All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [98]
Besides African dance, there are salsa lessons; the men encourage me, lead me softly, and smile at my mistakes in dance steps or the language. (One day, a local shopkeeper asks me out, and when I hesitate and tell him I need to learn salsa—aprender la salsa—he offers to come over to my house with a tomato, onion, and peppers). My Spanish—and my salsa dancing (aprender bailar la salsa)—get better, poco a poco, until one evening with Mexican friends, singing karaoke and dancing until three in the morning, I realize I haven’t spoken English all night, except the words to the Patsy Cline songs. When one of the men, Ricardo, asks me to dance, for the first time I stop worrying and let him lead, and we spin around, perfectly in time. People clap when we’re done. “Not bad,” Ricardo says, “for a gringa.”
As my house is being built, I realize San Miguel is a wonderful jumping-off point for all of Latin America. I sign up for Lamine’s African dance workshop in Tulum, dancing each day in a huge palapa by the beach, and realize how close the ocean is to San Miguel. I tag along with Deb, a folk art specialist who owns a local store with her husband, Rick, to Pátzcuaro, where they take me with them to artisan villages that circle the lake, each making its own distinctive pottery, masks, or copperware, each with its own culture and history. I’ve barely dipped into Mexico City or tasted its increasingly renowned cuisine; there’s so much of Mexico I don’t know and am so eager to explore.
THE HOUSE TAKES about a year to build, slightly longer and more expensive than expected, but Mexico is a good place to practice patience. Whenever someone is an hour or a day late, I try to think of it as an opportunity to step out of my constant sense of urgency, to relax. There is, in fact, a mindfulness to day-to-day encounters in Mexico, an attentive cordiality, that is contagious. You see it in the politeness people pay to one another, automatically. Drivers wait good-naturedly for pedestrians and other cars at intersections. People take the time to stop in the street and greet one another, with no sense of hurry. There is endless Mexican patience for things that can always be a little late, go a little wrong, but will work themselves out tomorrow.
WHEN I RETURN to San Miguel for the third visit in a year and the house is almost done, Anja has sent me photos of the construction and every receipt for every brick, so I know what to expect. But when she opens the mesquite doors, and I walk into a shimmering entryway, with tall glass-and-wrought-iron doors that open to an atrium to the sky, sculptural white stairs, terra-cotta tiles, a gourmet kitchen with lit polished concrete shelves and a big prep island, a thirteen-foot wood desk in my studio with a napping couch, three terraces, with beautiful details, I’m amazed. We’ve turned the smallest lot in San Miguel into a jewel box. Everyone—architects, the guy who delivers water, the upholsterer, the rug maker, the gas man, the Internet installer, the neighbors, my friends—is astonished when they open those two-hundred-year-old wooden doors.
Anja and I go to an Italian restaurant in an old hacienda in the country to celebrate finishing the house. We start with a glass of champagne. “Felicitaciones,” I say, “y gracias.” Anja has been very patient with my speaking Spanish as long as it holds out, especially since her English is nearly perfect.
“Congratulations,” she says. “This has been wonderful, so easy.” We both dab our eyes with our napkins and laugh at each other for crying. I may be the only person who’s ever built a house in Mexico who wishes the construction would never end.
When I move my suitcases out of Finn’s house, I tell Tallulah, now four, that she can come