IF HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS--I'M IN TROUBLE

I need at least one more heart, maybe more. 

I think you know that I 'live' in Mexico part of the year and have for ten years.
Mexico is not a vacation for me. It's a home. There is a lot of work involved and things go wrong. We also have a web of relationships to attend to because we live in a tightly woven Mexican-Indian community. Right now, I have finally gotten sick here and had to find a doctor and trust the treatment and take a cab to get there and then to the lab and then to a "farmacia' for medicine. Everyday things can get quite cumbersome. (Are you still thinking of me with a Margarita pool side????)

We are getting ready to leave for Maine next week and I begin to feel homesick for Maine and sad about leaving Mexico. That will be reversed next Winter.
Is it an abundance of riches or schizophrenia?  

Here is where my heart is in Mexico:

--I love the slap dash colors and decorations painted on the houses.  Any color
Any combination. We have a two story Virgen of Guadalupe painted on a house up the alley from us. Not campy.  Just sincere adoration.

--I love how Mexican kids take care of one another.  Everyone loves babies and to hell with Machismo. I see teen-age boys taking sweet loving care of a family baby.

--I love how Mexican kids play because it reminds me of my childhood blue collar neighborhood.  A couple of balls, lots of running around and pulling on
 one another, falling down laughing, up again bowling with empty Pepsi cans. 

--I love the whimsy.  I have two lamps made out of watering cans!! I have a cloud of tin angels over the bed.  I have a two foot tall wooden Ferris wheel in the guest room, I have tin lizards on the brick garden wall hiding in the jasmine.

--I love fountains and courtyards.  I love tiny hole in the wall cozy restaurants.
I love the abundance and color of bougainvillea. My roof top has 15 blooming right now.

--I love the ability here of people to make an instant gathering or party AND to celebrate everything possible. 

--I like our pop-up neighborhood week-end corner restaurant. Rachael cooks Mexican street food and put all her kids through school doing it. Buses stop outside the door and the driver grabs an enchilada while the people on the bus wait---of get a taco themselves.

--I like that we have four tiny neighborhood stores less than a block away. I go to Petra personally to get cilantro or bananas or red hot Cheeto's (I mean good)

San Miguel de Allende is a wonderful city not unlike Portland, Maine. It is about the same size. Not ruined--yet. True to its roots. Quintessential Mexico. Lovely fiestas and celebrations. Upscale stuff if wanted. BUT that is not what makes it a home.  It is the tiny details and my neighborhood--Valle del Maiz!!!  Adios!  Hasta Pronto!