Home Sweet Anywhere

by Lynne Martin

  He peered over his sunglasses and smiled at me. “Sure, baby, sounds fine to me, but don’t you think your list is a little long for one day?”

  He did have a point. Not only is San Miguel’s mañana syndrome infectious (if it’s not urgent, it can wait until tomorrow; if it is urgent…it can wait until tomorrow), but its 6,500-foot elevation augmented our sea level torpor considerably in the first few days. We offer that cautionary note to first-timers considering a trip here.

  “Well, maybe you’re right, but could we at least try?” I countered, my voice muffled by a big bite of chorizo.

  Tim shrugged in compliance.

  We moved fast by our standards, said good-bye to Angelica and company, and crunched down the driveway by 10:30, heading for town. Once there, we ran into a stately parade heading for El Centro. Dozens of taxis, buses, and cars rattled along on the cobblestoned streets, harmoniously taking turns at the four-way intersections and graciously allowing one another to turn as necessary. No one honked. Pedestrians took their time. It was amazing! The only ones we had to look out for were other Americans who hadn’t caught on to the courtesy and kindness of their host country. The Mexican way is hard for some gringos to understand.

  The Mexican government declared San Miguel a national monument in the 1920s, and its charm has been preserved. There are no traffic lights, neon signs, or chain stores. The place looks as it did four hundred fifty years ago, and the courteous behavior of most of its inhabitants makes one think of more gracious times. In fact, during the mid-nineteenth century, the Mexican government instituted Las Cortesías, a plan for civil behavior, which every well-bred Mexican is taught from childhood. For instance, it would be unthinkable to not say good morning or good afternoon to a shopkeeper, or fail to say “gracias” when departing the store, whether or not there was a transaction. All conversations must begin with inquiries about the health of family, and gentlemen still open doors for ladies and rise when one enters the room. It’s all part of the slower pace. We have to relearn that cadence every time we arrive in San Miguel, but we are grateful for it.

  Tim wheeled into the parking lot, where a large black Labrador with a neon pink collar was deep in the uninterrupted nap he seemed to enjoy every time we came here. An enormous, garish, four-foot glazed pottery chicken sat atop the rudimentary carport. It’s a colorful town.

  We struck out at a brisk pace, a dangerous thing to do on four-hundred-year-old uneven stone streets with foot-high flagstone curbs that dip and rise without warning. I have been among the casualties of San Miguel’s curbs, spending half my vacation limping around town with an ugly bright blue brace, the kneecap cut out. From that experience, I learned two cardinal survival rules for this town I love: Never look up from the ground when walking, and leave the high heels at home. Of course, gorgeous local girls prance around San Miguel in five-inch stilettos as if they were strutting down a runway. It’s maddening to me, clomping along in my sensible sandals, bent over to watch my step like a soldier looking for land mines. But I’d rather forego the heels than risk another stint in the blue brace.

  Our first stop: candles. Everyone in town buys their candles at the mortuary because they are an appealing honey color, they burn for a long time, and they do not drip. I found it a little disconcerting to count out pesos over a tiny white satin coffin, but you get used to it. After a lively conversation with the owner about the fine day, the health of our families and ourselves, and the new restaurant opening on Insurgentes, we eventually completed the transaction. Observing these courtesies is one reason we find it hard to accomplish more than one or two tasks a day, but again, they make us appreciate life more.

  We continued our march up the hill to Juan’s, the local coffee hangout populated mostly by Americans and Canadians. Tim was anxious to say hello and also to check out the latest crop of movies on DVD. Juan, the popular Mexican man who presides over the place, serves great coffee and provides San Miguel’s gringo population with an essential supply of movies, TV series, foreign films, and other normally unavailable entertainment opportunities. Over the years, he and Tim have struck up a jocular relationship, bonding over obscure movies. “Señor Teeeem,” Juan shouted at us above the din of caffeine-fueled conversation and a strumming James Taylor. “You’re back!” The two launched into one of their esoteric exchanges about past and present movie trivia, while I gazed longingly at the customers’ delicious food and drink, wondering how long it would be until we stopped for lunch.

  Tim wrapped up his private film festival and added a handful of DVDs to the candle purchases in our bag featuring Frida Kahlo’s unibrowed face. We walked purposefully down the street, headed for Chelo’s, the downtown drugstore a few blocks up the hill. By now, the sun rode high in the sky. As we passed Harry’s Bar, Tim said casually, “I’m really thirsty. Want to take a little break?”

  I hesitated, my brain foggy from the heat. Let’s see…first day back in San Miguel…hot…thirsty… Harry’s. I’ve got it! Margaritas! “Thank you, sir, don’t mind if I do,” I giggled.

  We stepped past the shiny brass antique shoeshine chair that marks the entrance to a San Miguel institution where gringos and Mexicans mingle in a New Orleans-like atmosphere for drinks, conversation, and a good lunch, dinner, or Sunday brunch.

  Bob, the owner, was perched at his regular table. He was debonair as always, dressed in a poplin jacket, a silk tie loose at his neck, and expensive loafers perfectly shined. A fresh hangover encircled him like a halo. He was engrossed in deep conversation with a local land developer and a lawyer we vaguely recognized. Bob seemed to have lots of lawyer conversations. His real-estate escapades, restaurant activities, and other high-profile hijinks were hot topics in the expat gossip mill in San Miguel. He was always good fun and a source of the latest news in the community.

  When he saw us, he pumped Tim’s hand and pecked my cheek. Apparently, the business meeting was over, so we settled in for a drink and a chat.

  Friends stopped at the table, passing along tales and local updates. An hour evaporated. When he saw us, Don Julio, our charming favorite waiter who had once worked for the snazziest hotel in town, performed his ritual hand kissing, which always amused both of us. He asked if we wanted a table. By then, we were famished, and we repaired with two friends, Merry and Ben Calderoni (whom we’d run into while chatting with Bob) to a table in the red dining room with its high ceilings and crown molding. The dining room was exquisite, its huge paintings and sparkling white linens reflective of the grand old-world Spanish influence here, and its long windows with louvered shutters keeping the noise and heat of the street away from diners.

  Merry is an artist whose colorful, expressive paintings and collages are internationally popular. She and her husband, Ben, a real-estate executive, were the first people we had met on our first trip to San Miguel years ago. We had stayed at their bed and breakfast, and Ben joined us at breakfast, entertaining us with hilarious tales of San Miguel lore that only a longtime local can spin. To give us a sense of what Merry did, he suggested we visit La Aurora and see Merry’s studio at the back of the building. We went that very day and were taken with the huge, brick-walled space. It was at least sixty feet long and forty feet wide, with twenty-foot ceilings. Since Merry worked on huge canvases, it suited her perfectly. After admiring her paintings, Tim said, “Merry, Ben said this morning that when you two were in college in Texas, you used him in your bullwhip act.”

  She laughed. “I was doing my bullwhip show, which was how I paid for college tuition, and he offered to be my assistant. He gave me a drink before we went on. The trouble was that I didn’t tell him that I’d never even had a beer before, because I wanted him to think I was sophisticated. There he stood, twelve feet away, posed sideways with a cigarette in his mouth. I had done this hundreds of times before, but not with a shot of tequila under my belt.

  “I damned near cut his nose off. There wasn’t much blood. It was just a nick, and he healed up nicely, but he never offered to be my
subject again.”

  As she finished her story, she stepped into her office and returned with a bullwhip in each hand. WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! Tim and I jumped as those thin pieces of leather cracked eleven feet across her studio; an empty tin paint can clattered to the floor. I wondered what their marriage was really like.

  Bullwhips aside, years later, we were still good friends. As we sat down with them, Tim and I ordered arrachera, marinated skirt steak. When prepared properly, arrachera is so tender that a knife isn’t necessary. We once took a prominent chef to Harry’s for dinner, and he actually made snuffling noises as he plowed through a huge plateful of the stuff. We enjoyed it this time, too, but managed to avoid the piglike sound effects. When Don Julio presented our plates, he murmured, “Buen provecho,” another part of Las Cortesías culture. It means more than bon appétit. It literally wishes the diner good use of the food.

  As we sipped the last of our coffee, Merry and Ben invited us to join them for dinner at the hottest new spot in town—a restaurant within the local bullring. I do not do bullfights—ever. However, when they assured and then reassured me that the restaurant offered a great view of the city, terrific food, and no bullfighting the day we were going, I agreed. We made a plan for later that week.

  After a commotion of good-byes and promises to come back soon, we stepped out into the warm lull of the afternoon siesta. We stood there a moment and looked up the hill toward Chelo’s. “You know, we COULD drop off those prescriptions tomorrow, and I’ll bet Marcia is closed for siesta by now,” I said. “I can cut a few flowers from Sally’s garden, so we don’t have to go all the way down to the flower market, but I do feel like a bum. We didn’t get ANYTHING done today.”

  Tim smiled.

  I sighed. “We just played.”

  Tim turned in the direction of the car park, jingling his keys, and started down the hill. “Nonsense, we did TWO things, which is twice as much as usual!” he said over his shoulder. I followed him down the street, laughing all the way back to the big chicken guarding the car. Mañana is always good enough in Mexico.

  It’s not that Mexicans are lazy. In truth, most Mexican people work terribly hard. But they simply value family and respect more than money and power, so their timetables are not always as precise or rushed as those of some other cultures. Their priorities are much more European than American, and that attitude is one of the things that draws us back to San Miguel repeatedly.

  We spent the rest of the day lolling on Sally’s wonderful terrace, peacefully watching the sunset while we carried on our private conversation, focusing on our plans for spending seven months in Europe following our two-month stay in Buenos Aires. We were still glowing with pleasure because we had made the big leap into the world, and we were eager to explore all the possibilities that had opened up to us.

  We talked excitedly about the next day, too, when we would see our Mexican “family.” Our friend Maribel Barrios had invited us to join in their semiannual tamale-making event. The family befriended us when we lived in San Miguel originally, and through the years we had been privileged to share both the joy of celebration and pain of profound loss with them. Maribel was also our property manager when we first arrived here. Soon we dubbed her our fifth daughter. As our friendship grew, she introduced us to her family and their traditions, most of which involved food, like every culture in the world.

  This family, though, has raised humble food to a fine art. Twice each year, everyone—from Lidia, the matriarch of the Hernandez Vilchis family, who is about my age, to Regina, her youngest granddaughter—gathers at Lidia’s pink adobe house for the complicated, labor-intensive production of hundreds of tamales. A crowd of women—cousins, aunts, daughters, and sometimes a lucky outsider like me—performs a graceful dance in the kitchen known as a “gang cook.” Some form of built-in radar allows us to work together easily and seamlessly in close quarters, stepping out of the way when someone passes from one part of the room to the other carrying a big bowl of chicken, or one of us quickly washing a bowl and handing it to the person who’s been charged with mixing up a little salsa, without bumping into anyone else. In Lidia’s kitchen, we laugh a LOT, even though one of us (yours truly) doesn’t speak very good Spanish. Usually, my poor Spanish causes the most uproarious giggles. They’re so sweet, though, that I don’t mind at all being the butt of the joke.

  Lidia’s culinary talents are amazing. Everything she makes, from red sauce to flan to pozole, is the best I’ve ever had. But the red sauce is truly ambrosial. It’s used over enchiladas, poured around chicken parts and baked, drizzled on tamales, anywhere an intense chili flavor with a pop of heat is required. Although she has given me specific instructions for producing it, my rendition has never come close to equaling hers. I’m convinced that Lidia’s red sauce poured over anything is a religious experience.

  The men in the family are involved, too, though much of their contributions run along the lines of drinking beer, watching soccer on television, and passing through the kitchen to sneak a few tortilla chips with fresh guacamole or salsa. Tim excels in this area of male solidarity, and his lack of Spanish does not interfere with his male bonding skills in the least. In fairness, masculine brawn is necessary for toting the enormous pots, which have been carefully layered with hundreds of tamales and filled with hot water. Since the pots are so big, Lidia’s small stove can’t accommodate them, and they are distributed among neighbors’ kitchens around the barrio, or community. The men lug them to their destinations and check them regularly as the tamales simmer to perfection. Then they tote them back to Lidia’s for distribution among the family. Each nuclear group receives Ziploc bags for their freezers, filled with enough tamales to last until the next session in another six months.

  Tamales combine masa (milled corn), lard, and seasonings—three of the major food groups, as far as I’m concerned. The dough is flavored to complement the filling, so Lidia’s kitchen usually contains four cauldrons of the fluffy mixture: one sweet, two medium, and one blazing with chiles and spices. The tamale maker spreads a wet corn silk in her palm, plops a big spoonful of masa onto the leaf, and slap!, presses it flat, and adds a smaller spoonful of chicken, beef, fruit, or fiery chiles in the middle. Then, she skillfully folds the edges together and ties up the whole thing into a neat little package with raffia string bow.

  Before long Lidia’s table groaned with tidy rows of tamales, grouped by filling type. How beautiful to behold all of this handmade food. The kitchen mirth increased as we toasted each other with my most valuable contribution: a decent tequila.

  ***

  That afternoon, after the men horsed the last pot of tamales down the street, it was time for dinner and more cooking. Seriously! Lidia’s kitchen, with its high ceilings and a hodgepodge of tables that serve as work surfaces, kept on humming the entire day. We immediately began the monumental cleanup process. With few cabinets, she creatively tucked and stacked pots, pans, dishes, and food here and there in scrupulously clean chaos. The floral oilcloth covering the table for eight (or up to ten if little kids share a big person’s lap) in the center of the room was sprayed and wiped constantly. Practiced hands hurriedly dispatched the dirty pots and pans. Out came the dinner ingredients. Lidia’s famous red sauce, crumbly Mexican cheese, carrots, onions, potatoes, and a huge stack of tortillas appeared. She banged heavy skillets onto the burners. I watched all of this in amazement.

  Maribel, chatting with me at the table, hardly looked at her hands as she worked on an onion. As I watched her chopping away, I gasped and grabbed her arm. “Stop it, Maribel, you’re making me crazy!”

  She looked at me as if I was crazy. “What on earth are you talking about?” she asked in alarm and dropped the onion, perfectly diced in quarter-inch squares, onto the plate in front of her. I pointed at her knife in horror. Using a small flimsy, plastic handled, razor-sharp knife (like those that run three for a buck at The Dollar Store), she cradled a whole onion in her left hand and sawed furiously up and down,
barely missing her palm and fingers with each stroke. I was terrified that one little slip would lop off her beautiful fingers.

  Maribel patiently explained that her method is just how it’s done in Mexico. There’s none of that Emeril-style technique, tucking fingers into your palm to guide a knife with your knuckles and spare your fingers any unwanted slices. Mexican cooks are the real deal. Each potato, carrot, and onion becomes tiny uniform squares with their hair-raising technique.

  Maribel continued, but I couldn’t watch.

  A food production quartet formed on the stove side of the kitchen. Lidia played first chair as she stood over the huge iron frying pan full of bubbling red sauce. She coated a tortilla with sauce, drained it for a second, and moved it onto a plate with tongs. Anna, Maribel’s architect sister-in-law who had driven in for tamale day from Guanajuato, fifty miles away, oversaw the cheese-filling station, crumbling a fat line of cheese down the middle of the tortilla and rolling it into a log. After another scoop of red sauce from Lidia, the plate shifted to Maribel. She anointed the log with a big spoonful of diced veggies sautéed in butter. Auriella, sitting roughly in the fourth chair, added a chicken leg. She delivered the plate to the table where eight expectant diners waited eagerly among super-size Coke bottles, cold beer, bowls filled with various salsas, and piles of chopped cilantro.

  There were so many of us that new diners had to trade places with those who had finished to get at the food. Finally, Lidia sat down across from me to enjoy her composition. As we laughed and talked about our grandchildren, her deep brown eyes sparkled. Her talents extend far beyond the kitchen. She worked terribly hard to give all six of her children the education she feels they deserve, ensuring that every one of them graduated from high school and got a college education. (Not an easy feat for most people in San Miguel in Lidia’s family’s economic situation.) This is what we love about connecting with people from all walks of life here. Our Mexican friends are like their sauces: richly nuanced with depth and subtlety, spice and warmth. They are imbued with a secret ingredient, a kindness that they spread to us with generosity every time we are lucky enough to be with them.