90

               What must it be like to be 90?

                My Mom recently turned 90.  We threw her a party at her assisted living facility.  It was like a family reunion, and then some.  A few old friends happened by.  Our next door neighbor from the house I grew up in, and in which Mom lived some 80 years, showed up.  He, too, is 90.  He came in with a huge smile on his face, and walked right up to Mom to say hello.  He told me he makes Christmas lawn ornaments for friends and family.  You know, big nutcrackers, elves, even Santa and his sleigh.  At 90. 

Mom with some of her nieces.

                I wonder what I’ll be like should I be lucky enough to make it to 90.  I wonder what it is like for Mom.  I wonder what goes through her head.  Does she still worry about money?  Does she worry about her health?  Losing weight?  Or is there some point where you just say, “Screw it all, I’m 90 and I’m going to enjoy it”.  My old neighbor, Tom, certainly seems to be that way.  But I’m not so certain about Mom.

                Like me, Mom has always been an introvert.  I know what it is like not to want to be around people, to just hole up in your room and watch TV or read.  I love going to the movies because theatres are dark and you feel that no one really knows you are there.  So now, at 90, does Mom still feel that way?  I think she does because she does not go anywhere.  When my siblings and I researched assisted living facilities for Mom, high on our list was to find a place that had a lot of activities.  We were certain Mom was going to want to stay busy (or at least, we hoped).  And the place we found has about a dozen activities each day.  They take trips to Bernheim Forest for picnics, to the grocery store, the mall, they have jewelry classes, play bingo, bridge, poker, Uno, they have movie night in the on-site theatre, weekly chorus practice and performances, and of course there are mealtimes, where everyone gathers to talk about families, their health woes, or where to buy the best wigs.  They all seem to enjoy living there.  Except Mom.

                In the year Mom has been at Atria Assisted Living, she has left the building once – and that was because the administrative staff said she had to go for a TB test or she would have to move out.  She has left her room twice, including that little TB outing.  She takes all her meals in her room.  There are people on staff who say they have never even met Mom.  I think they placed bets on whether or not she would leave her room and go to the party room for her birthday.  I spoke to one young woman who was very surprised when she did.

                What is it that makes one 90 year old want to get out as much as they can, while others lock themselves in their rooms, working puzzles and watching games shows?  I cannot figure it out.

                My Uncle George never stopped.  I’ve written before about how Uncle George always did things the hard way, on purpose.  By stepping off his back porch at the highest step-down point rather than the lowest, he kept his mind sharp and challenged his body.  I want to be like Uncle George.

                I watch so many older celebrities keep working into their 80’s and 90’s.  Angela Lansbury 

is 90 this year; she’s touring Australia in a production of “Driving Miss Daisy”.  Betty White, at 93, just came off another 7-year run of a sitcom.  And Dick Van Dyke, also 90 this year, is still dancing, singing with his new band, and making records, videos and guest appearances.

                The one person who I most wish to see doing all this won’t leave her room.  And it is frustrating.  It’s difficult not to say something to Mom about it. 

                “Do you know how lucky you are to be 90 and in such good condition?  You’re just pissing it all away!”

                But, of course, I don’t say that to her.  I gently prod, try to suggest things she might be interested in doing.  I offered to drive her to Florida to see her great grandchildren.  “No.”  I offered to go get her and accompany her to Mexico to stay with me for a few months each winter.  “No.” 

                She won’t budge – literally or figuratively. 

                So I’ve given up.  We all have.  If we try to push her on being more active, she just digs in her heels.  We’re the ones feeling frustrated.  We’re the ones stressed out about it.  We’re the ones getting into long discussions about what to do about Mom.  Mom seems perfectly content to sit in her Lazy Boy chair, continue working those word-seek puzzles, read her books, and keep the TV on for company. 

                I have made a promise to myself.  Barring any major health problems, if I make it to 90 I’m going to be hiking the Alps, or rafting down the Colorado River, or at least still enjoying the beaches of Florida or Mexico.  Will I make it?  What will that be like?  I’ll let you know.

The Sounds of Merida

The Sounds of Merida

The knife man came today.  I don’t know what he is really called – guess I should ask Gaspar or Berta – but I call him the knife man because he comes around and sharpens our knives, scissors, and garden tools.  This is just one of the things we love about living in Mexico: people can still hang out their shingle and make a living performing many of the tasks of day-to-day existence.  And it also comprises some of the unique sounds of Merida. 

                I had all our knives and garden tools piled in the corner of the kitchen for several days.  We have been listening for the sound of the knife man: a toot up the scale of his pan flute.  So when we finally heard it echoing down the street, out the door we rushed to make certain he did not pass us by.  He sharpened about 20 items, oiled the garden tools, sanded them when required, and off he went again on his bike, his portable grinder perched on the back.  Tooooooot!   Tooooooot!

                When we first moved to Merida we would wonder what all the different sounds were about.  We heard a ding-ding-ding, a clang-clang, a whistle, a bike horn, even voices shouting (shouting what, we didn’t know).  We quickly learned that we had better learn the different sounds if we wanted fresh fruit, bread, cold drinks, ice cream, a delivery bike service, or our knives sharpened. 

               

The first sound we learned was for the bread man.  He, and every other bread man in Merida, rings a bike horn just like we used to have on our bikes when we were kids.  Honka-honka!  When you hear that horn you have about 20 seconds to get to the door and yell, “Pan!”, or he’ll be down the street and gone; he moves fast.  But the bread we get off the street vendors is some of the best in the city.  They usually have French loaves, baguettes, sweet breads of camote (sweet potato), dulce de leche (caramel), or potato, and even donuts.  On lazy nights we catch the bread man and make a meal out of 2 or 3 different varieties.  Like Pavlov’s dog, whenever I hear a bike horn I start salivating.  And for some reason I’ve noticed that the little neighbor kid riding his bike down the street while ringing his bell always crosses to the other side if I’m standing out front of the house.  Go figure.

               

Now we have grown accustomed to hearing the various sounds and have learned the meaning of most of them.  The ice cream man makes a clang-clang-clang by hitting an old car’s wheel drum with a hammer.  If you are too close to him it is deafening; I wonder if the poor man has any hearing left.  The most interesting is a, presumably, husband-and-wife team.  The husband pedals their three-wheel bike down the street, chock full of mameys, those football-shaped fruits, the pulp of which has the consistency of and tastes like a sweeter sweet potato.  The wife walks along the sidewalk, under an umbrella to shield her from the harsh sun, yelling, “Mameeeeeeeey!  Mameeeeeeeey!”

                A couple of our regular vendor visitors have no sound at all; they simply knock on our door.  And I guess it kind of makes sense that the flower man doesn’t blast his plants with a harsh ding-ding or horn. 

               

The most interesting may be the dirt cart.  A mule-drawn cart comes down our street about twice a month, full of sacks of dirt for sale for $40 pesos per sack.  “Tierrrrrrra!  Tierrrrrrra!”  But when we hear that sound, we hide.  If you open the door when they ring your bell they will not leave until you purchase a sack or two.  In Spanish, they insist we need dirt:  “You have a garden?  You need dirt!  Yes, two bags.  You need dirt.  Never enough dirt.  You buy my dirt!”  They simply will not take “no” for an answer.  So we end up ducking in the corner of the kitchen, out of sight of the window lest they peek through, like criminals avoiding the fuzz.  Just like my mother used to make us do whenever the Fuller Brush Man came around.  (Those of you under 50, look it up.)

                We love living in Merida, but Gawd, it’s noisy!  From the neighbors’ blaring stereo speakers, to the ancient busses clanking down the street, to the guard dog at the feed store on the next street over, to the constant celebratory fireworks, there’s a lot going on.  But we wouldn’t have it any other way.  People in Merida do not seem to be parked in front of the TV day and night; the kids are not bug-eyed in front of Xbox.  The locals get outside and enjoy their wonderful city.  These are sounds of lives being lived, of families enjoying themselves, of children screeching in pleasure at the sight of bottle rockets soaring into the sky.  And your only recourse is to get out there and join in the fun.  We said we wanted to live in a different country to experience a different way of living, and so here we are.  We would be foolish not to take advantage of these experiences – and to get our knives sharpened.

Murder at the Tudor

               Of course it was raining; what kind of murder mystery would this be if it were not?  My old Ford Fairlane dodged left and right, trying to avoid the potholes whose depths I did not know until I hit one, so I tried not to hit one.   It was already hard enough to see in front of me through the broken windshield without the heavy rain clouding my vision even more.  I didn’t even try to look behind me; I was used to the missing rearview mirror.

                The gate of Mrs. White’s Tudor mansion was already open when I approached, but then closed behind me when I cleared it.  The claxon sound of the two metal gates closing on each other was right out of Hitchcock, and I laughed at myself for feeling off balance.  This was only a writer’s group meeting, I reminded myself.  But whenever it was Mrs. White’s turn to host, unusual things just happened.  One night a dead cat lay at Mrs. White’s double doors, the beautiful mahogany stained with the cat’s blood.  Turns out one of the hounds had got hold of the poor creature and slung it at the door.

                Another night one of the group members, Melissa, choked on one of Mrs. White’s shrimps.  Every person there that night said they knew the Heimlich and attempted to help, but it was Mr. White that jumped in first and helped Melissa expel the offending shrimp.  But tonight was truly going to be murder.

                Mary-Elizabeth, a woman of about 70 with blonde hair that was obviously out of a bottle, read her piece, first.  It was long and personal, a lament about how she had neglected her children when they were growing up, and how it made them strong adults (One of her children became a famous movie star, for a while.  I guess that made Mary-Elizabeth feel better about the neglect.)

                After Barbara read the first chapter of her romance novel (why are writer’s groups always heavy on the female side?), we broke for cake and coffee (Mrs. White swore off serving canapes after that one, unfortunate incident I alluded to earlier.)  The cake was one of those fantastic lopsided upside down creations so popular these days.  It was made and brought by Terri, who apparently wrote and baked fancy cakes.  I hate people with more than one skill.

                Settling back in our seats to hear from our next presenter, Mrs. White called on Caroline.  Caroline was a large woman, widowed, and an endless talker.  If someone hadn’t killed her, I might have, myself.  (Yes, I know that’s redundant, but I’m trying to find my voice, here.)

                “Where’s Caroline?”, Mrs. White asked.

                “I think she went to the bathroom,” piped up Peter.  Besides being the only other man in the group, Peter was an observer.  I know, as writers we all should be, but Peter tracked everything and everyone.  It was Peter who discovered how the cat died.  And he got a great story out of it, as well.  That really pissed me off.

                Just as Mrs. White was about to choose another presenter, a loud, long scream pierced our ears.  Mrs. White turned white, I’m sorry to say, and we all ran to the bathroom. 

                There was Caroline, apparently standing over Mr. White, his body draped over the open window’s sill. 

                I grabbed Mrs. White to keep her from entering the bathroom, but I lost my grip and she went barreling into the room.

                Back in the living room Mrs. White was surrounded by the group, some holding her hands, others offering her a tissue as she continued to wail.  She cried and wondered aloud how she was going to go on without her “little Whitey”. 

                When the police arrived, we were certain we would all be there all night.  But Peter ensured we would be home and in bed by midnight.

                “Officer, if I might.  I’ve been observing everyone here tonight and there can be only one murderer.” 

                Peter turned to Mrs. White.  “Mrs. White, your husband has a twin, is that not correct?”

                “Yes, he does”, she answered.  “But how could you know that?”

                “Every month when we arrive at your house, Mr. White greets us at the door.  He always stands to the right of the door to open it because he is left-handed, is that not correct?”  God this guy was irritating.  He sounded like a sleuth from, well, “Sleuth”.  So smug.  I also hate people who are always right.  Not just the ones who think they are always right, but especially the ones who are always right.

                “Why, yes, he is”, answered Mrs. White.

                “The man lying in that bathroom is right handed.  I could tell because his car keys are in his right pants pocket.  That means that your husband, Ben White, murdered his twin brother, Bob White who was recently widowed and inherited his wife’s huge estate.”

                The police soon confirmed the hypothesis, including Peter’s presumption that Ben White had invited his brother to the house to talk business and lured him to the bathroom and the open window in an attempt to make it look as if an intruder had murdered Mr. White; Mrs. White abruptly fainted.

                Peter was right and I hated him even more.  He was going to get a best-seller from this! 

     Bastard.

Help!

I can’t help him.  I wish I could, but I can’t help him.

He walks the streets in thread-bare clothing that he, himself, has made thread-bare.  When he is given new clothes he spends all his time ripping them and tearing them until they provide barely any modesty.  He is usually without a shirt and rarely wears shoes.  I cannot help him.

A coin provides him hours and hours of fascination.  He kneels at the curb or on a sidewalk and picks up the coin, then tosses it down to the street again.  Then he “discovers” a coin on the street and the process repeats itself for hours on end.  He needs help from someone.

His hair gets very long and filthy until someone, I don’t know who, gives him a haircut.  At one point last summer his hair reached to his hips.  His frame is prisoner-of-war-camp thin; his skin is dark from the sun and often darker from caked-on dirt.  Clearly he is disturbed.  But he is friendly and says “hello”…always.  I wish I could snap my fingers and help him.

Others have tried to help him.  Whenever he is “taken away”, something that seems to occur two or three times per year, he returns to the streets a week later clean, shorn, and with new clothes that he immediately makes into his own special brand of rags.  He clearly should be on medication; perhaps he is but does not take it.

Someone, at some point in the past, helped him: He has a home.  It is a two-room house just down the street from us.  He has set it afire three times in the three years we have lived here.  He collects old newspapers and fills his house with them…until he sets them on fire.  I can tell when he has walked past our house as there is a telltale trail of old newspapers along the sidewalk.  One time I made him clean up the newspapers.  He did so cheerfully.  That wasn’t any help to him.

One day I was walking past Starbucks on a busy boulevard in my town and saw two policemen trying to coax someone up off the street.  It was him.  He was sitting on the street, three or four coins beside him.  The police didn’t help him.

I wish I had the magic.  I wish I could close my eyes and command his scrambled brains to be unscrambled again.  But I cannot help him.

Today, on my daily run, I passed him on our street.  As he saw me running toward him he bent over and did a little jig as I passed him.  “Hello”, he said in perfect English.  “Buenos Dias”, I said in return. 

I’ll never be able to help him.

Who's Your Daddy?

     You know how Oprah has her “Ah-ha” moments?  (Always mention Oprah anytime you want to get peoples' attention, and especially right at the start.)

     You know how Oprah has her “Ah-ha” moments?  Well, I have “duh!” moments whenever I listen to or read columns by Fareed Zakaria.  (Not only did I mention Oprah, I also related myself to her…see how I did that?!)

     There are few columnists I read.  Tom Friedman is one I frequently find myself agreeing with.  He just makes sense.  No one knows economics better than Paul Krugman (even though I believe economics is a false science - parse THAT.)  But Fareed Zakaria, I mean, wow!  Not only do I find myself always agreeing with his logic, I often have “duh” moments where I wonder why no one else has said what Fareed said.  (Fareed won’t mind if I use his first name; after all, he’s in my living room every Sunday morning.)

     Fareed obviously has a firm grasp on world affairs as evidenced not only in his intelligent thoughts about the world, but also based upon how often his prophecies have come true.

     Over a year ago, in June 2014, Fareed wrote about the Middle East, and Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan in particular.  He said that the region would continue to fracture because “Sunni, Shiite, Kurd (and other) sectarian groups, often Islamist, have filled the power vacuum.  He argued the problem is one of identity, not idealism (read “religious”).  People will fight for an identity (American, for example), not ideals.  The Civil War, for example, was fought not on a zeal to adhere to biblical teachings (although the bible was used as a weapon to justify slavery), the North and South waged war because the two groups saw themselves as different people who could not come together in thought.  This plays right into Fareed’s principle that people in Iraq will not fight for Islam, but for who they are as a people.

     Only a year ago, you say?  Fair enough. 

     In December 1997, Fareed wrote that although many countries across the globe are holding ostensibly democratic free elections, the resulting power structures are looking more like dictatorships.  And that, indeed, is what we have seen in the last two decades.  “Today the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, are coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing; constitutional liberalism is not”, he wrote.  Duh!

In January 2010 Fareed also wrote, “Iraq needs a stable power-sharing deal that keeps all three groups (Shias, Sunnis, Kurds) invested in the new country.”  He argued that if that did not happen, the country could be doomed to failure. 

     It seems no one else had this thought because just this past week (May 31, 2015), Fareed declared Iraq a failed country and proposed what might need to happen, next.  Duh!

     Although the majority of Fareed’s thoughts are on world political affairs, he also has an eye on the U.S., technology (which he sees as an important ally of world peace), and periodically writes a thought piece, such as his recent column that wonders how the world might be different if a certain asteroid had struck in, say, New York City instead in the frozen wasteland of Siberia.

     Okay, enough touting Fareed Zakaria’s insights and thought-provoking, uh, thoughts.  I just wonder why more people are not as thoughtful.  Why is Fareed Zakaria, Tom Friedman, Paul Krugman, and others like them the only ones out there making sense?    

If we had politicians who actually engaged in thoughtful consideration (okay, now, stop laughing!), I might more often be saying “Duh!”, instead of, “Doh!”

     Where are our thinking leaders?  Where are any of our leaders?  We are so hungry and starved for competent leadership that anyone who can make a good speech immediately makes us salivate for their election to office.  Anyone who comes along with a decent new idea garners a huge following.  

     But their ideas often peter out; their leadership exposed for what it is: hunger for more power (or money…or both).  Are there exceptions?  Of course there are.  But I’m not going to talk specifics; I’m speaking in generalities, here.

     So what do we do?  How can we return to a government of thinking leaders?

     I believe it is up to us.  To have thinking leaders we must become thinking people.  We must stop poo-pooing science (unless that science is about poo-poo).  We must improve our educational system so we churn out thinking graduates.  We should teach our children to think for themselves and not simply repeat what they hear at home. (I would say “at the dinner table”, but does that even exist anymore?)  We must get our information from varied information outlets, and not sit back and watch only Fox News or MSNBC.  We must listen to differing opinions.  We must welcome challenges to what we know and what we believe.  We should attend meetings and rallies of organizations with views that challenge our own.  We have to take the money out of politics – somehow.  (No, I don’t know how, I only know it has to happen.)

     We have to stop watching the Kardashians.

     Okay, stop sweating…we don’t have to stop watching the Kardashians.  But we have to know that it is not real life and that what happens on that “reality” TV show doesn’t matter to any of our lives; we should not make decisions based upon what Kim might do.  We have to be smarter.

     It’s up to us, and only us.  We have the power, but we don’t wield it.  When we demand better leadership, we’ll get better leadership.  Until then the Donald Trumps of the world will continue to make a mockery of our republic.

indulge me

I was moving in a slight daze and could feel the sun baking my skin, but it felt distant, as if someone was describing the sensation of heat to me rather than my feeling it, and I looked to my left as two skateboarding teens twisted and turned past bicyclists moving in the opposite direction, the boys moving with as much speed as they could muster and quickly disappearing to the fading sound of the skateboard wheels grinding on the pavement where I slowly turned my head forward and continued walking as I was intensely aware of my surroundings with birds singing overhead – with whistles, chirps, and cawls -  children passing on their bikes laughing and yelling for their parents as a young couple approached, hand-in-hand, her wearing short shorts and he wearing torn jeans and a Ramones T-Shirt, the aromas swirling around my head a mixture of their colognes – hers light and pretty, his solid and silky – and then quickly dissipating into the hot air as I passed a hotel on Paseo de Montejo and noticed the landscaping:  A wagon wheel propped among the shrubs and flowers, attempting to evoke an earlier era and, I suppose, soften the hard, cold contours of the 9-story marble-facade building with its ridge of dirt separating grass and sidewalk bricks, for what purpose I do not know and as I moved forward I wanted to close my eyes and allow my senses to lead me, but there were too many obstacles in my path and I didn’t want to take the chance I might disturb the dream-like state because I was doing my best to simply be in the moment and allow my senses to be vividly alive and I felt the blood coursing through my body, especially down my hands and fingers; my feet stopped aching and I glided along the sidewalk with so many sounds bombarding my ears at once that I could barely categorize them all: Along with the birds overhead and the families enjoying their Sunday morning to my left I could hear car engines to my right on the next street over, one being an older car, most likely a Ford, with its tell-tale water pump making that familiar click-click-click and all the walkers’ shoes made various sounds on the large red bricks under our feet - clop, clop, sshump, sshump, ping, ping, ping, ping, and I thought to myself that I must remember these sounds, these smells, these sights;  I must remember this feeling of being alive in this moment; my temples relaxed and I stopped grinding my teeth; I let go of my stomach muscles and the weight shifted forward as I met a tag of taxi drivers gathered around their vehicles parked along the side street, some of them idling, their exhausts spewing the venomous, piercing odor and threatening to catapult me back to reality as the men laughed, tugged on their crotches, and added to the acrid odor of car fumes were the waftings of burnt tobacco as the men sucked on cigarettes and I quickly wound my way between them to cross the street where ahead were numerous artists selling their paintings and as I strolled past their wares I tried not to judge their works, but only to allow them to have whatever effect they may have, feeling little in the way of inspiration or emotion, but very much feeling the weight of the artists’ labored stares desperately seeking my approval, and my money, and I felt uncomfortable and sad for them, not being able to imagine making my way through the world working on the streets and how lucky I am in my life to be able to indulge myself in this manner – to know I have some security – a thriving business – a future, when just ahead a woman stooped over to pick up her dog’s dropping as she expertly wrapped a small plastic bag around her hand, grabbed the entire mess, and almost magically turned the bag outside in as she arose and crossed to the trash can on the street as she’d done many times before and I came to the glorieta with the OXXO store, the area eerily quiet – as opposed to the clamor normally occurring here with traffic coming from all directions, fighting their way through the traffic circle - when I noticed the sun’s rays hitting the trees above and shattering into a million fragments, each falling to their place in line along the sidewalk and street and buildings as I walked under the trees and my skin stopped baking and the air momentarily cooled as a man sat on a bench awaiting a bus that would not come this morning and just beyond a couple of old mansions to my right were in the process of restoration as others sat and continued their slow, abandoned decline; one of the restorations only the façade of the old home remaining intact while a new, modern facility arose behind it, with the sidewalk rising and falling due to tree roots and heavy rains inundating the walk to the heavy iron fence to my right which protected the cars in the lot of the small shopping area from Paseo where a guard sat in a shack at the parking lot’s entrance, his small portable TV blaring some sporting event as I slowly began to return to the present and my final glorieta that would require all my focus to cross the dangerous intersection until I was pleasantly reminded that it was Sunday and there was very little traffic about so I quickly and easily crossed the street to the grass median and immediately continued on to step up on the far sidewalk and its carpet of bird doo that told me I had reached my destination and in that instant pulled myself back to reality as I looked up to see the patinaed stone front of my friendly neighborhood Walmart

Squish, Squish, Squish

So a couple of days ago Gaspar comes to me and tells me there is a “small, no maybe big problem” in one of our rooms.  I follow him to Balam, on the second floor of the first casita, where he shows me a leak in the shower hot-water faucet.  Ah, no big deal, says I to myself.  I have already dealt with a leaky kitchen faucet and know that all I have to do is visit my friendly neighborhood hardware or plumbing supply tienda and in no time that leak will be history.

So I grab a few pesos, my wallet, and put on my “walking” shoes (anything other than flip-flops) and head down the street to our hardware store.  The owner, Jose, loves to practice a bit of English when I come into the store.  He tries to repeat in English whatever he says to me in Spanish.  Then he looks at me with a big grin, very proud that at age 85 he “still has it”.  Whenever I purchase something at his store, he always speaks the cost in English.  “Tirty-six pesos”, and then looks up at me with that grin.

So I pull out the old valve I brought with me and ask him if he has one.  “No, lo siento”, comes his reply.  “Sorry”.  I say, “no problemo”, thank him, and head to where I knew I should have gone to in the first place. 

So I head for Cereba at the corner of 57 and 50.  The guy first gives me a very long valve, and I say, no, it is much smaller and show him my old valve.  He then pulls out one that seems to match perfectly.  Same length, same rubber grommets, same innards.  So I say I’ll take two…gotta’ have one for the next time one of these faucets gives out.

So I grab a taxi home to get the new valve installed before our next guests arrive. 

So our guests arrive that evening.  They are four young people from China, and they don’t speak three words of English.  We use a lot of hand signals trying to explain everything.  Steve pulls every breakfast food out of the refrigerator and shows it to them, one at a time, in order to find out if they can eat each item.  We get them all settled and they seem to be enjoying their stay.

So on their second, and last, morning, one of the young women comes to me with her hands flailing and trying to say “shower no work”.  After a few repetitions, I get it and follow her to the Balam room, where water is gushing from the hot water faucet.

So after shutting off the water and cleaning up most of the water on the floor of the bathroom, I run to our shower and remove one of the valves so I can use it in Balam.  That solves things for the moment, but I know I have, probably, a full day finding the right valve. 

So after the guests check out Gaspar and I remove the valve again and try to ascertain why the new one has failed.  Seems the threads on the new valve are different than the old and the valve had not seated fully.  When water pressure was applied, it popped out of the wall.

So now I know the problem, and head to Fernandez hardware.  I have found over the last three years that if I really need something, just go to Fernandez because they will have it. 

So they don’t have it.  They suggest Cereba, a plumbing store in La Mejorada.  Yeah, I KNOW!

So I return to Cereba for the “right” valve.  But guess what?  No, they don’t have the right one.  The woman behind the counter suggests I remove all the rubber grommets from the new one and rebuild my old valve.  After all, the metal housing is fine.  Sounds good to me; I buy two more valves and walk home, confident in Plan B.

So after I rebuild the new valve, I put in the last piece, which is the rubber grommet at the end of the valve.  But it is ever, so very slightly larger than the old one, but I manage to get it seated.  It puffs out the end a bit and this worries me.  And yes, when I try to install it, the valve leaks.

So my next step is to remove a couple of valves from our shower, install one of them in Balam, and try to find the right valves to replace the ones in our shower, using the other valve from our shower as an example and to compare. 

So I know that Luis, who renovated our property, is working on a house down our street, and chances are the plumber that works with Luis will be there.  I head to the house, knock, and open the door.  Luis happens to be there and I ask him where the shower valves came from at our house.  “Boxito”. 

So off to Boxito I go, my sample valve in my shorts pocket.  They don’t have it.  But they have one that the guy insists will work.  60 pesos. 

So when THAT valve doesn’t work, I head for Ceramat in Las Americas because I know we bought a lot of stuff from them when we renovated.  On the way I pass a Surpesa store and stop in to ask if they have the valve.  “No.  Va a Flecha”.  Flecha?  What is that?  Never heard of Flecha.  The guy says it is on the next street over, a few blocks down.

So when Ceramat doesn’t have the valve, I start the search for this Flecha store.  I walk three blocks East, and there is a little tienda in front of me called “Flecha”.  They have about a dozen different valves on display, and I was able to match up my sample with one on the display.  I purchase one, promising to return for 10 more if “this one works”.

So I’m back at home and 5 minutes later I’m in the shower, singing, “Aaaahhhhh sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you.”  Wow!  Can a tiny victory like that really make me that manic?  I gotta’ get a life.

So it took only 5 bad purchases, 6 hours, and some very wet clothes to get this one fixed.  But it is fixed (for now, anyway).  Now I can relax and watch a couple of episodes of “House, M.D.”

And then Gaspar comes to me and says we have a small problem.  When it rains, it pours, I guess.