November 16, 2013

It’s almost 6:00pm on Saturday, November 16, 2013, and I’m all packed for Puerto Vallarta, I think.  I checked the weather there before I began and it was 80f., so I’m only taking light summer clothes. Consequently, I think I’ll have nothing but carry-on luggage; the heaviest item by far will be the laptop.

 I remember November in PV from our first year there, when Jay was in grade 10 at the American School.  We had arrived at the end of August so he could start school, and it was hot, hot, hot.  November was the first month that I truly loved; we had all our initial adjustment ‘issues’ worked out and the weather had cooled.  The month begins with the festivities of ‘el dia des los muertos’ and continues with the International Sailfish and Marlin Tournament which Jim and I enjoyed watching twice when we were there.  For this event, they also bring cultural acts from all over Jalisco to the island and parks, so there’s a lot happening in the evenings.  It’s not going to be the same this time, but I look forward to being there again because the memories it holds will somehow sharpen whatever the present offers, I think.  And I will fight the urge to find that now is a sad remnant of the good old days.

As I packed, I came across an old diary I had kept in 1986, when Jim, Jay and I spent our first winter in Mexico, in Cuernavaca.   I had to force myself to stop reading it, but before I did, I read two parts that made me laugh.  The first was a comment Jay made as we were walking home from having dinner at ‘El Pollo Loco’.  He was riding on Jim’s shoulders, quietly looking around as we discussed how we were slowly getting used to walking along endless lines of stone walls topped with broken bottles, in the deafening noise and fumes of avenida E. Zapata.  All of a sudden he said,  “Oscar would love Mexico, all the noise and dirt and paper blowing around.”   He was missing ‘Sesame Street’, among other things, like his ‘Masters of the Universe’ figures, most of which we had forgotten in a taxi when we first arrived in Cuernavaca.  Jay always admired strength, size and power.  He really liked Eleazar, the man who did all the heavy lifting of water and gas bottles in the area where we lived.  He thought Eleazar could probably do anything.  In fact, one time when I couldn’t answer his question and just replied, “Who knows?”, he instantly responded, “ God and Eleazar.” 

Today is dad’s 94^th birthday.  He was born in 1919, two years after JFK.  It’s hard to believe that this year is the 50^th Anniversary of the latter’s death. 

Yesterday and today, I went cross-country skiing up in the winter of Sovereign Lake and Silver Star, and on Monday I’ll be walking in the  heat of PV, “… a body sure do get around.”

Mo and John at Silver Star

Me with Mo at Silver Star

This guy was there too