At the age of 65, I now finally know my mission in life. I’m a real-live crash test dummy.
Crash test dummies (CTD’s from here on) test out the risk factors of dangerous potential scenarios so you can learn from them and avoid damage yourself. Strap the dummy in, let ‘er rip, see how it goes and set your own course accordingly. I’ve been a vicarious CTD for many friends and acquaintances nearly all my life, though I only realized it fairly recently.
What a Decade in Mexico Has Taught Me about Weathering a Global Pandemic
I was walking along Waco’s Brazos River this morning when my throat caught – the woman about to pass me on the walking trail was wearing a red Mexican blouse that was clearly from San Antonino: the elaborate, heavily embroidered style I’d recognize anywhere after living for a decade in Oaxaca City only 50 miles away.
Agility and adaptability may save us all
More than 30 years ago, not just Before Corona Times but Before Mexico, when I was (really!) a suburban housewife in Dallas with a side writing gig, I wrote a piece (for a printed magazine!) for Dallas Community Colleges on crafting different types of resumés to get that first job. A traditional vitae – at least then – was linear in time, listing education and (if you were lucky to have had a summer internship thanks to a dad who had connections) whatever paltry work experience might set you apart from the rest of the herd. But what if you organized your self-promotion as skill sets? What volunteer jobs or life experience, showcasing what of your stellar 21-year-old qualities, might be worth giving you a foot in the door? What if it was your potential and not your actual experience that was under consideration?
Landing in Guanajuato, 2008
Sometime last year I read something that made me want to reframe the things that I miss and put them in a context where I can just appreciate them. Reframing – a term I’ve learned from my life coach Nils in Oaxaca – is taking a negative thought (sad to say, often my default button) and turning over the coin to find the positive. Nils and I had a What’s App video session last week; my last one with him in Oaxaca seems mind-blowingly irrevelant in this brave new world. Was I really worried that someone was upset with me for something I said? That’s so last millennium – no wait, that was just last month.
So the phrase was to reframe a loss by saying: “Wasn’t I lucky to have had ______?” – no matter for how long, or how much I miss it now. I’d actually been practicing this with several situations which I was grieving, most notably a 10-year relationship with José that just could not be salvaged or resurrected.
José, Puebla
The self-criticism: Was I crazy to have tried to have a serious relationship, in a language I was just learning, with a Mexican man who — before finding AA — spent 30 years as a street drunk?
Reframed: Wasn’t I lucky to have had ten years with a Mexican man who was quirky and funny and who loved me until the cows came home – though he had no model for how that looked?
Wasn’t I lucky to learn street Spanish conversing with him hours a day (I did have to learn to scale back on the adjectives)? Wasn’t I lucky to ride a motorcycle behind a tattooed man in cowboy boots?
So here goes. Maybe these are premature pronouncements, but then again maybe they’re not.
Wasn’t I lucky to have had a whole decade in Mexico, living exactly how I wanted? I didn’t wait until I had more money, or retired, or lost 20 pounds. I just acted on a deep yearning to live abroad again, learn Spanish and have multi-cultural adventures.
With Doc Severinson in San Miguel, 2008
An early conversation from a rooftop in San Miguel de Allende, where I went my first two trips to study in a small language school, stuck with me. A twenty-something young woman was working on her laptop in her swimsuit with a glass of sangria at her side. I asked her what she was doing. “Working remotely,” she answered, and a little light bulb went off in my head.
Was I leading the parade, a la Ferris Bueller? San Miguel de Allende, 2008
We want on to talk about risk and she continued, “I see myself climbing the rope ladder in the circus, and I get all the way up to the platform and dive – and on the way down I say, Water, appear!” Oh hell yes, I wanted to get me some of that: in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and finally Oaxaca.
And for 11 years, I have indeed gotten me some of that. Even if I never am able to return – I don’t think that’s going to be the case but I do think it will be longer than any of us imagine – wasn’t I lucky, lucky, lucky to have had that?
Santo Domingo, Oaxaca
Wasn’t I lucky to find my tribe and the most awesome women friends ever?
With Jane on Frida’s birthday
I can’t bear the thought of not seeing my Oaxaca home girls again – the ones I called when I was feeling sad, or to talk me down off the anxiety ledge, toss over possible alternatives to opening my big mouth right away, or just hang out and go cool places with. But wasn’t I lucky to have found them, after years of thinking I just didn’t get along that well with most women because well, suburbia.
With Suzanne in Teotitlán del Valle
I always had sensibilities that didn’t fit in and viewpoints that were too intense for the PTA crowd, and never, ever had the right clothes or hairdo. In Oaxaca, it didn’t frigging matter! On my last return to Oaxaca in January, I hadn’t seen my friend Suzanne for the first week or so before I ran into on the street.
Jacki, Women’s March, Oaxaca
She stood in the middle of the sidewalk and just held her arms open. I told her later that’s how I want to always feel when returning to my friends: welcomed open-armed. I could cry just thinking about that, but wasn’t I lucky to have found these women with their wise ways and superpowers of cutting through the BS and cutting to the chase of what’s real and true and honest?
With 40-year Texas work colleagues Kathy, boss Claudia and Peggy
(Not that I didn’t have real Superwomen friends in the U.S.; I just found them in spades in Oaxaca.)
Three Susans, friends for 50+ years
Wasn’t I lucky to have traveled as much as I have? From my first trip abroad – a three-week “If It’s Tuesday It Must be Belgium” trip through a dozen countries, I was hopelessly hooked on travel.
Puerto Escondido with son David
At 15 – actually I turned 15 on that trip in Heidleburg, Germany – I felt like I’d been woken up from a sleepwalking existence into one where I felt every nuance of being alive, where every shadow snapped into sharp focus.
Mexico 2007 with Susans: My first mango on a stick, but not my last by a long shot
I got to live in France for a year, backpack across the Greek islands, spend New Year’s Eve 1992 in Niger as the guest of the vice president – whom we’d met in 1978 in France.
Even in these later years of reduced money and more limited travel, I’ve still gotten to go all over Mexico. Wasn’t I lucky to find that I loved travel so early and get to do so much of it throughout my life?
En Via volunteers, 2017, in San Miguel del Valle, after eating tamales for Candelaría
Wasn’t I lucky to have found meaningful volunteer work with En Vía? One of my goals of living abroad again was to find volunteer work that made my heart sing, that made me feel like I was contributing . . . something. My first trip to Oaxaca in 2009, I stayed in a funky little hostel that later became La Betulia and met Emily Berens, who was just forming a new non-profit with Oaxacan co-founder Carlos Topete based on the concept of responsible tourism tours generating microfinance dollars for women.
With En Vía co-founder Emily Berens and a Teotitán borrower, 2009
I volunteered for three years as an English teacher, then moved into translation-guiding, and it’s been one of the more meaningful experiences of my life. The other guides – like Jacki and Suzanne – and the women themselves have formed a rich, rich fabric of experience that I don’t think could be replicated anywhere. But wasn’t I lucky to have had it?
Master weaver Juana, Teotitlán del Valle, 2009
Charging loan paybacks with En Vía borrowers, Teotitlán del Valle, 2009
José with five of his eight siblings, when both parents were living, c. 2011
Wasn’t I lucky to have a Mexican family? Through José, who was the oldest of nine in a fairly typical Mexican family that also had dozens of cousins, uncles, aunts and accompanying in-laws, I got to be the welcomed guera newcomer.
Tía Raquel, Tehuacan
His Tía Raquel in Tehuacan, in the flat valley between Oaxaca and Puebla, told me early on that she felt sorry for me not having a mom living (mine died when I was 18 and she 47) or brothers and sisters. “Susana, I will be your Mexican mama,” she said. “We will be your family.” Whenever we visited a couple times a year, José would leave me for a while in the downstairs room where Raquel held court, and she would lay down a few wise words before giving me a blessing. “We’re so glad that Pépé has found some measure of happiness in his later years,” she said early on. “Because he was – shall we say – a difficult boy.”
With Tío Julio and some of his nine kids, Orizaba
There was Uncle Julio and his nine kids in Orizaba, rafts of nephews and nieces who wanted to practice their English with me, weddings, baptisms. Later there were fallings out with various family members, both of his parents died and the family fractured as many do, but wasn’t I lucky to have had all that?
I could go on. As we all do right now, I grieve what and who I’ve lost – or may have lost, because we just don’t know yet. It’s OK to cry about it and give in to the pain – for a while. But then, there is this:
Wasn’t I lucky to have had all that?
Susan Bean Aycock, Embracing the Chaos, March 30, 2020
I had only been to Yanhuitlán (yahn-wheat-lahn’) three years ago on a Good Friday expedition, so when a friend told me about a fantastic field trip to the home studio of famous ceramic artists, I put it on my “to do” list. Wanting to do something special on the Fourth of July – not only U.S. Independence Day but the day my dad died in 2000 — I vowed to make it finally happen.
Yes, there were fireworks in Mexico on the Fourth of July. Not for U.S. Independence Day, of course, but in the little Oaxaca Valley town of Teotitlán del Valle, where they were celebrating the town fiesta that always falls during the first week of July. Just happened to be July 4 this year.
All things conspired for the good: a free Sunday, no highway blockades, three available girlfriends and an afternoon jazz concert in San Augustin Etla, a beautiful little town up in the mountains about 20 miles out of the city. I’d been there a few times before to see art exhibits at the CASA (el Centro de las Artes San Augustin), even my first week in Oaxaca when it seemed an exotic field trip made so mostly by lack of language and the complete mystery of where we were going.
Let me just say that having grown up in Texas, I’m a big fan of rodeos. I grew up on small town rodeos in west Texas – mostly Weatherford – and always loved the gaudy western wear, calf roping and barrel racing (not so much the bull riding) and especially rodeo clowns.
Rodeo clowns aside (theirs is actually one of the more dangerous jobs, as they’re distracting bucking bulls and broncos away from fallen competitors), the Charros de Ex-Hacienda de la Soledad, just southwest of Oaxaca City, offered all that and more on Sunday, plus chicas in full skirts galloping sidesaddle, traditional dancing (OK, one couple) and a mounted crooner in full charro suit. A charro event isn’t exactly a Texas rodeo, but close enough: it’s a little rough and rowdy and a whole lot of spectacle in fancy western wear with cowboy boots.
I found a slew of old emails recently on my early days in Mexico, when pre-blog I inundated friends with emails on my adventures and the fantastically interesting people who would never have crossed my path in Dallas, Texas. That was 2008-09 and I still can’t believe my good fortune in falling down the rabbit hole that has been my life in Mexico.
I didn’t actually catch his name, but I scared my friends with pix of my new pal in San Miguel
Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, 2009. So many clowns, so little time.
My college friend Carolyn, with whom I almost got into lots of trouble many moons ago, recently visited Oaxaca for the first time with her husband Tom. She reminded me of the off-the-charts emails that I used to send select friends who I thought wouldn’t freak out and try to airlift me out of Mexico after reading them, which turned out to be a fairly small number. I actually have a whole file of emails and notes marked “Mexico Book Chapters.” Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of how I ended up in Oaxaca:
Continue reading
Embracing the Chaos 