Every day a different day
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This morning I walk down to Tony’s
On the Beach for breakfast. I call it a walking meditation because naming it
such makes me feel better about my small steps, snail pace.
Once again I am in Mazatlan. Kathy
and Richard asked me if I would like to join them for a week on the beach. Who
would say no?
It has been three years now since I
lived in Mazatlan. Tony’s is in my old neighborhood. Oh, the changes. Each time
I come there are changes.
Economy is booming if one may judge
by new construction; condo towers shooting up like corn stalks on every vacant
beach lot. On the short walk to the restaurant I had to dodge around heavy
construction equipment three times.
When I first knew Mazatlan years
ago, all, and I mean all, the construction labor was manual. One seldom saw a
simple backhoe. Men climbed makeshift ladders with buckets of concrete mix;
descended with buckets of rubble. Now cranes replace an entire work crew.
Today the body snatchers were out in
force. Hector. Oscar. Rudy. Alberto. No, no, no and no. I do not want to pay
for my vacation with a morning sitting in a deadly shark-infested room
listening to a time-share presentation. Politely, no. I walked on up the
street.
Sitting at a table, plata de fruta y
huevos Mexicana in front of me, the ocean surf at my feet, I fall in love again
with Mazatlan. I fall in love a lot. Most restaurants are family affairs. The
same men serve my food who were here my first trip to Mexico.
I miss Mazatlan, my friends. I miss
the street activity. I miss Jose with his bucket of shrimp for sale every
Monday morning, the two little boys who push the camote (sweet potatoes) cart round
the neighborhood each evening, the man with the cart of brooms, dusters, mops
and impossibly long brushes, the elderly gent who pedals his bicycle daily,
searching the curbs for cardboard to recycle.
Each season the beach changes shape.
Hurricanes come and go. Water reconfigures, carves, piles up dunes or flattens
the beach. Last summer the beach was steep, difficult to walk unless one were a
side-hill gouger. Today the sandy beach is a table top, welcoming.
Fish jump close to shore. Where are
the birds? No fisher birds, no pelicans in sight. No frigate birds sailing the
wind waiting to pirate a flop of fish from the bill of an unwary pelican.
In the last couple weeks I have
learned that five people, each of whom meant something important to me, are
gone. It is a hard and sad thing to lose people in such a close cluster.
Francis, Juanita, Wanda, Tenny and Maxine.
I sit high above the beach alone in
the room and remember how each person touched my life, different times, in
different ways, and it is good. The tuba from the oompah band below snakes into
my consciousness and reminds me to smile. Yes, though some memories are frought
with tension, each person has his part in making me who I am.
Memory leads to memory until an
entire patchwork quilt unfurls before me, each piece alive and vibrant. Tuba
says smile, be grateful, so I do, I am.
I lie in bed listening to the waves
pound the sand, the distant call of a conch shell, the click of the refrigerator,
people overhead moving the heavy marble coffee table across the floor.
Tomorrow Carlos will pick me up to
go to the Migracion Officina to find out when I need to show up next fall to
complete my residente process. I snuggle into my blanket, breeze from the open
window on my face, thinking how I am happy. And that makes me feel kind of sad.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
January 10,
2019
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