she spends the summers.

When I arrived, Rebecca informed me that she wouldn’t be leaving until Friday. This wasn’t a bad revelation since Hannah had decided that it would be just too expensive to come, especially now that her expenses for the house would be tripling since she would have no roommates to share them. I was feeling very bad about her predicament but I also thought that she, within two months, would have affordable housing for her and the kids. I made arrangements to pay half the rent on the house for two months so that she could afford to stay there for at least that long. I felt some relief but this was weighing heavy on my heart and mind.

So, Rebecca and I spent the days changing the electricity into my name, going to Costco and to Mega, a Fred Myer type store and running errands as she tied up loose ends. I spent $60.00 at Mega buying things for the kitchen and about $276.00 at Costco on gin and tonic, vodka, wine, and three shade sails for the roof, toilet paper, laundry soap, a nice roast of beef and such. We were hoping that the shade sails would help to keep the house cooler and make the roof a cool hangout. That was a lot more than I had planned to spend, but it wasn’t more than I had brought with me. I wanted to be comfortable and feel at home and there’s something about having some liquor around to share that did that.

Rebecca cooked the beef and the tuna. She is a fabulous cook and knew just what to do to make special meals with not much work . We ate only at home and had thinly sliced rare roast to eat with horseradish and tuna medallions to eat with salad and whatever for the days before she left. Finally, on Thursday, knowing that she was leaving, she started to gather things out of the kitchen to put into bags. Rebecca is an extraordinary woman. I felt immediately like I was with a sister. I came to love her in these short days together. Rebecca read to me from her published anthology of poems. We watched Gravity, we talked and we talked and I learned more of her incredible story. My life was enriched by spending time with her.

I was grateful that Rebecca was not leaving until Friday. I wanted to know more about her and what about her journey made her so tough. Her son, with his Mexican girlfriend and her two sons were coming to pack up two cars and drive the six hours to Lake Chapala with no AC, just as the weather was beginning to heat up. Thursday, as I said, she started to move things out of the kitchen in earnest and to actually put things in garbage bags that were, to my eye, in total chaos in the bedroom. To my relief, she was leaving more in the kitchen than I thought and there was no need for me to fully furnish it.

By this point, I was getting tired of just sitting around, so I decided to clean. The kitchen was not bad but not good either. Rebecca had a cleaning woman, Lupe, but I knew once I got into the shelves and counters and floors that I would not be engaging Lupe as my cleaning woman. I found a lot that Rebecca needed to pack and I pulled everything out of the shelves and tore that place apart. After a full day of cleaning, I was finally satisfied. There are enough cleaning supplies in the house for a couple of years.

After a lovely dinner and more conversation, I went to bed, knowing that Rebecca would be leaving the next morning and the house would be mine and I would be on my own in this entirely Mexican neighborhood in a city I had never wanted to move to in the first place.

I was still on Portland time. I didn’t wake until after 9:30 Friday morning. I came downstairs and the living room was not navigable. Everything that Rebecca was taking was on the floor. Her son was late and it was going to be a wonder: #1 if everything would fit into two cars with 5 people and their luggage; #2 that they would actually be able to get out of here before noon. Rebecca wanted to leave in the early morning. It wasn’t going to happen. She was cooking potatoes and beef to feed the family while she and her son bickered about how to pack the cars. I curled up in the corner of the couch to stay out of their way. I was hungry but I wasn’t going to try to get to the kitchen… not even for coffee.

Miracles do happen. They filled the cars to their over-full capacity. Everyone but the drivers were sitting on something with their feet propped straight out. While Rebecca and her son fought about where the antifreeze and extra oil would fit, the two old Chihuahuas, Obi Juan and Don Juan, looked about furtively from their perches. I wondered how everyone, including these cars would fare on the long, hot drive.

I stood on the sidewalk knowing that I would miss Rebecca and the dogs (though they pooped and peed all over my bedroom). As they started the engines, a woman walked by saying “Red Alert”. I had no idea what this meant. But later, I found out that while we were busy, members of the New Generation drug cartel were busy both in Vallarta and Guadalajara, burning gas stations, breaking into banks and setting cars on fire as we spoke. People were killed but no tourists or locals, just the military, police and members of the gang.

Off they went, leaving me standing there to go into the house on my own. It was hot; I was sweating as I had been since I stepped off the plane at PVR and as I have been since. I knew nothing about anything, not how to catch the bus, get what I needed nor how to make myself happy and content, I do know Spanish, thank goodness. Little did I know that Vallarta was on fire.

From here, things got strange and very fast.

I am in Mexico and have been here longer than I thought I would be before I posted something in this blog. It was my intention to post daily and to document my first year in Puerto Vallarta. Now, sadly and yet happily, I will return to Portland after two and a half months. The experience to date has been intense.

I had no idea how fragile I was when I left Portland. Sure, I had my misgivings. I mostly wanted to get away from our roommate; I felt frustrated. Perhaps it was me, perhaps we were not meant to inhabit the same space. I won’t go into it here since it is a very private affair, but I was either going to find my own place or move to Mexico.

It had been my dream for decades to retire in Mexico. After some time living/studying here in the 90’s, I had fallen in love with the tropical climate along the Pacific coast. I liked what I knew of the history of Mexico and the culture and had found the people friendly. I had spent a lot of time traveling with the curator of the Museum of Art, Margarite Magdelena. She had taken me to parts of Mexico that I never would have been able to know without an in-depth knowledge of her country. That story has been told and yet to be written. I will however write those experiences later.

So my dream to retire here was based on experiences I had some 21 years in the past. Sure, I had continued to visit Mexico alone and with family and friends throughout the ensuing years as I worked to get my graduate degree in History and Folklore and Mythology. Then as I pursued my career as the Archivist/Assistant professor in the History Of Medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, I continued to enjoy trips to Mexico. When I decided to retire at 66 years old, my answers to the inquiries of others about what I would do when I was no longer working was that I would retire in Mexico.

I didn’t know that as I packed up, our roommate was really going to move, leaving Hannah to pay the rent on an enormous house. After two years of him threatening to move, he actually did, as I finalized my move. I had sent the rent and deposit on a house in Colonia Agua Azul; I had purchased my airline ticket; I had packed up my belongings and paid to have them moved into storage. I was set to go and then he rented a place and began his move. Now, as I think back, I was never sure about the move here but thought that it was just adventure jitters. Yes, I would have lost quite a bit of money if I had backed out then… and I would not have known what I know now had I aborted my plans. I assured myself each day that Hannah would be able to find affordable housing and I would be saving on my small retirement money by moving.

The rent for my beautiful Mexican house is $500.00 monthly with utilities around $60.00 monthly. The cost of food is negligible. What doesn’t drive up to the door in fish and fruit and vegetable trucks can be had at the meat store one door down or at the many tiny stores located every half block.

So, not feeling really excited about the move, I did it anyway. On April 27, 2015, I arrived at the PVR airport with five suitcases to handle on my own. I managed to get out of the airport and into a taxi without too much problem. The heat was powerful and the driver had the windows rolled down and the gas fumes and sea breeze and dust mixed into a recognizable sensory remembrance. This is a Mexico I am familiar with. The sweat began to roll into my eyes and gather under my breasts. Though I had expected the heat and humidity in my head, my body reacted with extreme measures.

The taxi driver asked if I knew where I was going; he had no idea where Agua Azul is located; he ran into the airport for a a map and when he returned, I showed him my new neighborhood. Thank you Google maps. Since I had never been there, I tried to describe the route based on my online Google truck experience. We eventually arrived at the house no worse for wear. Rebecca was waiting and as she opened the door, I threw myself at her, grateful that the Craigslist ad and photos were not a scam. The beautiful yellow house was just as it appeared in the ad and Rebecca in her FaceBook posts. As I walked into the house, it was just like the photos posted in the ad.

Rebecca had lentil soup and iced tea ready for my arrival. I felt completely at ease. Here, I thought, is a sister. We drank iced tea and spent a bit of time chatting. I was too damned hot to eat, though I was starving. She took me out into the street and introduced me around to the neighbors, showed me the stores and we oohed and aawed at the many babies being carried around. A family just kitty corner are 5th generation fishermen. We bought, right then and there, a hunk of tuna right out of the sea. The young man, I forget his name, apologized that he had put it on ice. I paid less than $7.00 for about 12 lbs. of meat. Chela, his grandma, makes tacos every night at 7:30 and sells them for $.70 each until very, very late. The meat store one door down has everything you could ever want.

I was overwhelmed and dead tired and way too hot and sweaty. Rebecca and I ate soup and talked a bit more and I went up to bed, full and feeling… I don’t know… lonely, wondering if I had made the right decision to come here… a whole gamut of thought. Most of all, I wanted Hannah to find the right place to live: a place where Ancel could still ride his bike to school, close to Jack so he could help with Enora, getting her to school and back and to help with Yum Yum.

I slept like a log with ceiling fans whirring and the curtains swaying on the balcony doors.