Quinceñera -- Coming of Age

When a girl reaches her 15th birthday, she has come of age -- a time for consecration in the Church, and celebration with the village. Sandra stands with her mother (Sara), father (Guillermo), and a nephew in the church -- at the beginning of a great celebration.

And so the Mass begins, with all her friends and family in attendance...






Ah, but after the Mass -- she is now a Woman.
These are the girls she has grown up with in the village... Girls we ourselves have known since they were little kids. Some transformation!

And then the party begins. Sandra cuts the cake, and then she cuts up the dance floor -- along with everyone in this village and neighboring ones. The party was still going when we wandered back to our casita... music, food, dancing, and much laughter! We have manymany more pictures, if you're interested....

Beloveds in our pueblo...

What joy and wonder as a little 3-year-old gazes at a piñata bigger than he is -- filled with balloons and toys. He is also from "our" family, mentioned below.
Well -- this is not so much about a photo of me (on my "will-you-still-need-me, will-you-still-feed-me" birthday) as it is a photo of the gifts brought to me that morning by beloveds in our pueblo... A beautiful piece of hand-made needlework; home-grown roses; and "I LOVE YOU" -- in English, you'll note -- this from our Ariana.


Speaking of whom -- here's almost everyone in the Ramirez family (for whom we are informally regarded as the Abuelos, the grandparents). Guille, Sara, Ariana, Flori, and Sandra (of Quinceñara fame) -- goofing off before presenting me with a Tres Leches birthday cake which we made short work of, along with sundry other sweet gifties...
And here is sweet Diana Laura (caught in utero by the Migra--now there's a story), with her mother and little sister in the background. Our next-door neighbors... a continually changing scene. So much to say -- but ah, how the photo shows the sweetness of Diana Laura and the bond we share.

And!!! Little Luis (his story is mentioned numerously in earlier blogs) who also used to live next door came back to visit! He has been successfully, deliriously happily adopted by a loving family in Zihua... How his little body shook with excitement as we met eyes again for the first time since then... He drew me this particularly happy face as a gift.... And here is a photo of him from that same day, deep in concentration.

Confirmed in the Faith....

By the time the Confirmation Mass began, the church was filled and all of us outside were seated in chairs -- right in the road (stopping any traffic til it was over)--with more folks seated along the side to the right. All of our little playmates from our first years living here --growing up! Ah, but of course, there's always a new crop of preschoolers...

Here's a glimpse inside -- a church built by the local parishioners over a number of years, and still in progress.
And here is one of our dear kids-growing-up -- Ariana Ramirez.

The greenness of our casita....

(But first -- a dreamy photo taken one evening, from the porch...)

So! Living in the sub-tropics is an immersion into greeniness....

And so.... we just went ahead and painted our buildings green (different shades every time) as well. This is taken from the ramada looking at our porch (where we LIVE--not inside the rooms). The sky-blue walls appear washed out in this photo -- but they are convincingly sky-blue such that birds and insects occasionally fly right into it (no broken necks!).


Then, turning around and looking the other way is a view of our green-pillared ramada in all its lushness...


...and this is yet another view of the ramada, taken from our porch.


And -- the porch itself. It is from here that we "watch TV" -- all the hummingbirds and butterflies and lizards and.... and... and... Care for a cup of coffee? How about a ripe mango--all of those yellow fruits in the foreground--they came from our own trees. Of a morning, I just wander around our four trees and pluck the the fruit, falling into my hand when ripe.

Robert at "Home Tree"/Mexico Spring 2010

There he stands, contemplating a risky task -- cutting off a diseased limb as big as a tree unto itself -- without getting caught under it.

And! There he stands, successful.
Not pictured are the days/hours spent sawing it into planks to be turned into furniture...

But here's an idea of just how heavy those planks are, once Robert cut them.
Guille is hauling them into our yard, where they carried them/stacked them inside the casita-- to dry til we return in the fall.

Robert (and friends) at work

Before the work begins, Santos of the Italian-accented English, and Sara Ramirez stay in the shade of our back porch.

Robert, Guille and Memo mixing the cement in the shade of our carport with the edifice to be constructed looming behind them....Our new wash-house.

And here, the men begin, by blocking out the walls to be constructed....

And a rather some time later....

And the close-to-finishing touches ...

Guille has such a fine eye for detail (as does Robert)

And here is where we left it til we return in the fall. Enough! We'll smoothcoat the outside walls and then paint them. Following that, Robert will begin with his woodworking projects to make a door to the shamrock-shaped shower room, and shelves for dish and clothes washing to the right of the shamrock.

The Last Three of Thirteen...

I can't just leave the chicken story. So here's how it progressed up to when we packed up and headed north. When I last wrote, there were 8 chicks and a hen...>>

Just before leaving for a towntrip to Zihuatanejo, we saw the mother hen lurching and falling, wings spread all cockeyed. A village kid said that clearly, she had been stung by a scorpion. Give her garlic. We ground up a clove and got it down her mouth, put her in the shade, with water, and propped up upright with two bricks. One chick was also missing (presumably scorpion as well). The remaining six chicks hovered nearby as we left for town...

When we got home, our neighbor had taken the hen back to HIS yard, where he just left her flopping on the ground. He gave her no water/food/garlic. Said she didn't want any. The chicks slept by her at night and wandered our yard by day. Not surprisingly, the hen died. The chicks continued to sleep where their mother had lain....

Well, if anyone is actually reading THIS far: those 6 surviving chicks were reduced to 4 in a 3am tlacuache attack... The screaming survivors came racing over to our yard, waking us up to their desperation. We covered them up with a big flower pot, and that became their new safe home.

Of those 4, one actually had already also SURVIVED a rat attack that temporarily crippled one leg. We called him Hopalong, of course.

Then an eagle swooped down and reduced the flock to 3... Three roosterlets.

Those 3 continued to sleep by our porch each night under the flowerpot. Every single evening at dusk, they came and waited for us to drop it over them! If we were late, they'd huddle on the spot where the flowerpot SHOULD drop.

When we left Mexico, we turned them over to our neighbor who insisted that all these chicks were theirs in the first place (but made little effort to protect them). We will probably never know the ending.