Blog Three- Two Canadians about Town

Aramara neighborhood. Three-story residences in purple, yellow, green, and blue dot the view across the street from the Aramara Market, two blocks away, and there resides a bus stop with benches; many people are usually assembled there, including multitudinous small-business entrepreneurs. It’s a heavily-travelled place with several lanes of traffic across a very wide couple of streets. Traffic lights remain subdued, but they are there, and if you walk fast you can usually get across, except, of course for the odd turning lane that one forgets to see before a line of cars quietly nudge close, in a metallic plea to move along, many playing music at some deafening decibel level, each on a different chanel. Mexicans have music and dancing, family and food as love languages, and it is evident in everyday life.

There are, so far as this casual observer can note, a ratio of 1 out of 2 Canadians to Americans, perhaps 1 out of 3. They too, it seems, find the culture indulgent, peacefully accepting, and tolerant of the hordes of “us.” All in all, it seems to them that the world is sending them the rich Northerners to bring cash resources. And I suspect our relationship is far more complicated under the surface, although it may take years to figure that out properly.

The sky this moring is gorgeous, all swirls of blue, and pinks and purples. It rises late by Colorado standards. Suddenly here, at 7:44 in the morning, it became light. Boom! Isn’t it interesting how one’s home is the “normal” and how I can forget that everywhere else is different? Nightime is the same — an early evening suddenly crashes, hours before I am ready. Hemispheres and latitudes suddenly enter my mind, when I’ve not often thought of them previously.

The Lavezzi family has lost someone this week. Brother Bill’s wife Lynn has been an invalid for years, and this past week, suffered a stroke. Hospice was called in and within the space of one day, one short day, she had departed her physical restraints. Good for her! Their joint families, including the three adult children and grands have pulled above their weight during this long illness too.

Among the many others, Lew and I, daughter Kelley as well, so far as we know, will be leaving this coming weekend for Cleveland to honor her life and stand shoulder to shoulder for witness and prayers. She lived a good and long life, and will be mourned by so many.

Another time, certainly not right now, I want to acknowledge what seems to be natural and common – we most frequently think of death in some future sense, inescapably as an unreality, like science fiction that doesn’t really happen — until it does. I wonder why that is…?

We will return to PV the 22nd, and are sorting out our summery clothes to bless ourselves with warmth for the Cleveland chill. We think of various ways of getting prepared with appropriate shoes and wintery, wooly, dark sorts of abrupt climate changes. We live in marvelous technological times, where the great outdoors is only endured for a few minutes at a time — Thank God!.

And on another note, we successfully completed not one but two bus rides yesterday. The measure of success being to go where one intended, on the correct transportation vehicle and returning without having to walk a mile to find connection. We rock! One of those smiling, afable Canadians told us that they always took the bus after they moved here, as it made so much sense, and is so easy. Ha! The photo is of yesterday’s vehicle, demonstrating the multiple industrial uses of empty soda bottles as levers against side-mirrors, and as stabilizers for the heavy plastic separators behind the driver. And the utility of hanging stuffed monkeys as security totems. The main route destinations are conveniently written on the front window.

Another difference between being in a neighborhood versus being downtown in the hotel, or the “romantic” area is that it is much easier to eat where menu choices are written in English, and where people speak in charming, accented English to us. Out here in the Aramara, we stumble a lot trying on our oh-so-inept Spanish and in a restaurant, wonder what the heck we actually ordered, after it appears, unrecognizably, on a plate. Homemade tortillas replace bread usually, and lots of gyros-style tacos, those meat on a spit machines are popular, called Tacos Al Pastor.

So far, all yummy edible,whatever it was.

Prayers for all those who struggle, the living, the dying, the dead.

Thanks greatly for walking along with us in this la vida loca Some of you have sent me your own experiences, and that makes it so much richer.