Skip to main content

In death there is life

Today was the hottest day so far in Cuernavaca, and I had pre-booked a tennis lesson at the height of the sun's rising. The hour and a half private lesson was $28 and my coaches were very experienced and helpful. I say coaches because one had to start and hand me over to the second as the first coach was double-booked, and when the lesson was scheduled, the coordinator who scheduled it wasn't totally in the loop. In any case, it gave me a chance to sample each coach and decide with whom I want to continue. Amauri Flores will be my coach from now on, and so Thursday I will go back hopefully a bit more improved. 

After the lesson, I was grateful for my mom who picked me up. Even though the tennis club is within walking distance, I was spent, and walking uphill on a busy road with dust and smog sticking to me just didn't appeal to me. I was also ever so grateful for my mom's sparkling swimming pool smiling at me with its shiny bright blue teeth. My mom joined in and swam her laps she has been mastering since she was a teenager. At 81, she moves well and has all her analog-version wits intact. Once they are digitized, it's another story.

She was so frustrated with herself because she told me that tomorrow she has a dentist appointment, but couldn't remember the name of her dentist, or the phone number, so she didn't have the exact location. I tried to show her how to use Google Maps, and search for a dental practice that may resonate. She was in San Antonio Texas according to Google. Suddenly, she remembered that she had called the dentist's office a week earlier from her cell phone, and so she called at least a dozen anonymous numbers listed in her call history in search of the dentist. 

I was lying by the pool, and over and over I heard, "Hello? Who is this? Who? No, it's not you...But why do I have this number? Oh, ok thank you." This was her robocall script that at least 5 people were subjected to. Fate must have been looking down and taken pity, because just then her dentist's office called to confirm her appointment. "Yupi!" as they say in Spanish here. 

N.B. Please don't take this recounting the wrong way. I am not laughing at my mom's expense, but rather writing from a place of endearment and also humility as God only knows whether I will reach 81 with such zeal and comical influence.

In the afternoon my funny mom and I went on a quest to find decorations for our home altar in remembrance of our dearly departed. In our case, it will be my dad, my husband, my grandparents (abuelos), and my mom's oldest sister. We found lots of festive things in the public market but since it is such a busy time, the stalls had overflowed into the parking lot. That is where the freshest skulls, flowers, and pierced paper were waiting for us. 

Cheap and cheerful decorations abound

I'll take a coffin and a sugar skull to go,
please


For the 31st of October, I will be in Mexico City to attempt to watch the massive parade that didn't exist until in 2015 a James Bond film, Specter filmed a fictitious scene in Mexico City of a Day of the Dead parade taking over the downtown core. It looked so real, that the Mexico City government decided to give it life, and ever since then, the parade gets bigger and bigger. I'll stay with a friend, but if it's too busy we'll do something else to avoid the crowds. I will go prepared, wearing my face mask and crown of seasonal flowers to blend into the crowd.
Going native for the Day of the Dead


After our successful shopping trip, my mom and I celebrated by going out for ice cream to one of the most traditional local ice-cream shops called Helados Santa Clara.  The warm evening air had an intoxicating grip on us and we didn't want to say goodbye to it just yet by being indoors at home. I chose a sensible cup for my ice cream while my mom asked for a sugar cone with the same enthusiasm the little girl sitting behind us delighted in her sugary treat. 

Helados Santa Clara never dissapoints!



Tomorrow we will continue building our altar, injecting life into death through the memories, mementos, and faith we have that life is here with us now and continues beyond the rising sun of Mexico.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The house of the "earth element" gods

When you cross through the threshold of the Anahuacali  museum in the southern region of Mexico City, you quickly realize this is no ordinary structure. From the outside, the museum looks like a four-cornered pyramid, a concept by Diego Rivera intended as an artistic acknowledgment of his Mexican heritage and the earth-element gods.  The four elements are represented by their respective gods in each corner of the building: for the earth, the corn goddess Chicomecóatl; for the air, Ehécatl, god of the wind; Huehuetéotl, god of fire, and for water, Tláloc, god of rain.  The only god I felt a connection with that day was the sun god, whom I was thankful for on a warm February morning.  Museo Anahuacali -house on land between two seas Diego Rivera's concept for the building also had a practical purpose. He needed a space to house and display his private collection of roughly 2,000 pre-Hispanic figurines and sculptures. He apparently chose this geographical area of Mexico...
2 comments
Read more

The Italian who unearthed the Mexican past

My father, Dr. Charles R. Wicke, was a very humble man. He died in 2012 at the age of 84, but before he started to deteriorate I convinced him to put together an online version of his memoir. In it, he shared some of his early experiences in South  America and Mexico as an anthropologist/archaeologist in the 1950s-60s. By the time he met my mom in 1964 at Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology he had been in Mexico 10 years, published a book on one of Mexico's oldest civilizations, and had mastered the Spanish language. He also had earned the trust and respect of the anthropological academic community. I've known all this for years, but once in a while, more fascinating facts are unearthed from the past in serendipitous ways.  With Marco Vigato in Mexico City Today I met the person responsible for one of those new discoveries. Marco Vigato is an Italian independent researcher living in Mexico City with his wife and two kids. A few months ago I received an unsolicited emai...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kicking up my Heels at the Grand Hotel Ciudad de Mexico

A few days ago I played tennis for the first time in a while and reinjured my right ankle which had been strained from consistently playing tennis on hard court surface. In Canada, the surface I play on is soft, like clay and it is much more forgiving on the joints. I've been icing and hobbling along for a few days and today I woke up to find my left ankle in more pain than the right one, most likely due to the fact that I have been compensating for the injury of the right ankle. I'll be okay, I know, but as I am impatient by nature and as I am within the last third of my Mexico trip, it's hard for me to stop in my tracks and literally put my feet up. "Hmm, where should I do this, so it really counts?" I thought to myself. And then I remembered one of my must-see destinations was denied a few months ago by a security guard at the Grand Hotel Mexico City. I had been in the historic city centre, and wanted to go in the famous hotel lobby to take some pictures, but...
2 comments
Read more