In Motion

I admit it: winging home from Patzcuaro, Mexico after 12 days of vacation en sol, drinking morning cups of cafes con leches on the Plaza Grande and gorging on enchilladas and chiles, and tiny, honeyed cheese filled pies, and already I was thinking Where to next?

I'm reminded of a Little Rascals episode, one involving a homemade fire engine, with dozens of Our Gang aboard applying the brakes with dozens of scuffling feet, plunging down hill, the rear of the fire engine swinging forward to meet the front half. Spanky demands of Alfalfa, "Where are we going?" Alfalfa responds, "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."

Exactly.

Juan the Gardener and I were conversing this morning over oatmeal about the differences in our natures. While he prefers a more domestic lifestyle, one in which he can shuffle around the house   watering his bonsai, I ache for foreign shores.

"You're energy," Juan stated, after I had mentioned going to Florida with some girlfriends in April. "Up and out, fire and air."

"What would that make you?" I asked.


"I'm more earth and water - down and out -- or, down and in," he amended. "Meaning inward," he emphasized, pointing to his heart region.

"I think you had it right the first time," I said. "With the down and out." I pointed to his attire: striped bathrobe over long johns.

"You're always moving," he said. He stirred yogurt into his oatmeal. 

"Yes, mostly I am."  He really doesn't like it when we spend too much time apart. He feels we met late in our lives, and he's right - we never know, really, how much time we have.

"I used to want to be away from the house when I was young," Juan continued. "Outside with my friends. Or just by myself playing down by the creek."

"I wanted to be outside too," I agreed. "But, I liked doing projects with my friends."

"What sort of projects?"

"Once, my friend Wendy and I sold daffodils."

"Where did you get the daffodils?"

"We stole them from the cemetery and sold them for 25c a dozen at the end of Wendy's driveway. It was a nice little business until one of my mother's friends caught us circling the head stones. That was pretty much it. We moved on to sling shots and setting small fires."

"I rode bikes with my friends and played ball, but sometimes I just wandered," Juan mused.

"I do like to walk, though," he added. "Remember, we walked a lot in Mexico."

"You meander," I said. "I stride."

"I like adventure," Juan said. "I've been to Mexico 8 times and Europe twice." He held up two fingers.

"And you travel from your office to the den," I teased. "And from the den to the kitchen."

"I also like the Travel Channel," he laughed. "I can do a lot of traveling from the couch."

I went around behind his chair and kissed him on the top of his suntanned head.

Later, I had a memory of being in Pamplona, Spain for the first time, on a family vacation. It was during the Running of the Bulls and my father took us to a bullfight. I was far enough away in years from Ferdinand the Bull not to mind too much, being somewhat more interested in the tight fit of the matador's pantelones and his whirling red cape. I'm not sure how my younger sisters felt. We may have been whisked away before the final violent denoument. 

What I do remember is how afterward all of us had to pee something fierce. My father pulled the car over by the side of the road and we all scrambled out. Just as we girls were poised to squat down in the tall grass by the roadside, a small boy meandered by, dragging a stick. We jumped up, affecting indifference, hopping foot to foot until he had passed. 

Somewhere there are photographs documenting this event: three young girls hunkered down, my father a bit farther along the road, wearing a light colored sports jacket, his golf hat on his head, my mother snapping the picture, all of us giggling.