All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [99]
AS SOON AS I move into my house, I have a sense that it fits me just right, like a custom suit. It’s small but seems airy and spacious. I feel settled and calm, productive in my quiet office. I try to keep the house spare and furnish it, as much as possible—rugs, stools, glassware, ceramics—from the nearby mercado and the merchants on my street. My main worry is that I will run out of English books, but that would probably be just as well, since I should start reading Spanish.
Over the next two months, I grow accustomed to the roosters that wake me every morning and sleep through the fireworks and ranchero music that can last all night. I learn the names of the people who live on my street and tell them “Buenos días” every morning; I say “Buenas noches” to the teenage couple who makes out in my doorway every night. There are rhythms to the week: Luis, the farmer, brings me organic vegetables on Fridays, and I make them into soup on Saturday. I go swimming in the nearby hot springs or to yoga in the mornings, or hike up the canyon to the botanical gardens. In the afternoon, I love to watch the tropical rain pour into the atrium of my house and dash through the downpour to make a cup of tea in the kitchen. I work quietly during the days and then find someone to eat comida with in the evenings or some place to listen to live music or dance. When the Day of the Dead comes, with bright marigolds attracting the dead to altars with their favorite foods, photos, and beloved possessions, I walk to the cemetery with people laughing, crying, and playing music and think I must start collecting objects—a photo of Maya, my grandmother’s rhinestone earrings—that remind me of my own departed friends and family, so that I, too, can visit with them once a year.
It sometimes seems to me that there was a little magic involved in ending up in this little house in Mexico. The sense of magic and coincidence that pervades San Miguel de Allende, exaggerated by New Age types, can nevertheless be hard to explain. The town feels a little sparkly around the edges, and people are in the habit of speaking about unseen energies, which I am not. Yet whether it is magic or middle age, I am realizing that intention has a lot to do with how things turn out, and accomplishments don’t always have to involve such a difficult personal fight or even campaign. So, too, how you tell your story has a great deal to do with how you feel about the circumstances in your life and which direction your story is going to go in. In a peaceful, patient town, surrounded by friends, I am losing the threads of my story that have to do with disappointment, with regret, with difficulties with men. I am happy for the wonderful men I have in my life, would be happy for a new love, and am happy either way. That is a kind of magical thinking that works.
The more people I meet here, the more I see them finding the magic in their own lives. One woman tells me that despite the skewed ratio of women to men here—some say it’s thirteen to one—all the formerly single women she knows have met their husbands while they were passing through town. Others couldn’t care less about relationships and find other kinds of satisfying companionship or spiritual practices or bursts of creative talent. There is something here that allows people to rewrite their lives, take risks, and tap their long-simmering talents. There is something about having built a little house that makes me feel settled and grounded, not always tempted to fly away but ready to explore something new, discover something deeper.
Sometimes the magic in San Miguel startles me. One evening I am having a glass of wine, waiting for a friend at a bar, and chat with a couple next to me, who just met in Spanish class. I ask them about themselves; she is traveling for a few months and happened to end up here, and he is reluctant