by Jane Downs
Sunset. Clouds on the horizon form a sky city backlit by deep pink. In the distance the lights of Puerto Vallarta begin to flicker on. I think of back home and the San Francisco skyline.
In geologic time, cities are transitory and as perishable as clouds. Last night, my husband, Dan, dreamt a man stood over our bed with a rope cat’s cradle between his hands.
I’ve read the cat’s cradle is one of the oldest games in human history. Independent versions have been played in indigenous cultures throughout the world. As children, my brother and I passed it between our hands, paying attention to the complications of transference.
Every day, a thin layer of dust covers our furniture. We hear dogs bark and children playing. Things are heavy here. Iron doors, dishes, and wood furniture make loud scraping sounds when dragged over the tiled floor. I’m getting used to walking on hard tiles. I brought six delicate glasses made in France as reminders of home. Unpacking, I dropped one onto the floor. It broke into thousands of tiny pieces that glittered where the sunlight brushed the floor.
I also brought my collection of favorite bookmarks. Many are from museum shows: Chagall, Monet, and Cezanne. My favorite Renoir bookmark lies between the pages of Paul Theroux’s book On the Plain of Snakes about his travels through Mexico. I am struck by the inappropriateness of the image of a 19th-century French couple dancing, the bearded man in a straw hat, the woman in a lacy Victorian gown, between pages depicting the hardscrabble life of heat and dust. Lush colors against monotonous desert terrain.
The couple’s joyful, sensual expressions of pleasure are a sharp contrast to the weather-worn looks of people in villages where food is scarce.
Another bookmark of a well-known Edward Hopper painting, where a solitary woman in a diner sits behind a plate glass window looking at her coffee cup. She could be me away from my friends, alone in a café in Puerto Vallarta.
From my window, I view the resort and retirement world, overlooking Banderas Bay. The pool of sky-blue water, a courtyard of lounge chairs and tables under striped umbrellas. Just beyond, the ocean beats its elemental rhythm.
Each day repeats itself in minutes and hours. Heat makes a day languid. I read that time is blind. That time’s enormity proceeds and survives us. Last night, I slept to the ocean’s sounds, my dreams small kingdoms populated by strangers and people I love, and the dead.
It will take time to know and love Mexico, and time is what I now have.
After selling our house of forty-five years, we drove from Kensington, California to Puerto Vallarta filled with expectation and a sense of adventure. Also, I think we were in a kind of shock that prevented us from second-guessing our decision to become expats. What we chose and packed into our Tundra truck describes who we think we are – books, art, air-tight bags of my clothing, Dan’s stereo, including a massive woofer, family photographs, writing journals, and my husband’s tools.
After the first of the four-day journey, we stopped listening to music and sat quietly. My husband concentrating on a foreign road, me, lost in thought while gazing at the desert animated by dust devils churning over the sand. Each toll crossing brought us closer to our new home, exacting pesos instead of dollars.
We traveled in liminal space between what was and what will be. Memories, their edges already ebbed by time, traveled with us as we headed into our fresh life hidden in the future.
Mexico is a land of magic and deep history, Puerto Vallarta, a place of welcoming and new beginnings. Within days of our arrival, people offered us advice, assistance, and friendship.
Perhaps the man in my husband’s dream was a metaphor for Mexico offering us a cradle for safety and protection as we begin our transformation into future selves, the complexities of the cradle’s pattern suggestive of what awaits us.
A new friend said there is a saying that once the dust of Mexico settles in your heart, you will never want to live anywhere else.
