All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [102]
When they arrive, they open the door and are astonished at the enchantment that makes eleven feet wide seem so huge. Though they’ve been following the progress in photos, they say they could never imagine how much better it is in person, and right away they’re glad they came. My father, a perfectionist, admires the craftsmanship, the wrought iron and the wood cabinets, and pronounces himself impressed. After they explore the house, Mom calls my sister and has tears in her eyes. “It’s just wonderful,” she says. “Darn it, maybe it’s the Parkinson’s, it makes me cry.”
In the morning we wander around town, Mom with her walking stick to maneuver the cobblestones. I explain that on the narrow sidewalks, as an elderly woman, she is at the top of the sidewalk hierarchy and never has to give way to someone else (men step off the sidewalk for women, younger women make way for older women or those burdened with bags or children). Mom and Dad don’t recognize anything about the town until we come to the blue-doored bakery, and then La Parroquia, and then everything suddenly seems familiar.
Over the next few days I show them this world they introduced me to so many years ago. We have breakfast with Finn and lunch with Anja, we visit Jody’s house, as well as folk art galleries, an artist’s mosaic-covered house, and photography collections. Dad practices his Spanish running errands to the hardware store, to buy groceries, to get a paper. On Mom’s birthday, we take a taxi up to the Charco, the botanical gardens, and she is in her favorite kind of place, a cool and sunny blooming desert. We have lunch in La Aurora design center with Finn, drinking wine at noon, and Mom agrees, at this time of life when she is trying to throw everything away, to let Dad buy her a necklace.
In the evening, we go to a party in a Frida Kahlo–colored house, where a friendly group gathers on the roof, and Mom and Dad mingle with these latter-day hippies and artists. When it gets cold, we all go inside, and the hostess gets up to make a speech, greeting everyone, celebrating birthdays and weddings and visits, saying she’s grateful for her friends and the wonderful place we all live in. “Paradise,” she says.
Then she asks if anyone has anything else to say, and I offer that it’s my mom’s eightieth birthday, and that I want to thank her for having had the daring and foresight to bring me and my sisters here thirty-five years ago, when it was difficult to do so. “That trip,” I tell the group, “had a lot to do with making me who I am, with me being back in San Miguel today.” They all clap for Mom, who deserves a toast and a party, even among friendly strangers, on her eightieth birthday.
On our way home, Mom is tired, and she leans on my father, who, hearty and handsome, still seems fifteen years younger than his age. All my friends have remarked on how charming my father is, and though I appreciate how personable he’s become in his later years, my mother isn’t able, any more, to fully project who she is to new people, her vitality and passions. I wonder if I’ll have someone to lean on when I’m older, someone who will take my arm and cherish the fullness of me—the curious wanderer and the woman who likes to stay home, chop vegetables, and hear compliments about her cooking—even when I’m no longer able to dance, to flirt, to pack my bags at the last minute and board a plane.
“I love you,” my parents each say to me, as we hug and they step into the taxi at the end of the night. It’s a phrase I hear and say more often the older I get, and I take that as a good sign.
Afterword
In fall 2009, I was in Europe for a couple of months and wrote to the Professor to say I’d like to visit him in Paris. He replied that he was in the hospital—“the least sexy place in the world”—and suggested I come later, when he was recovered from surgery. After a few weeks, he was still in the hospital, and this time he said sure, why don’t