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The Beaches
by Jay Lewenstein
I nearly spit my coffee over the front page of my San Diego Union Tribune when I saw this picture of a Mexican grounds crew carting around a Queen Palm in a wheelbarrow. The article next to the picture said that they were constructing an artificial beach in the middle of Mexico City! In one of the most densely populated cities in the world, the most congested, the most polluted, and certainly one of the most violent, they were bringing in sand, palm trees and bikinis…
The thing was I knew this place in the picture. Ten years ago I had the chance to study and work in Mexico City in a special California teachers
program, and as part of the deal I had to live with a real live Mexican family that coincidentally resided in Villa Olimpica, right next to the site of this beach. In the picture, you see these
buildings in the background; I lived with my Mexcian family in one just like them, on the sixteenth floor!
The idea was that we (teachers) would work in the public school systems by day and perform coursework at night, and of course through the
experience of living with a Mexican family, we would learn valuable cultural lessons that would enhance are teaching perspective.
I was into it! I was a good student, and a good teacher. The only problem came from my anxiety to live with another family. I had left my own behind a long, long time before, and I wasn´t too sure if I was ready to return to this world. Don´t get me wrong. My Mexican family was the best. They treated me openly and respectfully, and they were always there for me when I needed the slightest help. Sandra, the matriarch of the family, was a college psychology professor at UNAM, and she just may have been the most caring, loving person I have ever met. She was only three or four years older than me, but she treated me with all the love and concern as if I was her own.child.
Like I said, I knew it wouldn´t work. Despite my best efforts to fit in and love and help and support my Mexican family members as much as
they did for me, I could never really strip myself of the notion that I was an outsider.
I was supposed to be there for a year, and I kept on telling myself that I would eventually figure it out, but it wasn´t to long before I began waking up nervous in the middle of the night, twisted like a chicharron, in my sheets and covers. Man, for reasons I´m still not sure of to this day, I found myself sweating, scratching, and weeping through the night.. and the more agitated I would become, the less sleep I would get, and the less sleep I would get, the more agitated I would become. Sometimes these bouts would last for four or five days. In the mornings I went about my work and studies like a fantasma…
Of course, my Mexican family took notice.
As big-hearted as each of them were they tried to talk things out with me in the best way they knew how. They changed my diet. I went to their family doctor. They did everything they could to make my life more comfortable but nothing worked. Probably the feeling that I had become a burden to them brought me down the farthest, and eventually I reached this point where I was going to give it all up and go back to the states. In doing so, I would drop out of the program which would put my teaching career on hold for a couple of years. I kind of knew that I would never get my money back. Things didn´t look too bright.
That´s when I got this idea.
I had my problems. I knew that, but being a quitter wasn´t one of them. Instead of tossing and turning in my bed of walking back and forth along the halls of the small apartment – I guess I was ashamed to give anyone the indication that I couldn´t handle things – I started putting on my Nikes and leaving the apartment building for a few hours at a time. That´s it, I didn´t need any kind words, or strange herbal concoctions, and definitely no medication or alcohol. In the wee hours of the morning 1:45, 2:35, 3:10, fifteen or twenty minutes after I woke up out of a fitful sleep, I would go for 10-15 kilometer runs through the dark.
That´s how I know this place in the picture. On this very spot where today little brown skinned kids fill their plastic pails with sand while their
bikini clad mothers and/or sisters spread out on their beach towels, I huffed and puffed, and just kept going, fearful that if I ever stopped I would just crumble.
* * *
Now I live in Mexicali. I’m alone and I have a nice little house that I call my own.
I don´t have the same problems with sleep that I had in Mexico City, but I still run the early hours of the morning through the streets. Near
my house there is a sports complex and a major university, each with custom tracks and jogging trails, but my favorite place to run is along las playas de Mexcali.
“Guat?” That´s what everyone down here says. Every time I tell a Mexicalense that I run along the beaches of Mexicali, they look at me
like I am crazy. They say “What you say gringo?” They tell me that Mexicali is in the middle of a desert. There is no beaches here, man.
There is no ocean.. “Yeah,” I say. “But there is a lot of sand.” And when when I run along the sandy trails that border the irrigation canals that seprate California and Mexico, I feel the breeze that comes off the water and I watch the ducks scatter and elevate as I pass by. I swear it smells like fish. If I close my eyes, I can imagine that it´s 2:45 in the morning and I´m running around Mission Bay in San Diego. The surroundings help me forget my problems. The farther I go, the freer I become.
* * *
Ten years later, I still comunícate with my Mexican mama. Somehow, thank God, Sandra and I ended up good friends and confidantes.
She still writes to me, wanting to know of my teaching and writing experiences and my life here in Mexicali. She asks me when am I ever going to get married? And I tell her, probably when it snows in Mexicali. I ask her what about her, when is she going to remarry? Well she always changes the subject or talks about cooking. ( In this way I get a lot of cool Mexican recipes from her!) This summer, however, the exhange of notes and letters has taken on a much different tenor. Sandra´s older brother had been discovered to be suffering from a tumor on the brain. He`s had all his hair removed for chemotherapy, and he has lost nearly half his weight. Every day now, she stays by his side in a tiny public hospital room. If I know her, there will be no peace until he shows any signs of improvement.
Pues, I love Sandra very much, but sadly, I don’t have the money nor the opportunity to be by her side, and I can only imagine how much she is
suffering watching her brother go through one treatment after another. She has stopped answering her phone, and she rarely sends me any response to me letters. I don´t blame her. Believe me.
I know what it´s like to have to put into words down on paper when your head is spinning and you’re your fingers are curling up with knots.
Here is what I do.
I try to write her stuff that will distract her a little bit from the daily misery of a cold and sterile hospital room. I write anything I can think of about my work, my cooking. The other day I wrote about my borracho neighbors that invited me to go camping with them. Well, in all actuality, they invited my pick-up to take them camping, and if I wanted to go along, that would be great too. Ja. Ja. …
Today I´m writing this letter about an article in the newspaper I read. They are building a fucking beach in Mexico City. Can you believe it?
How long is it going to be before people start stealing the sand, I think I`ll write. Jaja. But what I´m going to emphasize to Sandra is that beach is very close to her apartment. It would do her some good if she got away from the hospital once or twice a week and let her feet do the walking. I´m going to tell her that maybe at the same time, I´m going to be running along the beaches of Mexicali.
I´m going to remind her that the world that we live in is connected by water. Asi es. The drops of rain that come down from the sky end up in our
streams, and the water from our streams flows into our rivers.
Rivers empty into our lakes and oceans. I will illustrate the cycle. Water that evaporates takes the forms of clouds in the sky. The clouds rise and fall and drift before they break up into rain..
I´m going to encourage her to walk, and walk and walk and for at least a brief time leave the pain behind. Sometimes its all we can do to maintain
our sanity. Andale.
Walk, Sandra, until you can´t take another step. I don´t care what the people say about artificial beaches or crazy gringos. It´s the water that will bring us together. As bad as things get, if she keeps on walking, and I keep on running, somewhere our paths will cross, and she will know how much I care for her.
Writer Jay Lewenstein heard about the Desert Writers Issue through Deanne Stillman in his M.F.A. program at UC Riverside-Palm Desert. He lives in Mexicali and teaches English composition at College of
the Desert. For his thesis project at UCR, he is writing a novel about border life ... “Much of my creating and editing is done on long daily runs I take through the desert on the outskirts of my
city.” J.L.
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