by Laura Fraser
As my house takes shape, so does the community around me. At times, I worry that as enchanted as I am with the town, I might not fit in with its people. Friends in San Francisco have questioned why someone who travels to remote parts of the world would buy a house in such a gringo-infested town. Indeed, I run across retirees who’ve built dream houses that, aside from the cost, might as well be in suburban Texas; some scarcely bother to learn enough Spanish to say “Gracias.” I see women in heavy jewelry whose puppet faces display their penchant for cheap plastic surgery. There are “healers” who seem to have attained their degrees by dint of crossing the border, throwing on a shawl, and listening to a few Eckhart Tolle tapes. But there are people in every town who are not your crowd, and there are few enough of them in San Miguel that they’re easy to avoid.
There are also people like me here, who want to mingle in another culture, learn to speak another language, soak up the colors and sun, and work on creative projects and who recognize that it isn’t easy for a single woman in her forties to plop herself down in any town in Italy or Mexico, that she would be too much of an outsider, and too alone, without a community of others who have ventured here before her. There’s a balance between what’s foreign and familiar, what’s daring and safe.
The more time I spend in San Miguel, the more depth I find in the people I encounter. The cafés are full of artists and photographers, and many of them are serious about their work, some world class. Just as the plain faces of the houses in San Miguel hide magnificent courtyards and whimsical houses, you never know what kinds of talents you’ll find in the people you pass on the streets. The town is a playground for architects, whose clients let them run wild with their creative visions. The theme of self-invention that I first came here to explore for my article is repeated everywhere, as I meet more and more people—women, in particular—who have moved here after one phase of their lives has ended, whether because they have divorced, their children have grown, their jobs are over, or they simply want a change, to take a leap into something new, something truer to who they want to be in the latter part of their lives; most are much happier as a result. Many expatriates create programs for the community—midwifery schools, collective child care centers for young Mexican working women, kitchens in the camp to feed schoolchildren, dance classes to build young girls’ confidence, rescue groups for the town’s innumerable little stray mutts. One friend who started a writers’ conference here asks me to teach. Others immerse themselves in Mexican folk art, history, or indigenous communities. The town isn’t divided into gringos and Mexicans, as I originally feared, or young and old; I find myself collecting an international group of friends of all ages.
I feel certain I’m in the right community when one evening, out walking with Finn, I notice a sign up for African dance. I take a class with the Senegalese teacher, Lamine, a giraffe of a man with dreadlocks, and am amazed to find a world-class dancer in San Miguel who has taught with some of the best companies in New York. At the end of the class, he tells me, in his simple African way, touching his heart, flashing a brilliant smile, that I am a good person. “African dance is your medicine,” he says, and he’s right; I dance to a joyful, exhausted sweat every time I’m in town, as I haven’t danced since those afternoons in college, and think of my luck to have found it here. Lamine and I become friends, and I like to cook for him, since he misses chicken and rice dishes from Senegal and it makes him, too, feel as if he’s at home to share a meal.
Besides African dance, there are salsa lessons; the men encourage me, lead me softly, and smile at my mistakes in dance steps or the language. (One day, a local shopkeeper asks me out, and when I hesitate and tell him I need to learn salsa—aprender la salsa—he offers to come over to my house with a tomato, onion, and peppers). My Spanish—and my salsa dancing (aprender bailar la salsa)—get better, poco a poco, until one evening with Mexican friends, singing karaoke and dancing until three in the morning, I realize I haven’t spoken English all night, except the words to the Patsy Cline songs. When one of the men, Ricardo, asks me to dance, for the first time I stop worrying and let him lead, and we spin around, perfectly in time. People clap when we’re done. “Not bad,” Ricardo says, “for a gringa.”
As my house is being built, I realize San Miguel is a wonderful jumping-off point for all of Latin America. I sign up for Lamine’s African dance workshop in Tulum, dancing each day in a huge palapa by the beach, and realize how close the ocean is to San Miguel. I tag along with Deb, a folk art specialist who owns a local store with her husband, Rick, to Pátzcuaro, where they take me with them to artisan villages that circle the lake, each making its own distinctive pottery, masks, or copperware, each with its own culture and history. I’ve barely dipped into Mexico City or tasted its increasingly renowned cuisine; there’s so much of Mexico I don’t know and am so eager to explore.
THE HOUSE TAKES about a year to build, slightly longer and more expensive than expected, but Mexico is a good place to practice patience. Whenever someone is an hour or a day late, I try to think of it as an opportunity to step out of my constant sense of urgency, to relax. There is, in fact, a mindfulness to day-to-day encounters in Mexico, an attentive cordiality, that is contagious. You see it in the politeness people pay to one another, automatically. Drivers wait good-naturedly for pedestrians and other cars at intersections. People take the time to stop in the street and greet one another, with no sense of hurry. There is endless Mexican patience for things that can always be a little late, go a little wrong, but will work themselves out tomorrow.
WHEN I RETURN to San Miguel for the third visit in a year and the house is almost done, Anja has sent me photos of the construction and every receipt for every brick, so I know what to expect. But when she opens the mesquite doors, and I walk into a shimmering entryway, with tall glass-and-wrought-iron doors that open to an atrium to the sky, sculptural white stairs, terra-cotta tiles, a gourmet kitchen with lit polished concrete shelves and a big prep island, a thirteen-foot wood desk in my studio with a napping couch, three terraces, with beautiful details, I’m amazed. We’ve turned the smallest lot in San Miguel into a jewel box. Everyone—architects, the guy who delivers water, the upholsterer, the rug maker, the gas man, the Internet installer, the neighbors, my friends—is astonished when they open those two-hundred-year-old wooden doors.
Anja and I go to an Italian restaurant in an old hacienda in the country to celebrate finishing the house. We start with a glass of champagne. “Felicitaciones,” I say, “y gracias.” Anja has been very patient with my speaking Spanish as long as it holds out, especially since her English is nearly perfect.
“Congratulations,” she says. “This has been wonderful, so easy.” We both dab our eyes with our napkins and laugh at each other for crying. I may be the only person who’s ever built a house in Mexico who wishes the construction would never end.
When I move my suitcases out of Finn’s house, I tell Tallulah, now four, that she can come visit me at my new house. With a grave expression, she puts her hands on her waist, above her pink tutu. “Mom,” she asks Finn, “why does Laura have to go live somewhere else when she can live right here with us?”
AS SOON AS I move into my house, I have a sense that it fits me just right, like a custom suit. It’s small but seems airy and spacious. I feel settled and calm, productive in my quiet office. I try to keep the house spare and furnish it, as much as possible—rugs, stools, glassware, ceramics—from the nearby mercado and the merchants on my street. My main worry is that I will run out of English books, but that would probably be just as well, since I should start reading Spanish.
Over the next two months, I grow accustomed to the roosters that wake me every morning and sleep through the fireworks and ranchero music that can last all night. I learn the names of the people who live on my street and tell them “Buenos días” every morning; I say “Buenas noches” to the teenage couple who makes out in my doorway every night. There are rhythms to the week: Luis, the f
armer, brings me organic vegetables on Fridays, and I make them into soup on Saturday. I go swimming in the nearby hot springs or to yoga in the mornings, or hike up the canyon to the botanical gardens. In the afternoon, I love to watch the tropical rain pour into the atrium of my house and dash through the downpour to make a cup of tea in the kitchen. I work quietly during the days and then find someone to eat comida with in the evenings or some place to listen to live music or dance. When the Day of the Dead comes, with bright marigolds attracting the dead to altars with their favorite foods, photos, and beloved possessions, I walk to the cemetery with people laughing, crying, and playing music and think I must start collecting objects—a photo of Maya, my grandmother’s rhinestone earrings—that remind me of my own departed friends and family, so that I, too, can visit with them once a year.
It sometimes seems to me that there was a little magic involved in ending up in this little house in Mexico. The sense of magic and coincidence that pervades San Miguel de Allende, exaggerated by New Age types, can nevertheless be hard to explain. The town feels a little sparkly around the edges, and people are in the habit of speaking about unseen energies, which I am not. Yet whether it is magic or middle age, I am realizing that intention has a lot to do with how things turn out, and accomplishments don’t always have to involve such a difficult personal fight or even campaign. So, too, how you tell your story has a great deal to do with how you feel about the circumstances in your life and which direction your story is going to go in. In a peaceful, patient town, surrounded by friends, I am losing the threads of my story that have to do with disappointment, with regret, with difficulties with men. I am happy for the wonderful men I have in my life, would be happy for a new love, and am happy either way. That is a kind of magical thinking that works.
The more people I meet here, the more I see them finding the magic in their own lives. One woman tells me that despite the skewed ratio of women to men here—some say it’s thirteen to one—all the formerly single women she knows have met their husbands while they were passing through town. Others couldn’t care less about relationships and find other kinds of satisfying companionship or spiritual practices or bursts of creative talent. There is something here that allows people to rewrite their lives, take risks, and tap their long-simmering talents. There is something about having built a little house that makes me feel settled and grounded, not always tempted to fly away but ready to explore something new, discover something deeper.
Sometimes the magic in San Miguel startles me. One evening I am having a glass of wine, waiting for a friend at a bar, and chat with a couple next to me, who just met in Spanish class. I ask them about themselves; she is traveling for a few months and happened to end up here, and he is reluctant to say what he does. That makes me curious, so I press, and he quietly admits that he is a shaman—it isn’t his fault, he used to be a high school math teacher, but it just turns out that it’s a talent he has, he can see things and sometimes fix them.
“What kinds of things?” I ask. I am skeptical, to say the least, but his reluctance to talk makes him seem honest.
“Physical things, emotional things,” he says. “I just see them.”
I can’t resist asking him what he sees about me. We are in a dim outdoor space, and the bar is between us; he can’t see more than my upper body.
“Your right hip,” he says, immediately. “It was injured a few years ago, and it’s still injured. You’ve tried everything, but the pain deep down doesn’t go away. You have trouble sitting cross-legged.”
I’m speechless. He hasn’t seen me walk, and even if he had, no one can detect my injury.
“How did it happen?” I ask, pushing my luck.
He frowns. “I don’t think you want me to talk about that right now,” he says. “It’s a very personal story.”
“Right,” I say.
“What is it?” asks the young woman with him.
“Nothing,” the shaman and I say in unison.
“Can you fix it?” I ask.
“I already did,” he says.
I rotate my hip joint and still feel the pain.
“I know,” he says. “It’ll take a few days. You’ll wake up Tuesday morning, and it’ll be fine.”
Tuesday morning, despite believing that I will be better, my hip still hurts. Maybe a little less. On Thursday, I have a party in my new house, everyone squeezed together in the little kitchen or hanging out on the terrace for a smoke, and I see the shaman and give him a kiss on the cheek.
“I know,” he says, before I say anything. “It’s still there.”
I nod.
“I was a little drunk, and you were behind the bar,” he says, sheepishly.
“No worries,” I say. He’s like a good-natured warlock who gets things a little wrong, like the befuddled aunt on Bewitched accidentally turning Darrin into a toad.
“I can try again,” he says, not moving. “I just did.”
“Sometimes pain is there for a reason,” I say. “It can serve as a reminder.” I have a deep, physical twinge that tells me I’m vulnerable, that it’s okay to be vulnerable, to want to protect myself and to be protected. It reminds me I’m female, that I’ve lived a full and exciting life, that I’ve made mistakes, that I’ve forgiven myself and others, that I do my best, here in middle age, to live with Mexican patience, tango receptivity, and a Spirit Rock sense of lovingkindness.
“That’s true,” says the shaman.
“I mean, if you can make it disappear, go for it.”
AFTER EACH VISIT to San Miguel, when I come home to San Francisco, my friends tell me I look good and seem softer and more relaxed, as if I’ve just been on a meditation retreat. After spending some weeks in Mexico, I always fall in love with San Francisco anew—for its wonderful restaurants, huge parks, steep hills, longtime friends, and intellectual liveliness (people are much less apt to use the phrase “It’s all up to the universe” in conversation, for instance). I’m not ready to give up San Francisco. When I’m back in the Bay Area I realize that it’s my home; San Miguel is a getaway, tranquilo, a place where I love to spend some of my time, to speak a little Spanish and feel a little Mexican, but it doesn’t have San Francisco’s stimulation. Yet when I’m in San Miguel, it feels like home, too, I feel softer and more at ease when I’m there, and I wonder how I can leave. I am grateful to have both, to feel settled but able to see my surroundings, in either place, with the fresh eyes of a traveler.
I SEND PHOTOS of my house to the Professor and tell him I hope he comes visit sometime. He e-mails me back saying congratulations, it’s beautiful, and who knows when he may find himself in Mexico. He sends wishes that Obama will win the presidency, saying it would be magnificent, once again the entire world could be friends with the United States. I’m happy to hear from him; he has not written since last summer, when he told me he was going on a trip to India, which he had always wanted to visit, telling me that if his money didn’t hold out in Paris, he’d retire there in style.
And then he tells me he has bad news.
He has been diagnosed with cancer, and the doctors have given him two rounds of chemotherapy. He won’t be able to go back to the university, not this year. “I had hoped,” he writes, “to at least reach sixty-five before finding myself in this situation.”
He is now fifty-nine, and I am almost the age he was when we first met, when he was such a sexy, assured older man. But still so young.
I call him in Paris, and when a woman answers I try to come up with the polite way in French to say good afternoon and ask to speak to the Professor. He comes to the phone and first I forget and say hello in Spanish and then Italian and he realizes it’s me. “Laura,” he says, the rolling Italian way, the way he first pronounced it after we met, over breakfast at a pensione on Ischia, on our way together already to go see the view of the sea from the highest point on the island. “It’s so nice to hear your voice,” he says, always so sweet, sounding so close.
I stumble over my word
s, I’m so sorry, and I can’t say anything for what seems a long time, from Mexico to France, but I want to pull myself together because I don’t want him to think that I’m so upset, as if that would makes things worse.
“È così,” he says. It’s like that.
I try to cheerfully tell him a little bit about Mexico and the election, how wonderful that everyone is so excited. We talk about his son, who is thinking about coming to San Francisco, and he asks if I will help him, and I say of course, anything, but a nineteen-year-old who is nearly as handsome and charming as his father won’t need any help at all. He laughs.
I ask about his trip to India. It was beautiful, incredible, he says, from north to south, and a good thing that he traveled when he did. If he had known, he never would have gone, never would have experienced the place he dreamed about for so long. When he returned home, he had a pain in his stomach. I don’t want to ask, but he offers that it is liver cancer, not an easy kind, but he is feeling okay for now. He has many friends who visit and care for him and keep him company, and he is full of hope. I ask if he is still with the same woman, and he says, “The same beautiful woman, meno male,” a good thing, so I know she is nearby, listening, and I’m so glad she is there for him.
He asks if I have any romances, and I say nothing right now. Niente.
“I can’t believe that,” he says.
“We’ll see,” I say. “Someone always turns up.”