She was in our house when we moved in five years ago. She’s been here much much longer than that. I venture to guess that she has been on this planet longer than we have.
She is an old-school Catrina. Her wide-brimmed chapeau with the enormous winged and flowered bow on top looks like the one José Guadalupe Posada, drew on his original “La Calavera Garbancera” back in 1910. So does the hairstyle.
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Tuesday evening the basketball courts in Parque Juarez thrummed and thumped with exuberant kids who shouted back and forth to teammates while jutting and cutting up and down the blue surface, looking for an open shot.
It was a different world next door at the stately old gazebo. A fairy tale was unfolding. Like all good princesses, she would allow only a tantalizing glimpse of her face. The air of mystery was exquisite.
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“Go sit on a rock, and children will find you.” That’s the simple counsel of Elsmarie Norby, the founder of Ojalá Niños, a rural San Miguel de Allende program that encourages scores of children to explore their artistic side.
In Elsmarie’s case, it wasn’t really a rock. “I opened my gate,” she says.
Elsmarie moved to the rural community of San Miguel Viejo in 2007 and built a house like no other in the community. It had floors. It had windows. It had furniture. It had a kitchen with modern appliances. And it had a front gate.
Nowadays she says she was “a very strange person” to the residents. Especially strange to the children who would peer into her yard through the front gate. She didn’t know she was such an object of curiosity, an outlier, really. Not at first.
Elsmarie recalled the first time she invited the neighborhood kids in. “They stood frozen at the entrance … then entered wide-eyed. They had never seen a refrigerator, furniture, art on the walls …”
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I’ve been handed my first writing assignment in ages, covering a much-anticipated wedding in Portugal. At the same time, an incredible opportunity has come up involving a full-time job for a major newspaper chain covering nothing but Taylor Swift.
Isn’t that just the way these things happen?
You are a nobody for years. Unread, unfollowed, untalked about, an aging ghost of a writer drifting through the literary fields. Suddenly you have to choose between the wedding of the decade and Taylor Swift.
The story of my life.
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In counseling the British writer Robert Graves on a possible move to Majorca, Gertrude Stein called it “a paradise – if you can stand it.”
And that is as good an explanation as any of the complicated relationship many people have with Jimmy Buffett. The man sold a brand of paradise. Millions bought at least some version of it – be it a beachy lifestyle, the music, a devotion to margaritas, Hawaiian shirts and sandals, sportfishing, sailing, and all the Margaritaville bars, retirement communities, casinos, resorts …
Buffett wasn’t the first to turn a lifestyle into a commodity but few seem to do it better. Maybe Donald Trump. These days you can be a cradle-to-grave Parrothead with apologies toward none. More than anything, we worship success and if a guy sells a million records or makes a million dollars, he will find no shortage of admirers.
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As a writer, I don’t think I’ve grown less creative over the years. As the husband to Rose Alcantara, I don’t think I’ve grown less ardent in my love and appreciation.
Still, I wrote this declaration on her birthday (which is today) during our first year in San Miguel de Allende, and I don’t think I can improve upon it:
“Feliz cumpleaños, Rose Alcantara, el amor de mi vida! Cada año creces más hermosa. Tienes un alma que nunca envejece y un corazón que crece para llenarse en cada momento. Estoy tan agradecido de que estés en mi vida. Te amaré por siempre.
Happy Birthday, Rose Alcantara, the love of my life! Each year you grow more beautiful. You have a soul that never ages and a heart that grows to fill every moment. I am so grateful that you are in my life. I shall love you forever.”
Nothing has changed.
If anything, my sense of wonder grows as I see Rose through the eyes of others, as I see how passionately she prepares for her every Pilates class, as I see her smile lift a whole room of weighted souls, as I see her love for her children and mine played out daily, as I see her planning our next adventures, as I see her embracing life as something to live and not just abide, as I see her response to every act of kindness, as I see her own compassion, as I see her.
Yes, simply, as I see Rose.
Not just be with her, but, see her. See inside. See the love. See the pain. See the hurt. See the worry. See the desire. See the happiness. See the vision. See everything that she has overcome to be the dancer, be the teacher, be the mother, be the wife, be the friend.
Once again, the gift today is mine. Thank you for traveling this path with me. Thank you for teaching me how to really live, that just abiding is not enough.
While I can only give you words, you have given me life.
Happy birthday, Rose.
The voice is young, sweet, innocent and yet, broken in a way only love’s betrayal can scar.
She accompanies herself on a guitar, languidly strumming. Not living, not dead. In the between. In the neverland of a broken heart. The vocalist drags out the last words of each line, as if groping toward a precipice. It may be in Spanish but it feels very French.
The singing is coming from an upper patio of the building next door.
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Matthew 25:40: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. “
And the rain pours down
Like on no day before.
My Rose takes our red umbrella
And hangs it over the hummingbird’s nest.
.
Like on no day before
But the three tiny eggs
And their mother stay dry.
.
And the rain pours down
Like on no day before
But my Rose thinks only
Of the frailest among us.
.
My heart fills with love
For a woman who thinks like that.
Let the rain pour down
Like on no day before.
Postscript: There are now babies in the nest and Rose lets me place the umbrella up when it starts to rain. Sometimes.
Every time I think that I’ve photographed the Parroquia San Miguel de Arcangel from every conceivable angle during the past five years, something new comes along.
It’s like in physics. Scientists were pretty sure that the Standard Model that addresses all “of nature’s known particles and forces” was The Overall Encompassing Answer to Everything.
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(The author begs your indulgence if you already read this on Facebook. The blog seems a better home for it. Thank you for reading and commenting. — The editor)
A whole ocean spreads out before them
But for two little boys
A string of shallow pools
And some rocks
Are quite enough.
Splashing water with foot-stomping fierceness
They move rocks from pool to pool.
They wallow in the deepest one
Like beached sea lions.
All the while, the ocean calls
In vain.
It sends dolphins to entice them
But the boys will have none of that.
Yesterday, at a children’s park,
It was the rolling green lawn, the wind twisted climbing trees, and the incurious squirrels
That captivated their imaginations.
Not the swings, not the slides, not the plastic and rope confections of an adult’s imagination.
They are like cats with boxes and Christmas wrapping.
Give us nature’s raw materials,
they seem to say,
And we will build sailing ships and castles
And fantastic flying machines
In our fertile minds.
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 