The last day

Today is my last day in the Yucatan. 

Last night I rode my last mile, the eight-hundredth and eighty-first mile. (This is like riding from New York to Iowa) That last mile was completed at the door of a small and hip bike shop across the city; I wheeled my beloved, long-suffering, absolutely filthy bicycle up the ramp and felt a wave of gratitude for my safety during all of those miles. People always say how crazy I am to ride in Latin America, please be safe, those drivers!, and I choose not to worry, and I ride with care but when it's all done wow am I grateful. 

Last week, the two sweet brothers of this bike shop had answered Jen's message about a bicycle box, and said $200 pesos for it. What!? That's $12 and pretty expensive for a cardboard box. But what they had meant was to take the bike apart for her, pack it into the box, and all that labor and all that cardboard would be $200 pesos. They would even deliver the box across the city to our hotel when done. Neither Jen nor I had anything to prove; we can take our bikes apart and reassemble them ourselves just fine. But to have a bit more time to wander this city, and to not have to worry about tools, and if these brothers wanted to do it, then what an amazing deal! So over I handed my machine and took an Uber back to my hotel. 

Senora Uber, a sweet grandmother, and I conversed in my favorite kind of way: a mix of simple Spanish and simple English, both providing what we could of the other's language. I told her about my bicycle trip and that this was my last day Tuesday. "Estoy muy triste!" I said, I am very sad. 

"No. You should celebrate!", she returned. Of course! What a wonderful and different mindset that is. Celebrate when something good is done, rather than mourn it being over. Celebrate someone's life and memory, like Day of the Dead. Thank you Mexico for this perspective, may I remember it and carry it back home with me. 

Sadness mixed with happiness, the Duality, there it is again. My trip is completed, yes, but I don't feel such the grip of mourning that I used to after a trip is over. I've painted memories, I have a picture book in my mind of all the places I saw and all the adventures and all the laughter and amazement. They exist for later day-dreaming. Also, my other life is wonderful, and I am happy to be going back to Ithaca, researching, my farmers, my pipe organ, my friends. And because of my obsession with the pen, say, on a disgusting rainy night in March, I can pour myself a bit of mescal, sit with my beloved cat, and flip through my journal. I will probably laugh in past-pity at the unbearable sun flogging, over the days of 17 toilet visits, smile at how Jen and I shared with each other bites of absolutely everything we ate ("here, I saved you this tiny wad of what was once a bigger tamarind wad.... isn't that attractive!") 

For all I've loved being here, I've started having intricate fantasies involving peanut butter, I haven't hugged anyone in a week's time, and I'm nearly desperate to eat kale and spinach. 

This morning, my last day, I slept in 'till the languid hour of 5:40am. I haven't slept in for days, and thus it felt like a Saturday. A whole Saturday, all earned, all celebrating, all free for nothing more epicurian than wandering and seeking various final pleasures, with that tinge of This Is The Last poignancy. And shopping! Since I am no longer restricted to two small paniers, I am buying mole, snacks, mescal, all these things for my beloved people back home. I also purchased a truly enormous, square, inarguably el-cheapo 70 peso "novidades" bag with...Winnie the Pooh on it. Can't wait to lug that saccharine atrocity, along with my boxed bicycle, through the airport surrounded by a bunch of serious adults.

Before I headed to the market I climbed up to the roof of my hotel to see the sunrise. The stairway to the third floor just led up there. The roofs in a colonial city are a world of their own: all flat, sometimes with slightly different levels. All the buildings in a block connect, I think, with courtyards amongst them rather than yards separating them. 

And so it was natural for me to take a little step from my roof to the neighbor's (ignore that chasm), then up this little ladder, climb over that wall thing, walk across a flat expanse under the sky. I peered down into one courtyard, the checkered floor, the layers of balconies with wrought iron fences, the palm growing through the middle of it. No one else was awake yet. The next courtyard seemed abandoned, it contained piles of rock, crawling with vines and plant life. What was the story there? Then I walked some more and watched from the edge the buses roaring on the street below, people moving along the sidewalk. 

There was a huge caimito tree that had been dropping little fruit bombs into the courtyard of my hotel; the staff were constantly chasing their splats around with brooms. I reached and picked four of them from the roof. You cut open and scrape out the white milky insides, avoiding the skin (which will leave your lips stuck with latex), and it tastes like Arroz Con Leche, complete with vanilla but in fruit form. I ate three of them before I thought to have scruples for my Future Self. After I climbed down and reentered the normal ground level sidewalk life, I felt I had x-ray vision, depicting in my mind all those hidden courtyards deep within that block, peered into from above. 

Being up there fired the imagination so much,  like fanciful fairy tales combined: Peter Pan because it was almost like flying invisible, the Secret Garden, and of course Mary Poppins for the chimney sweep scene dancing from roof to roof across the whole of London. 

The roof sunrise 

Courtyard peeking 

Shadow self portrait with roofs on roof 

Street view