Tales from Paradise: An Interesting Day

I'm in a beautiful little fishing village on the west coast of Mexico. This village has a 'cash and carry' style of economy. Credit cards are not taken here, and my cash was down to 50 pesos, and I invited a friend to drive with me to bigger town about 30 minutes away. In that town there were several banks that would accept our ATM card to withdraw pesos from our American account. My friend is French Canadian and a singer and yoga teacher, with whom I have a great affinity of mutual personalities. You see, we are both perfectionist, so we both are multilingual, and fluent in Spanish and are generally happy about whatever!

The drive from Barra goes up hills, slightly higher in altitude than sea-level and is a curving two-lane highway. Mexicans, who are charming and gracious people, have personality changes behind the wheel and become aggressive. They pass around slower drivers in blind curves, then pass when on-coming traffic is roaring toward you, and generally appear quite mad. So the drive to the bigger town is a heart-pounding journey in and of its self.

When there, we were able to get money and then wandered the dusty streets teeming with people, pick-up trucks, street vendors and little store-front businesses. I needed some odds and ends, I wanted some yoga mats, but none existed. This proved to be a luxury, that most of the Mexicans didn't need or want. Oh well, a few thick towels would have to do. We wandered into stores that sold things, that in the last century were called "sundries?" They had everything, from ribbons and thread to cooking gadgets, plates, glasses, to tin items like a watering can and baths. The kind of big tin baths that people bathed in when they didn't have bathtubs. Actually when I was a little girl, and we lived in France, we lived in an apartment with a toilet and no bath. We bathed in one of those tubs for a short while until my parents coerced the owner into putting in a proper tub.

I needed to buy some running shoes, so we went to the 'department store' in town and I found some Nikis in my size. As I stood in line to pay for them, I noticed the cashier had manicured fingernails that were very elaborate. She was a young woman, with a plain face, but her nails were in colors of silver and gold and champagne with little diamond and pearl faux decorations with each finger different from the other. I said, "Wow, what wonderful nails you have", and the other cashier looked over, slightly jealous, yet she was pretty in her face with plain nails. The cashier with the manicure smiled shyly and softly said thank-you, as though it was the first time someone thought she might be pretty. Ah well.

My friend and I went to a grocery store that was owned by Wal-Mart, and before anyone gets perturbed, the people that work there earn a living, and it had products that otherwise couldn't be found in the area. We bought Raid and bug spray for "sangudo" protection, (blood-sucking mosquitoes). Among other things, we might find in our respective countries.

I asked the butcher a question about a particular cut of beef I wanted and another worker wandered up and teased the butcher about not speaking English. So in my perverse way (It's a wonder I have any friends at all), I asked the one teasing did he speak English. He said just a "little" but he understood "a lot"!

So again, perversely, I said to him in English “I'll speak English and you answer me in Spanish".

He looked at me blankly, and in Spanish, I said, "you don't understand a language unless you actually speak the language." The butcher laughed out loud.

When my friend and I went out to the parking lot, we put our cold purchases in a cooler, and all the rest in the trunk and got in and I prepared to start the car.

A man in a wheelchair rolled outside my window and said in broken English, "Where are you fron?" I told him she was French Canadian and I was American.

He had a sweet smile on his face, was wearing tattered clothes, and it was obvious he was missing his left lower leg well above where his knee would’ve been, and didn't have a right shoulder or arm. He had lost his right leg below the knee and had a prosthesis on his right leg.

So I reached into the ashtray and pulled out change and handed it to him and he started telling his story. He was a drifter, who had drifted to America living in many different states, a fact that he was proud of. He returned to Mexico and was riding the trains, and actually had a job promised, but fell off of a boxcar and that's how he lost his right arm and left leg and the lower part of his right leg.

He said how he was happy because a benefactor, an American, who owned a coconut plantation was getting him a motorized wheelchair and a prosthesis for his left leg. He proudly showed me his prosthesis for his right leg, and told me when he got his wheelchair and prosthesis, he would be able to push a button to help him stand up and then he would walk with a cane. I asked him how he lived now and he said that every night, he went to mass at the Catholic church and they fed and clothed him and gave him a place to sleep and a means to earn some money so he could buy beer and cigarettes sometimes.

I told him it sounded like his life was good and he said it was, then said "Good-by, now I have to go wash my hair", and with a sweet smile, he wheeled with his left arm and pushed with his prosthetic right foot, going backward so fast and was out of the parking lot and gone from sight .

I drove home, dropped my friend off, called my husband David who was home in Chicago and talked about my day. Then I fixed a cold, frosty, Paloma, and watched the sunset in the west from my beautiful house. As the glorious red-orange globe, sank slowly down, I contemplated my day. The plain cashier with her glamourous nails, the vain-glorious worker, trying to act like the 'cock-of-the-walk' and the left armed-right legged man who's joy was, to someday soon, walk with a cane and enjoy a beer or two and a smoke. Life is good.

PEACE & LOVE.