Rodrigo’s Rose Garden

Finding things that will grow in this climate has been a challenge. Cactus, no problem, but otherwise, a bit of work.

Roses work well. Amazingly well although finding them is a chore; at least any kind of variety.

Rod wanted a rose garden. This really translates to, “I’ll plant them but you need to take care of them.” At the annual plant fair (Candalaria) we bought our first new rose plants. After picking out the appropriate spot, close to water and the right amount of sun, Rod set to planting. He had all the right tools but was having a problem breaking ground.

I have more than a few pounds on Rod so when I saw that he was struggling I decided to put my weight behind the pick on his behalf. First stroke, no problem. Second stroke and water began bubbling up from the ground. As much as I wanted to believe that we’d hit a natural spring only six inches below the surface, I knew better. I’d hit the water main. In fact, I’d hit the pipe dead center. I couldn’t have hit it better if I was aiming.

This, of course, happened on a Sunday during a three-day weekend. Try to find a plumber. So we shut off the water to the back of the property and continued working.

Caspa, our Labrador mix puppy, decided to eat the blossoms but since the first day, she seems to have lost interest.

So this is it. I know it is small but they are doing very well and if we continue to add more every year, we might have something in the future.


Our plumbers are here now, fixing the kitchen sink which involves tearing up the back patio and half the lawn. They hit the water main today so I don’t feel so bad.

Tetanus Shot

Another small town example; the 27-year-old Doctora who sewed me up in the emergency room is our maid’s niece. Our maid (Mari) has a photo of Rodrigo and me in her home (she asked for a copy of one we have). While the Doctora didn’t recognize me when she was sewing me up, she must have thought about it later and remembered the photo in her aunt’s house. (In the photo I’m wearing the same jacket that I was wearing that ominous night.) The Doctora (Claudia) called the ranchito (our phone number was part of my check-out process) and talked with Mari. She said that she called to see how I was doing. Interesting. I wonder if she does that with all her emergency room patients.

I didn’t go back to the hospital to have my stitches removed. I went to our regular doctor and German-Mexican friend, Ricardo. As I was having my stitches removed, I asked him if I should have a tetanus shot.

“They didn’t give you one in the emergency room?”

“I don’t think so. The only shots that I got were in my eyebrow. It has probably been 20 years since I’ve had one. Do you have the shot here?”

“No. The only place they have it is at the Centro de Salud in La Lejona.”

He charged me nothing for the consultation nor for removing the stitches. (He says that Rodrigo and I are family, although he is straight, married to a beautiful British woman and has a tri-lingual 10-year-old son.)

So after shopping for a dinner party we were hosting that night (including a five pound filet mignon for only $25 USD), I found my way to the Centro de Salud.

The waiting room was packed. I was standing in line at the entrance but people kept cutting in front of me and waiving little booklets in front of the staff. Maybe they had appointments. So finally, in my best Spanish, I asked a staff member if I was in the right line for what I needed. He told me that I was not and pointed to a desk in the corner of the lobby that was relatively un-crowded.

Being the only gringo in the place, I’m sure that I stood out like a sore thumb. So it was no surprise when a nurse stepped up to me and asked me what I needed. When I showed her the note from my doctor she started asking me questions; Did I have some kind of card? Did I have any records of my vaccinations? Had I ever had a tetanus shot?

“No,” “No,” and “Yes.”

She then took down my name, address and age, completed a form and gave me a little book as a record of my vaccinations. She led me into a very clean examination room and told me that the shot was to be in my “pompis.” So I dropped one side of my pants and showed her probably the whitest ass cheek that she’s ever seen in her life. (I thought for a minute that she was going to ask to borrow my sun glasses.)

She deftly administered the shot and explained that a little soreness the next day is normal. (It is amazing how much Spanish that I now understand and at the same time, how little that I speak.) When I asked her where and how I pay, she told me that it was free.

A tetanus shot, a little book for my records, out of there in 10 minutes, all for free. (Good thing, because the $25 dollar filet was waiting in the car.)

18 Stitches

San Miguel has been called, “The City of Fallen Women.” It might better be called, “The City of Falling Women.” This is not because of some high rate of indiscretion but rather because they actually physically fall on the cobblestone streets. One frequently sees women (and let’s face it, men too) in casts, wrist braces or special medical boots. This weekend I joined their ranks.

I was all by myself when I did a header on Zacateros street around 2:00 Sunday morning. Yes, I was drunk but not THAT drunk. The problem was those blasted steps from Umaran onto Zacateros. If they aren’t bad enough, there is a rain gutter in the street at the same point. And I should have known better to have been walking with my hands in my pockets. I had nothing to put out in front of me to break my fall.

I landed on my right eye and the frame of my glasses cut a nice gash above my eye. At the time, I didn't realize that it was so bad. I picked up my glasses and put my hand to my head and felt it wet. I walked to La Cucaracha (my old watering hole and most famous dive cantina in San Miguel) to get cleaned up and German, the bartender, told me I needed to go to the hospital. I said no, I just needed to clean my face. He then took me into the woman’s bathroom and pointed me toward the mirror. "Oh shit!" was all I could say. (Picture a scene from Halloween II here, alternating red stripes down my face and a large flap of skin hanging lose above my eye.)

There is a private gringo hospital but I have been told that for trauma care, one is better off going to the new General Hospital. With a wad of toilet paper pressed to my wound, I got in a taxi and said, “Hospital General por favor.”

There were few people in the waiting room and I was admitted immediately. When I was asked what happened I really didn’t have the language skills for the details that I would have liked to share so they had to make do with the Spanish equivalent of, “I am drunk and fall.” (They probably wanted to know if I’d been in a fight or mugged in case they needed to notify the police.)

A nice young lady doctor cleaned me up, gave me a couple of injections in the forehead and proceeded with the sewing task. (I should mention that this is the first time that I’ve had stitches since my appendix was removed when I was 11 years old.) The sensation was not entirely unpleasant. I think I actually dozed off for a few minutes.

During the entire process she was very friendly. But then, after the stitching was completed, she asked me if I had a wife. I said no, that I have a husband. After that her tone changed slightly and I detected a note of sarcasm. I was glad that she was done sewing me up by the time that she asked the question; otherwise she might have taken a little less care.

She gave me a prescription for antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory and sent me on my way. At the front desk I stopped to pay my bill. 150 pesos (about $13 USD). A taxi was waiting out front and I took it home.

The swelling began the next day and is only beginning to subside today. After removing the bandage, Rod counted 18 stitches. The scar starts above my eyebrow, passes through about half of it and finishes on the side of my face; kind of like a lightning bolt. (Rod says I just wanted to look like Harry Potter.) It is starting to become black and blue.

We had our regular doctor look at it today. He said that they did a good job at the hospital, but I’ll probably have trouble growing half my eyebrow back.

Some time ago I gave my doctor and his wife a hard time for not wearing helmets when ridding their motorcycles. And now they do. “Maybe you should wear one when you’re walking,” he told me. I guess he got the last word on that one.

Semana Santa (holy week) 2010

The seeds were planted at Christmas. A couple of Rod’s cousins were staying at the ranchito and we began to talk about how fun it would be to invite a bunch of family members here for a camping vacation. We just needed to decide what would be the best time of year.

Rod decided that Semana Santa was it; the kids are out of school and many of the parents take time off, and typically there is no rain. So he sent out an invitation to his family on his father’s side and we expected as many as 15 to 20 people might want to come.

“How many are we up to?” I asked.

“I don’t want to tell you; you might freak out.”

“Last you told me we were at 30. Anything over that is the same. I’m numb after that.”

“50.”

“Who even has 50 immediate family members!”

“That’s just my father’s side.”

“We need to order at least one porta-potty.”

Emails began flying back and forth. I was copied in all of them but they were in Spanish, too complicated and full of idioms for me to follow. I expressed my apprehension to a friend’s mother. “If they’re Mexican it won’t be a problem,” she said.

An Excel spread sheet arrived, with every family’s cooking and clean-up schedule. Breakfasts were the responsibility of each family individually; comida (the main afternoon meal) was to be divided by families to cook for everyone. I only had to cook when the first 20 people arrived on Wednesday and clean-up on Saturday. Rod had more assignments (mostly pertaining to barbequing because he is the grill queen) but I was only concerned about what I had to do.

The night before the first guests arrived, we had dinner at a restaurant with a friend who was visiting from Spain. Rod was up all night with food poisoning.

The next day I got to meet and great 20 family members and serve them comida while Rod could barely lift his head off the pillow on the sofa. When people began unloading I began reheating the spaghetti sauce that I’d had the good sense to prepare the day before. I enlisted help from the maid and eight-months-pregnant cousin Chelo to prepare the garlic bread and salad.

Comida came off without a hitch. Everyone seemed to enjoy my gringo meal and very little food, if any, was leftover.

The maid stopped the children from throwing rocks in the fish pond while the parents were setting up the tents. The kiddy pool was filling. In the mean time, I remembered that we had balloons leftover from previous parties and got the idea to start making water balloons. (I think I earned the award of best gringo uncle ever that day.)

I put the eldest child (14) in charge of building the campfire, brought out marshmallows for roasting and a guitar for anyone who could play. Everyone checked on Rod from time to time and he even made an appearance briefly; but then staggered back to his couch. I stayed up until 11:00 PM, conversing completely in my bad Spanish the entire time. I fell into bed exhausted.

The next morning we awoke to children playing in the hammock outside our bedroom door. By the time I was showered and dressed, more people were starting to arrive. I walked out into the kitchen and was thrilled when Rod’s three-year-old nephew (who had left Cuernavaca at 5:00 AM with his family) jumped into my arms.

The days began to wash together after that. The porta-potty arrived, tents kept springing up, the front of the house became a parking lot. People took orders and ran to the supermarket, an uncle bought a pump and figured out how to string all the hoses together and wind them around the yard in order to solar heat the kiddy pool. A “Slip and Slide” was a huge success.


I received a lot of, “Charles do you have this,” or “Where can we find that,” but all in all, I was so impressed by the way everyone chipped in while at the same time being so respectful of our space. They would hardly enter the main house without permission. (But the casita was a zoo.) Food arrived in piles and I engaged in recycle education (not available in Mexico City). One couple asked what score I gave them (1 to 10) on their recycle prowess. I gave them a 4. After that they became the recycle guards and quickly moved up to a 9.

I learned a lot. I learned that you don’t have to be “on” the entire time. It is ok to nap or to find a private corner, jumping into the fray when the mood strikes you. I learned to delegate, I learned to let go and let whatever happens, happen. I learned that your Spanish doesn’t have to be perfect. I learned that a child in need is a child in need and one doesn’t need to be their parent to take care of them. (Sometimes it was difficult to determine which child belonged to whom.) I learned that in a family this large, if something is broken, someone will know how to fix it. (More than once I saw someone walking across the property with a toilet plunger.) I learned to play dominos.

They also understood the economic impact of such an event and everyone chipped in to pay for the porta-potty, the beer I’d bought in advance and even for the gas to heat the hot water for showers and such. I tried to refuse but they would not take “no” for an answer. (I also received gifts of wine and chocolate.)

Despite my occasional feeling of being overwhelmed, I was sad when the cars began to pack up and leave. And my heart melted when a carload of children yelled, “Adios Tio Charles,” as they drove off.

I’ve received several Facebook messages from Rod’s family, thanking us for hosting the event. One cousin went so far as to say, “Me and my family will remember this weekend for the rest of our lives.”


When it is all said and done, I find this an amazing tribute to Rodrigo. The fact that he is so loved by his family that all these couples, these aunts, uncles, cousins, all married in the Catholic church, would pack up their camping gear and children to spend a long weekend with him and his gringo boyfriend.

So if anyone tries to tell you that Mexico has a backwards, macho, un-accepting culture, tell them to put this story in their pipe and smoke it.

A Non-Disposable culture

(First let me apologize for being so remiss about blog entries. I blame it on Facebook. Once I started using Facebook it simply became easier to post photos there, and to limit myself to one sentence musings. I’ll try to get better.)

About 20 years ago, I bought a vacuum cleaner; an Electrolux Ambasador III. At the time, it was a pretty top-of-the-line canister model.

Vacuuming in Mexico doesn’t seem to be common. In general, carpet isn’t common. Tile and area rugs seem to be the norm here. The tools of choice are brooms and mops.

When shopping for vacuum cleaners in San Miguel, I found little more than glorified shop vacs, and those that were a more substantial, cost a fortune. So when I moved my things from the States, I brought my trusty Electrolux.

After my maid learned how to vacuum without the Electrolux eating the area rug fringe, she became quite attached and began vacuuming everything from dog beds to drapes. But then one day the “power nozzle” began to make a terrible noise and the brushes stopped turning. I was a little cavalier about it, and figured that she’d just have to use the other attachments.

Rod and I returned from a trip out of town to find that our maid’s husband had disassembled the power nozzle and found the source of the problem; a faulty belt. He had also looked all over San Miguel and deduced that no such belts were to be found here. The power nozzle was disassembled and a ziplock bag lay on the counter, the contents labeled, “tornillos de la aspiradora” (screws for the vacuum cleaner). From this I gleaned that the maid really wanted her power nozzle.

I set to work on the internet, researching belt replacements. And after receiving one incorrect belt, I finally found, ordered and received the correct belt. Today I reassembled the power nozzle and the maid was off and running.

What struck me about the entire process (which took me about five months) was how different I’ve become. In the U.S., I would have thrown the whole thing out and bought a new one. The culture is different here. Why would one throw out a perfectly good piece of equipment if only one part is not working? It is also an economical thing. It is cheaper to fix something than to replace it. I also look at it from an earth-wise standpoint. The old vacuum didn’t end up in a landfill somewhere.

Call it a cultural difference, call it the economic crisis, call it what you will. But I was patient, enduring (maybe a little cheap) and very proud of myself today. (But there is an extra screw in the bag and I don’t know where it goes.)