by Philip Gambone

Friday began for me at one in the morning, when I was awakened by a gaggle of young, drunken frat-boy types returning from a night of bar crawling. They thought nothing of standing on the sidewalk underneath my window, loudly carousing and trying to hook up with some young women they'd met. Their loud, raucous nonsense went on for a good fifteen minutes before the young women slammed the door of their Air B&B in their faces. The boys got into their car and drove off. Suddenly, I heard a crash at the corner, and a few minutes later the sound of a police cruiser.

In the morning, on my way to coffee, I passed by the corner. No wrecked vehicle, but part of a stone window sill—maybe two hundred years old—had been broken off in the accident. In turning the corner, the car—which of the drunken boys had been driving?—must have side-swiped the building and caused the damage. My husband, who is Mexican, looked for news of the accident on his local news feed. Nothing. "That's because they were gringos," he said. "The city doesn't publish stuff like that about the tourists."

At the café, more bad news. The barista, a Mexican woman in her early sixties, talked to me about how bad business had been. There were fewer people coming to San Miguel. Why? I asked. "¡Los precios!" she said, and went on to tell me how rising rents were causing small business people like her to jack up their prices. Higher prices all over town were discouraging tourists and locals. This led us on to a conversation about greed, the rampant, uncontrolled building boom, and municipal corruption. It was only 9 AM and already my day was full of unpleasantness.

As the day went on, it got worse. My husband found out that the high-end restaurant where he cooks was closing. In another conversation, I learned that Carlos Manso, the mayor of Uruapan in Michoacán, who had been fighting against organized crime, had been shot and killed by a seventeen-year-old boy at a Day of the Dead festival last month. Back home, Trump was at it again, this time removing Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the list of free admission days at the national parks and adding his birthday, which happens to fall on Flag Day.

By that evening, I was feeling pretty glum about the state of things. Somehow, I managed to rouse myself for a stroll into the Centro. I knew that the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony would be taking place, and, since my husband was working, taking in a bit of cheer on what had been a pretty gloomy day seemed in order.

I was totally unprepared for what I experienced—the crowds of merrymakers in Jardín, the festive music, the festoons of lights in the trees, the Santa Claus mojiganga, the packed cafés, ice cream shops and street-food vendors doing a brisk business. And then the fireworks! Against the backdrop of the Parroquia, the thrilling bursts of color and noise brought me back to my childhood when only on the Fourth of July could we enjoy similar displays of such magical pyrotechnics.

Most of all, what lifted my heart was the hundreds of families, parents with their children, enjoying this kickoff to the Christmas season. Many dressed in Christmas sweaters, they were sitting on the curbs, huddled together, eating tamales, drinking hot beverages, and just being family. For me it was one more example of the sweet, tender affection and closeness that characterizes so many Mexican families. For them, tonight was a night for fun, for delight, for silliness, for wonder. For dropping worry about rising rents, lack of jobs, scarcity of water. And perhaps for a few, like me, it was a night for taking a more spacious view of things, for reminding myself to cherish, as one of my dharma teachers puts it, "the crystal-clear nature of this moment now."

I walked back home refreshed, steadied, grateful. Still aware of all the crap in the world—the hatred, violence, pettiness, megalomania, corruption—but aware, too, that we can access something bigger and more beautiful than all that stuff. Mexico "gets into your gut," Carlos Fuentes once wrote. The best of Mexico got into my gut Friday night. Let me cultivate it every day.

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Philip Gambone, a retired high school English teacher, also taught creative and expository writing at Harvard for twenty-eight years. For over a decade, his book reviews appeared regularly in The New York Times. Phil is the author of seven books. His memoir, As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II, was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by the Boston Globe. His new collection of short stories, Zigzag, was published last year by Rattling Good Yarns Press. His books are available through Amazon and at "Tesoros," the bookshop at the Biblioteca.

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