Mexico

One warm sunny day, my husband told me that he was going to Mexico for a year. He mentioned that he had been thinking about doing this for a while and that he would go down and live with a family there.

OK…, that sounds interesting.
"What are the children and I supposed to do?"
"You would stay here and everything would just be the way it is."
"So… when would you be leaving?"
"I'm not sure."
"And you expect everything to remain the way it is now while you are gone?"

After this conversation, things started to get interesting. I remember telling him not to expect me to be here when he got back. That my life wasn't going to be on hold while he follows his rainbows.

So he started to rethink all of it. "Maybe we could leave our children with your sister?" What I got out of that was that Betty should take care of her three children for a year along with our 3 year old , our 4 year old and our 6 year old. Somehow that didn't seem fair to either Betty or me. I just didn't see me leaving my children for a year.

After much discussion, "Perhaps we could take them along" became the plan. So this run-away from life changed into a run-away with life. That is probably where the problem started.

He built a large box carrier for the top of our car to store all the things that we would need. He got addresses of the people he wanted to look up. We got a visa for 6 months with the idea that after 6 months if we wanted to, we could come to the border and get another 6 month's visa.

We headed for Nogalus with our overloaded car. The plan was to drive from there to Matzalan and then on to Guadalara.

My husband wouldn't let me drive because from the time that he crossed the border, he went into a mega-fear mode. Everyone around him was against him. I found that very interesting. He had to calculate everything out and make sure that he wasn't overcharged on anything. That no one was stealing from him.

The land itself is interesting. One hundred plus miles above the border is desert and the two hundred miles below the border is the same. It is like no man's land around the border. Nothing is happy there, sort of burned out desert. Maybe this is where the fear came from?

Finally we got past the ugly part of both countries (My opinion) and into the tropical part; it became a welcoming place of green again. Even the people smiled at us.

I remember that we stopped at the Tropic of Cancer sign and took pictures. It was a happy time.

When we got to Matzalan, we played on the beach across the street from the motel that we were staying at.

The motel pool was of interest to the children. While most of us were sitting in the pool, Blaine was walking around the side of it talking to everyone. At first I didn't know what he was saying but he was making them laugh. Then I realized that he was talking to them in all the Spanish that he knew. He could count from Uno to Diez and say Buenos Dias, Buenos Tardes and Buenos Noches. He did all of this over and over because that is all he knew how to say.

We went to watch the cliff divers and explored the outdoor market place. It contained everything one could want but the meat was there only on Tuesdays and then chicken was hanging from the stalls everywhere.

In 1967 this town was a village on the Gulf of California. They were building a new airport in the countryside. We went out there to look at it. Nothing was occupied and there were no workmen there while we were looking around. We wandered in this ghost construction of what would someday be a wonderful modern airport.

I looked around and one of my chicks was missing. I looked down at my feet to find Blaine hanging on by his fingertips to the floor at the top of the escalators. One small square of metal flooring was sitting along the side of him. I reached down and pulled him up watching escalator gears grinding under where his feet could have been. Thanks you God for making him a short 3 year-old. We left Matzalan the next morning with me in a rather shaken-up condition.

We were headed to Guadalara, where his friends were supposed to live. They didn't really live in this city but lived in a little village south of there, called La Puenta. When we got there, we found out that they were "on-holiday" and had gone to the states. These friends were studying medicine there because it was a lot cheaper than to go to a medical school in the States.

Having hit a dead end, my husband wasn't sure what he wanted to do. While we were trying to find out about his friends a little girl suggested, in rather nice English, that we should follow her to meet her grandfather's. We did. He turned out to be the mayor of this little village.

He wasn't at all what you would expect. He was a tall, thin man from Denmark with salt and pepper hair. He invited us into his home and we talked about what we had hoped to do. He spoke English very well and on the walls of his home we saw commendations from the King of Denmark. I would guess that he was an ambassador at one time and had married a native and stayed. He called a couple of his friends and then told us that he would help us find a place to rent in his village. We spend most of a day going around from place to place but no one wanted to rent to a family with three children. I remember his comment as we headed back to his house for supper. "We are some Catholic country when we won't rent to a family. I was hoping to have some English speaking children in our school."

The next day we headed north to Guadalara. It was here that my husband got sick. I mentioned to him that as long as we were here, we should go and see things. He suggested that the kids and I go but that he would just stay in the motel.

What we found was that this town is divided into sectors. In one sector you could get all the Russian food that you would ever want. In another sector, Italian and in another, Chinese all created and served by people from those countries. It was a melting pot. Later when we got back home, people would mention that we were probably tired of Mexican foods but really we had some of everything down there.

One day we were looking for an address and knocked on the gate of a house. An American woman came to the gate and welcomed us like she knew us but we didn't know each other. We mentioned what we were looking for and she said that she would see if she could find it for us but in the meantime to come in and relax, make ourselves at home. Maybe she just wanted company from people back home?

The house was an open design. All the floors were made from large tiles. The furniture was colonial. (That means that it was heavy dark wood in Spanish designs as opposed to modern. (They even ask if you want colonial or modern when checking into a motel.) A large pool was inside the tropical fenced-in yard.

The family that lived here was from the States and the husband worked for a local company. They had children who were watching TV. Our two oldest went in to watch Gilligan in Spanish but my little one decided to jump into the pool. He didn't swim so I ended up in the pool pulling him out.

Looking back, I don't understand why I didn't see all the signs that were there and we weren't supposed to be.

We left the area and headed back to Matzalan. When we got there I found a small place that we could have rented just across the street from the ocean. It didn't have furniture but we could have fixed that and there wasn't any yard but we had the whole beach. I knew that I could tutor Kathy back up to her grade level if she lost some ground in this school. Loren would have been able to learn fast enough to make it there and Blaine was too little for school anyway. By that time Larry had already decided that we weren't staying. So we celebrated Kathy's birthday by letting her pick out something as a present at the open market. She chose a wooden carved shadowbox.

From there back to Nogalas was strained. My husband wasn't feeling well but refused to allow me to drive because "the Mexican's are all out to get Gringos!!!!"

After we got to Nogalas, He went into the back of the station wagon and I got to take us home. Well, whatever home was as we had rented out our house to TD's (Temporary Duty people at the air force base near our home.) So we really headed back to Los Angeles where his parents lived. It was the only time that I have ever driven when I had to keep reminding myself that I was completely responsible for the 4 people sleeping in the back. I dug my finger nails into my hands until they were almost bleeding to stay awake and alert and I drove. I knew that he wouldn't be happy until we were back in California so I drove and I drove.

Hind sight tells me that I should have just let him go to Mexico by himself. Sometimes we don't always make good decisions but that is just another part of learning about life.