Sentimental Drivel

When I listen to the life stories of my students, I am no longer stunned by the rough edges, the splinters, the rusty nails. There was a time when I was shocked by their intimacy with violence and poverty, but I've come to understand that their experiences are probably more common globally than mine. Now I'm stunned rather when I think of my own childhood. When I was a little girl, I lived in a big white house with pillars, two parents and a wide green lawn. From my front porch swing, I could see the balloon man perched on his stool at the corner. In my memory, it was an old stool, with metal legs and a wooden seat, but that's a detail beyond my point. The point really is: there was a balloon man who worked my corner. Stephen King might be able to turn something like that sinister, but it wasn't; it was simply idyllic. I remember sometimes I could have a balloon, and I remember sometimes crossing to talk to the balloon man even if we weren't there to get one. There are a thousand other details from my childhood I could add, some things about the smell of chlorine, golf clubs cut to my size, storing marigold seeds in a coffee can in the winter and Father Walsh--one of many retired Jesuits who lived across the street and would toddle across for a visit, a nip and to quiz me in math--but I'm thinking about the balloon man tonight because of things that are no longer: like the days in which a knife sharpener was not a plastic tool thrown carelessly into the kitchen junk drawer but a man who walked the streets. One of the things I like about it here is that those jobs still exist. Each morning, we have woken to the sounds of men climbing through the alleyways in our neighborhood hawking their wares, shouting out or playing flute to alert their customers they're at hand. We have seen the local knife sharpener several times; he carries a red toolbox on a leather strap across his chest just like the one I remember the knife sharpener from my childhood carrying and he has a lovely whistle. I saw him on the street and had a brilliant, vivid, layered and happy memory of being a kid. Just that.

We spent the morning putting our last things together for our return trip to SMA and Mike came for our check out. A regret from our stay in GTO was not hearing more of his stories. We chatted just a bit this morning before we took off and learned that in addition to living in Mexico for these past 20 years, he also lived in Guatemala for five years in the mid 1970s. He was there, in fact, for the earthquake in 1976 which, we learned last summer, devastated whole areas. He and his wife owned several stores, two in Antigua and another in Panajachel, and, despite the absence of roads as we know them in the States, would travel to the outlying villages to purchase indigenous handicrafts to sell in them. Given the Guatemala with rather rudimentary infrastructure we experienced over three decades later, it sounds like quite an adventure to have had at the time they were there. While we had to leave to catch our bus, he was a pleasure to talk to and to listen to (hard sometimes to find both in one person) and we would recommend renting from him to anyone traveling in Guanajuato: La Casa de Dona Ana or Guanajuato B & B.

Unfortunately, I haven't been my level best the last 24 hours because of my intestines having been removed and replaced with a sausage grinder while I wasn't looking. It comes with the territory of reckless eating; I'm not sure which poison it might be that my body is fighting: the steady ingestion of regular milk and cheese, the possibly foul and contaminated street food that is so delicious and worth it in the moment or some questionable water I may have had with lunch yesterday (but I was SO thirsty). Still and all, Chris had a tongue taco by accident and he's fine: not fair. In any case, it fell well: we arrived back in SMA in time for a downpour so I overlapped my not feeling all that well with being trapped indoors by the rain with some school work I needed to submit anyway. We downloaded a movie and are going to hunker down for the rest of the evening and head out into the world of Mexico again in the morning.