Shopping bags become storage, jars become glasses, ice cream tubs hold leftovers. In Mexico nothing is thrown away while it still has a life.
Google has information. Abuela has experience. In Mexico, knowledge is inherited through people, and grandma already solved it decades ago.
Apparently friendship in Mexico has a disclosure requirement.
"Ya casi llego" is less about geography than optimism. In Mexico, reality gets softened to keep the harmony, because time matters, but people matter more.
Do not cry, life is a carnival. It sounds like denial, but it is not. A field note, and maybe the clearest answer to the question at the center of my book: why does Mexico smile?
Love can disappear in a moment. Forgetting refuses to cooperate. A field note on why Mexican songs are not embarrassed by longing that outlasts the love that caused it.
You arrive with an empty container and leave with it full. In Mexico, hospitality isn't just feeding you, it's insisting you take some home.
The roads of life are not like I thought. A field note on accepting the unexpected turn without the language of personal failure, and how the road can disappoint you and still take you home.
Come here, I am not going to do anything to you. In Mexico or in South Africa, no child has ever believed that sentence. A short field note on a phrase that means the exact opposite of what it says.