To Mexico????

This is the last time I’ll be writing with a full keyboard.  It will be words with one thumb from now on, at least I hope that will be the case.  I’ve been walking down two trails lately, one in the direction of Guanajuato and the other Victoria, but mom seems to be determined to do her best on her own for the next little while, so the former might be the final one.  Every time I come back to the house after being out, I look at the phone to see if the message indicator is blinking red; my heart soars it it’s not and sinks if it is.  Actually mom has only called twice, both times about small matters.  She wore a heart monitor yesterday to test her blood pressure.  She will talk to the accountant tomorrow about taxes and annuities and she has finally broken down and made an appointment with the audiologist to get something slightly more up to date than the ridiculous ‘pocket talker’ that she got in a rush so that she could hear what was happening when we went to Matti’s wedding.  He now has two children and is working at his second job since he got married, so nobody could accuse her of rushing into new technology.  But I’d best stop there; I also am slow to let go of old possessions and old anything for that matter.  I’m continuing to read Graham Greene, another book of his that I hadn’t read, The Heart of the Matter.  There’s a density to it that I can’t understand, except to say that the way he writes and what he writes about seem perfectly suited.  I get completely lost in the atmosphere he creates.  His perceptions are clear and his expressions of them are perfect, without sentimentality or any form of embellishment.  The very cold eye that he turned on Mexico in The Lawless Roads, and that I hated because I love Mexico, is what made The Power and the Glory such a good book once it was expressed in his terse style.  The same must be the case here, although I know nothing of the post war West Africa that he is describing in The Heart of the Matter.

This brings me to my heart, which has been the only matter that has slowed down my preparations for Mexico.  I bought travel insurance on Friday.  On Monday after an appointment with the doctor where we discussed what tests I have had or been scheduled to have lately and what the state of my angina is, if that is what I have, I went back to BCAA and changed some of the answers I had given to questions about my health.  The result is that I paid another one hundred and some dollars more for travel insurance that covers everything, except anything that might happen to my heart while I’m in Mexico.  I’m satisfied with this because I’ve managed whatever I have to this point and think I can do so in the future.  My grandmother and uncle had angina for years and neither died of it or of anything to do with the heart.

I certainly am not leaving Vernon to get away from the weather.  It’s been warm and often sunny since I returned.  The skiing has been good, if not great.  This morning, the sun was brilliant and although the base was hard, the groomers had worked up a bit of a surface on the snow.  Where the sun had been shining through the tall spruce, the snow was quite soft by noon.  I almost fell on a downhill bit when I streaked out of the shade into the sun and slowed down instantly.  I almost fell, but not quite.  Any stupid thing like that that happens to me in Mexico will be fully covered by my travel insurance.  So as all the Ausies at Silver Star would say, “No worries”.

My Friday snow shoe gang.  I'll miss the last run on Friday, March 13 because that's the day I fly to Guanajuato.