Hello Mexico

 

I have been here in Mexico for a couple of months now, staying with friends and trying to decide if I am going to make Mexico home. I must admit, making a commitment to staying in one place has not been easy for me. I have spent the last six years traipsing all though Latin America (and a bit in Europe and Africa) and I have grown accustomed to living out of a suitcase.

But when I finally put a deposit on a cute little apartment in Puerto Morelos, I felt like I wanted to dance.

I walked to the park by the beach where the big band was playing and families were wandering among the arts and crafts stands and munching on corn in a cup topped with cheese, mayonnaise, chili powder, and lime and I bought organic soap made from papaya and coconut oil. I admired a painting of the shipwreck I know sits at ninety feet beneath the sea with spotted eagle rays flying overhead and wondered how it would look hanging on the wall of my new home. I talked to an old friend named Rudy who was the first person I ever met to pronounce my name the way my mother had always intended–with a Spanish flair and singsong feeling–L..ow…ra.

And then I left the square and practically skipped down the sidewalk toward my rental car with visions of shopping for colorful blankets and pillows and flowered dishes and big coffee mugs and kitchen things and fluffy towels and incense and hand blown Mexican glasses and bright yellow and blue pottery bowls all dancing through my head.

And a feeling came over me. A feeling of finally coming home after years of knowing where home was but being afraid to sit still there. A feeling of welcome deliciousness, of giving in and allowing the sacred river of life to take you where it knows your soul wants to go, a feeling of relief and delight and light all mixed together like rainbow swirls in a paint bucket. And I voiced my acceptance and excitement with a simple phrase that burst from my heart like soap bubbles from a bubble stick, soft and hardly whispered but full of joy. “Hello Mexico!”

And Mexico answered.

For immediately after I breathed my salutation, a voice behind me rang out clearly from the throng of local party goers.

“Bienvenido!”    (Welcome!)

Finally home,

laura

www.lovelylatitudes.com