Yesterday was my birthday and so my usual Monday post is a day late ~ because I took the day to go wander and have fun. I also happen to share my birthday with Mexican Independence Day. (For those not in the know, Cinco de Mayo is NOT a huge holiday in Mexico, nor is it their independence day. You can learn more on the ol' internet, but just wanted to make sure that was clear because there's a lot of misunderstanding around that.)
I've known that I shared my birthday with Mexico's independence from Spain since I was a little kid and I think it always made me feel some kind of connection to Mexico. In reflecting on this for my post this week I realized I've only been to Mexico six times. I mean, I grew up only a few hours from the border, you'd think it would have been a much higher number. And of those six, only one of those visits wasn't to Baja California.
My first trip was when I was six or seven. We took a family trip to San Diego (from Los Angeles) because my grandmother was visiting from New York and it was a chance to show her some of California. We took a day trip to the city of Tijuana which is right across the border from the San Diego area. At one point I remember we "lost" grandma, but she was found soon enough, and no one seemed to be super panicky about it. My grandmother was a spitfire as far as I can tell, still going out dancing and drinking well into her 80's, at a time when most women of her generation absolutely did not do that. I like to think I got some of that zest for life in my genes and I hope to be able to live my final years with as much gusto as her. I also have a story about some leather sandals that I got on that trip, but I'll save that for another day and another post.
I visited another couple times in my teens, once with a friend and her family, camping along the coast with a lot of other people from the U.S. I had my first kiss on a beach in Mexico. Another time was when I was in college visiting a friend who was going to school in San Diego. We went over to Tijuana to go dancing at a night club (and drinking ~ which we could do in Mexico legally, but not in San Diego). I drove my little Volkswagen beetle and we got lost for a short moment too (channeling my grandma perhaps?) but soon found our way to a nightclub where we ended up running into someone I knew from Los Angeles. It really is such a small world. It feels now, and did then too, very brave of us to have gone on that adventure, I'm sure my parents didn't know about it though. Ha.
In my mid-twenties I went by myself to backpack around Baja for a week. It was summer time and basically the worst time to be camping in a tent on a beach in the desert. SOOOOOOO hot and humid and the mosquitos were relentless. I packed up early and came home sooner than expected. But I did have some of the best conversations and chats with locals using my high school Spanish, and with folks that were willing to practice their English, and with a lot of help from a pocket dictionary ~ pre-internet days being what they were. That was yet another time I got brave and tried something new. I learned so much about myself and about that part of the world too for such a short trip.
A few years after that I got to go on a kayak trip with my grad school and we learned all about the ecology of the area around the town of La Paz, also in Baja. It was my first time kayaking in the ocean (the Gulf of California actually) and it was much harder than kayaking on a lake. But it was such a memorable trip and something I will never forget either. Turns out I have a friend who loves that part of Baja and plans to live there some day, I will absolutely be returning there at some point!
My most recent trip was finally to the "mainland" of Mexico to a little town outside of Puerto Vallarta called Sayulita. It was for a friend of friend's 50th birthday party. This was just before the pandemic, so not that long ago, compared to my other times visiting there. Something really clicked for me that visit. I think it's because I'm older and a lot more self-aware now, but I really felt a strong connection and paid attention to those feelings, that sense of really wanting to be much more connected to everything about there. It was later the next year, during the pandemic and lockdown, that I started trying to revitalize my high school Spanish and to see where it would take me.
I feel so strongly about having the chance to go back to visit and get to visit and get to know more parts of Mexico. It's a feeling I can only call "intuition." A gut feeling that I want to be much more connected in some way to the culture, people, and language of our neighbor to the south.
Copper Aztec calendar, hand crafted alebrije Dragon, and vintage terra cotta hand painted pottery (1950's).
I've also realized something interesting about my dining room recently. This is the room where I spend most of my time these days (rather than a home office) creating the content for my courses, writing my blog and newsletter, and visioning the path forward of this new life of mine (after 21+ years in my former job). It turns out I have a lot of things from Mexico decorating this room. Many of the items were not things I bought or chose but are things I ended up with from others. For example, the Aztec calendar (pictured above) was something I grew up with hanging on the wall in our living room ~ my parents brought it home from their honeymoon in Mexico and now it hangs on the wall in front of where I work. Other things ~ like alebrije sculptures, terra cotta pots, a Huichol yarn painting, and DÃa de los Muertos figurines ~ I was gifted or have found their way to me. It feels like some kind of kismet? Maybe.
Huichol sacred nierika yarn paintings made by the Huichol IndiansÂ
(also called the Wixárika) of Mexico’s remote Sierra Madre Occidental region.
At the very least I'm super curious about this connection I feel. I don't have any plans at the moment to travel to Mexico, but after spending a week learning Spanish in Lake Tahoe this past summer, I know I'm itching to go spend some time in Mexico learning Spanish. Hopefully this next year I can make that happen. And maybe, just maybe, I will start dreaming of ways to teach about creativity and painting in Mexico!
Have a great week my friends! ¡Hasta la próxima!!
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