Shani Waves Goodbye

                                                            Shani Waves Goodbye

Hay una nina pequena -  there is a little girl - se nombre es Shannara - her name is Shannara, Shani for short.
I see her still, standing in the doorway of her Grama's house in Patzcuarto, Michoacan, Mexico. Her young Mom, Gaby, holds Shani while she waves goodbye to us. She waves like young children do, opening and closing her little brown hand, her eyes focused in a serious tone, as though she realizes now that she will miss us. These 2 guests leaving, who speak oddly, whose skin is not the same lovely warm brown as hers, who like to smile and play with her and her boisterous brood of little cousins, who eat her Mama's beans and soups at the family table when her Papa comes home. Her beautiful, funny Papa, el dentiste, the dentist, full Perhepecha Indian, with a smile and a sense of humor as long as the day he puts in at his office in town, and the other small pueblas he visits in the week.

Shani's Papa is our dentist now. We travel 2000 miles to have him work on our teeth because he is a wonderful man, and we have no U.S. insurance. His family takes us in, gives us a place to stay and keeps inviting us to eat. We sit with the whole family on a Sunday and eat 'impossible' cake Gaby baked especially for one of the children's birthdays. We talk about food, family, language, music, work - everything.

On the last day Gaby makes us lunch, calda y frijoles - soup and beans. Shani sits on her lap eating frijoles entero - cooked beans whole. I watch her small fingers take one bean at a time from her bowl, as she looks out with her deep brown Perhepecha eyes. She looks like her father I think, she has the indigenous features like those on etched into ancient artworks. With the small earring in her tiny ear, she takes on a wizened countenance. I take a photo, and she will not smile, but that is OK, she has a gorgeous face for a child of 14 months. Something about her stare goes beyond the place, the day, the time. I long to come back and talk to her, years from now. She will have something to say to me.

Shani, the descendant of those peoples of the lake who drew designs of trout - trucha - into their pottery. Those peoples who were so difficult for the Spanish. They ran off into the woods and hid, or hung themselves rather than be enslaved by Cortez's brutal machine.

I step into the little white rental car w/my boyfriend, whom they call "Ella espoza" her husband. It is almost inconceivable to them that people of our age are not married, so we go along.

I think of our destination (Mexico City) and say to Gaby, "Yikes! La Ciudad!" and she smiles knowingly from the cobblestone street in her Puebla.  She laughs her soft Mama laugh, much older than her 22 years, and smiles her blessing upon these 2 wayfarers she has fed for 5 days. She is the new matriarch, the one who is always in the kitchen, who watches everyone's children in the family, who never raises her voice, and looks so forward to her Baking classes in the evenings.

We drive away and they wave. I follow them until the final turn as they disappear from us, and we from them. Shani stays long in my heart, a little ache, a small light. Someday I hope she will meet my grand daughter, who will be less than 2 years younger. Someday we might all sit in the warm Mexico sun and talk a Spanish/English mixture, laughing hard because words will fail us.

Dia de los Muertos, Cuetzalan, Puebla, MX

This humid evening
I hear the church bells continuous toll,
metal to metal, for all the dead.

The laundry hangs on rooftop lines
the children play and run in the street below.

Shedding clothes wet from
famous waterfall pools, I luxuriate in an evening where
I am not required to be anything or anywhere
I Light this candle to James, his brother and
 all the grandparents.
To the good leaders who advocated peace and justice
and to
the innocent.
My offered candle is small here, 3 pesos
My heart however is, I hope, expanding into
jungle hillsides, viney damp
to little kids asking for money in the streets,
To all the vendors and food preparers, to all those walking slowly
carrying a heavy load up these steep hills
My spirit and my heart I am inside
before and after I arrive and then leave,
closing into winter at my own house.