travel writing – Jezebel’s Table

Meanderings Across Borders

7-2-22

Watching my blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Mexican-born son as he effortlessly negotiates language, race, and class through play, I hold a sand dollar of hope in my cupped hands. Hope that children of the future like him will help change ingrained societal prejudices.

Where I was born, the natives were displaced decades ago, or assimilated into the largely Scandinavian population who inhabit Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

There were a few black children who came and went in our public school system, but other than that, diversity wasn’t something seen in the north woods.

For me, there will always be the unconscious/conscious notice of difference when it comes to race. It’s the framework in which I was raised.

I wish a different world for our son.

I sacrificed many things when I gave birth to Callan in Mexico.

My belly, split open like a ripe melon, our baby plucked from my womb, so he could be born in a new homeland. So that he might see the world through a different lens than his mother and father.

7-19-22

A note to my family; the smell of moss after an autumn rain in Michigan’s woods; the sigh of fresh water on rounded rocks; that particular gold of a northern Michigan summer evening.

I didn’t mean to leave you.

I have some adventures I need to see about.

Some things to do and see and experience

To help me

Make sense

Of this world.

7-27-22

Notes from The Coaster Amtrak train up the California Coast

All around me, a California divided.

Each train stop an encapsulation of how racial socio-economics segregate the United States. The beautiful coastal towns are white and blond. Affluence and skin color buy the best real estate. Homes with the best views. The best schools. Water. Healthcare.

On the outskirts—the margins—cling a motley group of middle class families. White, black, Asian, Hispanic. Their houses butt up to the tracks—a maze of neighborhoods on winding streets. Clinging to the edges of California’s nice neighborhoods as inflation grows, prices climb, gas goes through the roof, and there’s no parking for the cars necessary for jobs that barely hold down the rent-mortgage another month in a neighborhood that used to be affordable.

Those in the middle, slide down the economic scale every year as the wealthier grow richer.

I read an economic report today that said more people are spending only on necessities—nothing extra for their lives given in hard work.

64% of the United States lives paycheck to paycheck.

Juxtaposed against rising sales for luxury items.

Then there’s the rest of the population. The ones who’s numbers grow by the hour. In the same moments corporate offshore bank accounts funnel millions of dollars more than any one person or family will ever need, uncounted families disappear into poverty.

From the train I see homeless encampments—villages—small cities—where the folks who fell off the edges are allowed to make their homes because society doesn’t know what else to do with them.

The wealthy and homeless move around each other in this divided universe.

$500 shoes step carefully around sleeping bodies on the sidewalks.

The train moves away from coastal cities and suburbs. The landscape shifts to agriculture. A nation’s worth of strawberries grown and harvested by “migrant workers.” Men and women allowed to work the soil, but not to hold a place in society.

The train stops in cities named “Santa Maria” and “Santa Barbara.”

We disembark in a picturesque town edged in fields and vineyards full of brown-skinned workers. Cute downtown streets—boutiques, ice cream parlor, brewery, coffee shops—full of white patrons in hiking boots and Patagonia sweaters. A world away, from the reality on the margins.

8-25-22

I cannot follow a recipe

for anything.

It’s as though some part of me rebels at even

these

simple

rules.

9-15-22

I stand at my kitchen counter, cutting a fragrant, ripe, orange-fleshed papaya.

The sweet, milky aroma mingles with the tang of coffee and it’s pleasant, delicious.

Pounding wave sounds wash over a distant skill-saw whine, and occasional car horn.

Pelicans glide above rolling ocean.

It’s a blue, enticing pacific today—personality swings and mood shifts mirrored in color changes and wave strength.

I take a deep breath.

Then another.

This is a lovely moment.

I would say, I’m happy.

But the last two years have taught me to feel leery of such moments.

Tempting fates I don’t believe in but that seem to tangle my threads every time a sense of contentment crosses my heart’s threshold.

Callan is in school. His first day at a new location just outside Tijuana where I hope with every fiber of my being he’s learning and growing from the experience.

He’s only four, but this is his third school and I ache for consistency—for our whole family.

He’s so damn beautiful in his signature sunglasses and flop of blond hair.

“I’m international baby!” Callan shouted when he plunked into his car seat this morning.

A line he heard on a show somewhere.

“What’s international?” He said after a pause, brow wrinkled.

“Well, a nation is a country. The US is a nation. Mexico is a nation. Being from multiple countries means you’re ‘international,’” I explained as I buckled him into his seatbelt.

“You’re international,” I say again, looking into his wide, earnest blue eyes. “You’re from Mexico and the US.”

“I am,” he says proudly, definitively.

9-16-22

Once you realize how subjective it all really is—that’s the moment of freedom.

There are no rules, really.

There is no guide.

Life really is what we make of it.

Choice.

How we fear choice.

The blessing and curse of being human.

Consciousness—we choose to see the world as it is, or we don’t.

Tipped scales against a horizon where the sun is always setting.

Tides, I learned, are a myth.

Really, the water bulges out as the earth turns. There is no rise and fall. No high and low.

Just an illusion we’ve built words and a romantic idea around.

9-18-22

Consciousness is a multi-faceted, sharp-edged jewel.

It makes it both possible, and impossible to fathom our own mortality.

My sweet, beautiful son, four years old, asks me why melons get moldy.

“It’s part of the cycle,” I tell him. “They’re returning to earth, where they came from.”

It makes sense in terms of a fruit, tree, or even animal, but is somehow impossible to contemplate our own place—or the place of the beautiful child before me—within the cycle.

Consciousness of our own mortality, or that of our children, is almost too much to bear.

Our awareness of rot, decomposition, is fearful and separate from our human bodies.

A thought only brought out in lurid books and media.

Relegated to the realm of darkness and the macabre, as opposed to a place within a larger cycle that cares not whether we are afraid, disgusted, in denial, or accepting of our place within it.

Regardless, our fragile animal bodies die and, if not disposed in another way, they decompose.

But why is this considered a dark, depressing thought to entertain, rather than perhaps a sense of satisfaction in fulfilling and completing our part in this glorious cycle we get to participate in as animals on this magical planet?

If not for consciousness.

It’s our own awareness, that makes peace of mind so hard.

10-9-22

I’ve lived in a diverse range of places: my lakeside family home; cabins in the woods; the old Nordic Bay Lodge hotel; dorms; a canvas wall tent for six months; a slew of camping spots and loaned beds and couches; three apartments on a tiny Mexican-Caribbean island and a home with a new baby and ten million mosquitoes; a lovely guest-house in affluent central California wine-country; a “hipster neighborhood” classic-cottage-style home in San Diego’s North Park with no screens on the windows and a bedroom the size of our queen size air mattress for $3000 a month; to our current brick edifice in Rosarito overlooking the cold, dirty, breathtaking waters of the far-north Baja coast.

Before being a nomad, I lived my entire existence in the same house. On the same piece of land. Within the same water-centric world. I can conjure a moment in that place as easily as breathing. The way chickadees call from a tamarack tree on a frozen winter landscape. Where to find morel mushrooms in spring. The aroma of rain-wet maple leaves on a fall day.

What will our son remember?

Callan plucks a gone-to-seed dandelion, and then another.

He hands one to me.

“Make a wish momma.”

We take a deep breath and exhale together, releasing wishes and dandelion seeds into the wind.

Treading Water

1-3-22

There are many types of survival mode and the last two years have taught me a great deal about them.

Grief in layers, the heaviest parts drifting and landing on the bottom of my heart where they lie waiting for space to sift through the sediment. Pick them up and hold them to light like river stones. Eventually let them go.

I’m learning to breathe again. Drawing from deep in my belly and spine.

Pulling back my shoulders, straightening my head.

Looking forward again.

Learning to walk, after holding my head above water I treaded for many, many months.

Rise to the surface.

Suck joy out of every second before plunging down once more.

Even writing feels strange, my thoughts turned inward, streamlined for one step at a time.

One.

Step.

At a time.

To go beyond that in these two years has been to risk the sudden drop as the bottom falls out once again.

***

I first read of selkies before I was ten years old in a book that was beyond my years, but so entranced me I read it over and over until reading it felt like watching a familiar movie.

Celtic mythological creatures, selkies are seals in the water and human when they shed their seal skins and come ashore. They’re passionate beings, who love fiddle music and the warmth of a beach bonfire in the dark of a chilly night.

Shapeshifters who move between worlds.

I watch a pelican cruise casually past where cold pacific waves lick against sand.

The Baja is a land I never imagined I would inhabit. A place I referenced only from a spring break trip to Los Cabos with my family when I was 16.

That’s far south of where I sit in North Rosarito. Rosarito claims its own identity as a city, but it’s really a long, beachside arm of Tijuana. A city my rural-Michigan upbringing never bargained for.

The weather and water here are far colder than I expected, and while I dislike being uncomfortable, something in my Northern-Michigan soul loves how the atmosphere here makes me want to move.

I dance more than I did at home on Isla, and a lot of that has to do with Callan. We often break into spontaneous dances when the music and mood strike us.

There’s nothing more pure and perfect than the joy on his face as he shimmies, wiggles, and gives his limber three year old body to the music. He has a surprising rhythm for someone on this earth for just over three years. A dancer like his daddy.

I remember dancing in the kitchen with my family countless times. Memories layer into this moment and braid together, filling me with echoes of joy.

In the last two years, as loved one after loved one passed away, I promised myself that, in their honor, I would endeavor to live better. Be more joyful and present. Dance when the mood strikes me. Not let myself become so bogged down with anxieties and worries over things I’m powerless to change. Take action on the things I can change. Work harder every day at being more selfless and kind wherever possible.

Yasmin, fading away of cancer.

Tom, his peaceful last moments on the porch.

Ian, in all his struggle and sadness.

So many in hospital beds, fighting for breath.

Cancer feels like it’s everywhere.

Grief’s weight is immense for an overburdened heart.

So I’ve turned and shaped it like clay, into a determination to find appreciation and joy in each day, and to, quite simply, Live Better.

Shore birds scuttle away from the laced edge of waves frothing toward the shore, pushed by forces far from this beach.

I feel their invisible power here as the ground reverberates beneath me.

The sound of the meeting point between sand and salt water is a constant, unceasing companion in our Rosarito home.

I baptize myself in the cold salty water an introduction.

“Thank you,” I whisper to this new mother as I wade into her cold, dark water.

Fresh water—cold, deep, and pure thrums through my veins like the Laughing Whitefish River that flowed outside my cabin door another lifetime ago.

However, the last half decade of my life has been spent on the saline shores of first the Caribbean’s turquoise beauty, and now the cold, wild depths of Baja’s Northern Coast.

At night, when I can’t sleep, I try to synchronize my breaths to the rush of waves. Selkie dreams.

Waves are a reminder of something wild on my doorstep. Their thundering makes me feel more at home than I have in a long time.

Callan and I try to visit the water daily.

I bring garbage bags for the trash, and he brings laughter, curiosity, and boundless energy.

His energy cries out to something in me and together we race, hand in hand into the icy water, heedless of wet pant legs and cold toes. It feels good; right somehow, and we do it over and over, laughing until we’re out of breath. Then we stand for a moment in silence, mother and son, contemplating sunset on the western horizon, coloring the sky a perfect palette of oranges, yellows, pinks, purples, and blues.

Callan’s eyes reflect water light, as they have his whole life.

He’s a selkie child, moving between worlds, between oceans and fresh water. Between countries.

He does so effortlessly. It is his birth-right.

I say a little prayer to the immortal waters that cradle his tiny toes, fingers, body: Protect him on his life’s journey. Help him understand his responsibility on and to this earth; let him live a long, joyful, generous, full life.

What better deity to place this mother’s request than the waters that make all life possible?

1-11-22

The Santa Ana winds blew in yesterday, and my head aches.

Winds hot and dry sweep the horizon free of dust, tumbleweeds, and all the strange swirls of garbage a third world border town can conjure.

Throat dry, lips parched, head aching, eyes heavy, this wind turns and twists its way into and through me.

Fireplace ashes blow onto hearth and carpet.

Strange dust covers the countertops.

Long-dead termite detritus sifts down from the ceiling.

Wind chimes become a clashing symphony as the air swirls. Mountain winds, sweeping and whooshing across canyons and on down to the coast where they tangle with tidal winds and change the air in a Janus-faced shift from hot to cold and back again before your body has a moment to acclimate.

The Santa Ana’s are known for bringing “valley fever.” A sickness caused by spores picked up by the wind in mountain valleys and carried down to the breath of people closer to the coast.

Joan Didion said of the Santa Ana’s:

“I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.”

I’m exhausted from the seventh day of cautionary covid quarantine; endless hours with my sweet toddler that turn us both stubborn and irascible.

Germanic and Celtic ancestral ghosts surface within us, and we clash wills like mountain sheep.

It’s a topsy-turvy world—a constantly rotating Ferris wheel of joy and struggle, backed always by the timeless surge of surf on the horizon.

I’m laundry-dishes-erratic-sleep toddler-geriatric 140 lb. Labrador with many needs and tumors; exhausted.

I fight back at the negative feelings and frustration with thankfulness for being able to do laundry in our home. Food to fill the dishes I wash. The intelligent, curious, head-strong stuff that makes up Callan. Every day with OG, who I try to take a moment with each morning to appreciate being here, in this day, for one more day in the amazingly beautiful world we inhabit.

A hummingbird got stuck in our house today.

It couldn’t find its way low enough to fly out the doors we opened to help it to freedom.

For hours it buzzed, agitated and more exhausted by the minute.

My own heart beat frantically as I tried to gently shoo it outside—to no avail.

Afraid of injuring the tiny feathered body, I finally left it alone.

I attempted to go about the evening’s business of getting Callan in the bath, dogs fed, house tidied, and dinner ready, but the occasional hummingbird buzz above me was sad, and distracting.

Once Callan was clean and settled with a snack, I located the tired, desolate bird perched on a light cord in the hallway. The only chair tall enough to reach it was a swivel bar stool. I got a pair of work gloves from the garage and climbed cautiously onto the chair. The chair, in order to reach the tiny bird, was set precariously on a tile step.

The bird let out a tiny, desperate squeak as my gloved hands gently closed around it.

A sound both frantic, and somehow resigned to its perceived demise.

I slowly lowered myself onto the stool, bird carefully held between my cupped hands. The chair began to swivel with my movement and I froze, afraid of falling and acutely aware of how ridiculous I must look. I tried not to giggle.

The white Labrador looked up at me curiously from his cataract-glazed eyes.

Stabilized, I reached a tentative foot to floor, tiny bird silent in my hand.

I walked for the front door, which was thankfully still open.

The metal front gate with the sliding bolt, however, was not.

Unable to use my hands to open the bolt, I lifted my right foot and, simian-like, used my foot and toes to slide the bolt free. Once out in the night, I slowly opened my hands.

My heart skipped a second at the still, tiny silhouette in my palms.

The wings fluttered to life, and with a buzz and squeak, the ruby-throated, tiny bird flew into the Santa Ana night.

1-14-22

Healing is a process we do over and over in life. A snake shedding its skin and moving forward—new parts and old parts—a whole being.

In survival mode, it’s hard to grieve and heal.

Taking time to look over the pages of all we’ve been through. Where we’ve come from. Who we are now. Mourn the ones who didn’t make it out the other side.

Each morning I take our 13 year old, tumor-laden white lab, OG, out to go to the bathroom. He placidly pees on his own foot, while I stretch and watch the waves, hummingbirds zooming and squeaking above me.

The air is misty with salt, and the rhythmic wave crash has become like a second heartbeat.

A year ago, we thought OG wouldn’t be with us one more week, let alone another year and move back to Mexico.

When he’s finished doing his business, we take a moment together to look out at the water.

It’s another day. And we’re both here in it, wrapped in the joy of another morning on this amazing planet.

Together, lady and her dog, we turn to go inside, the blessings of a new day a gift between us.

3-9-22

When I miss my family, it often comes in the form of missing the familiar choreography of my lifetime in various kitchens together.

The way we move around each other.

Stopping to bump shoulders affectionately; chat about anything under the sun; help each other stir, chop, wash dishes.

It happens effortlessly, each person’s DNA so tuned to the other, meals and dishes come together and finish in infinitely precious and timeless ways.

A dance I want to teach our son.

A legacy of love spelled out in food, soapy water, and many kitchen dance-steps.

4-21-22

On Saint Patrick’s Day I walked the beach beside a dear friend and with Callan happy in school, our home secured long term, and more time to teach and write, I felt a lightness both familiar and distant.

We were finally, finally, finding a rhythm.

Three hours later, the phone call came.

My father’s cancer diagnosis leaves me adrift in a current of emotions. I move through eddying whirlpools, bumping against rocks and logs of precious memory, and then without warning I’m thrown over grief’s waterfall, where a dark whirlpool waits below.

For now we tread water.

Bombs rain on Ukraine while we wait anxiously by our cellphones for blood test results and chemo schedules.

A juxtaposition of how precarious this world is,

and stark evidence that time,

and joy,

should never,

be taken,

for granted.

Days for Remembering

October 31st, 2018 marks my second Halloween far from my Michigan birth place, and my first Halloween as a mother.

My first Halloween as a mother is also the day we signed papers making Callan a Mexican citizen.

Me, Michigan born and raised, with a son carrying dual citizenship. It surprises me sometimes, these turns in life’s events.

In the states, Halloween is a holiday made up of yard decorations, massive amounts of candy, and elaborate costumes.
On Isla, the holiday focuses more on Dia de Muertos, a traditional Mexican holiday observed across the country. This day celebrates the deceased, and the belief is that they return to be with the living for a few short hours. Families set up altars to their loved ones called ofrendas that feature their favorite foods, bright orange marigolds, candles, and photos. Dia de Muertos, in its modern incarnation, is an ancient Aztec observance melded with the Catholic holidays of All Saints and All Souls Days, which are also observed in Mexico.
The food, drinks, gatherings are about celebrating the dead—a connection to loved ones.
Because so many Americans influence Isla’s culture, Halloween becomes an amalgamation of cultural observances: decorated golf cart parade and trick or treating down Hidalgo, the main shopping street. Adults and children stroll along the cobbles in all manner of costume, and the throng contains many incarnations of sugar skulls and Catrina makeup, both traditions a melding of indigenous and catholic religions.

Halloween is about costumes, spooks and candy. All Saints and All Souls is about remembering.

I remember:

Carving pumpkins with my momma and sister. The wood stove makes the house cozy-warm, and our cheeks rosy. We’re careful and diligent as we carve, our faces already patterned in permanent marker. The nutty aroma of pumpkin seeds roasting in the oven makes me hungry.
Dad puts the carved jack-o-lanterns by the driveway with lit candles dancing eerie light through eye, nose, and mouth holes. Flickering grins greet us when we return from harvesting candy from our neighbors.

Memories of adolescent Halloweens are a blur of costumes:

My first trick-or-treating at age four in the white bunny costume Grandma Harkness made. I loved the little pink rosebuds on the fabric inside the bunny ears because my nickname was Rosebud.

Wonder Woman at six when I jumped off the MacCauley’s porch to see my cape fly, but tripped, somersaulted, and landed with my head “Smack!” Against the car tire. Kenny Fyvie—a year older neighbor kid riding along with us—laughed, and my child-self never forgave him.

Second grade, the pink princess dress and pointed cone hat momma made—just like in the fairy-tale book illustrations. She let me borrow her real fur leopard print stole and it didn’t seem like I’d ever feel so pretty again.

Freshman year of college, the requisite post-Brittany Spears era naughty school girl outfit: short plaid skirt, white button down shirt. I can’t remember if I felt vaguely embarrassed by the tacky, clique outfit, but hindsight tells me it was so.

Twenty-five and I was the Pick-Axe Blonde girl from the Keweenaw Brewing Company’s beer can logo. I had the perfect green dress, great pig tails, and a cardboard/duct tape DIY pick-axe my crafty mother walked me through making because my ex-husband said that me drunk with a real pick-axe was a terrible idea.

Two years ago: My purple top hat stolen from a friend’s wedding photo booth, glow in the dark fluorescent yellow bobbed wig, black dress, thrift store white rabbit fur coat, and a homecoming queen sash from a past costume that read, “Miss Calaneous”.

This Halloween it’s not about me. It’s about the baby.
People want to see babies in cute outfits on Halloween. Hell, I want to see babies, and all people really, in great outfits on Halloween.
My makeshift costume for Callan consists of a onesie that states in bold letters “Happy Little Man”, a tie-dyed bucket cap, and a pacifier with a mustache. The mustache is really cute and funny, but I notice right away that the plastic comes up high enough to block most of the baby’s nostrils, so I limit it’s time in his mouth to photos.

Callan’s first Halloween Costue — Callan’s first Halloween Costume

We walk with other families down Hidalgo, which has become a teeming mass of people, mostly children in costume.
Shopkeepers call out, “This is the place!” and “Stop and take a look!”.
Adults stop to chat, creating traffic backups while their candy-eyed offspring, masked, makeupped, and costumed, weave through legs, tables, and chairs to hone in in their sweet prize.
The crowd is a mix of tourists, locals, and transplants— a glorious commingling on a windy Caribbean Halloween night. All prejudices and histories are set aside in the tumult of noise, candy, costumes, and happy children.

I love seeing it all, but after weeks and months spent cocooned in our home with husband and baby for company, the tumult is overwhelming.
I return home in a cab early evening full of mixed emotions. A year ago, I would never be the person coming home early on Halloween night.
A tear slips down my cheek as we pull away from town. I know that tomorrow morning I’ll see countless photos of costumed friends out playing late into the night.
There are many moments I miss that Rachel, and her independence.

The red cab pulls up to our dark house. I wrestle stroller and car seat onto the porch and let out the dogs, who are ecstatic in their greetings. They whine, wiggle, and wag their tails effusively, and I can’t help but smile. Their noises wake the baby, and he blinks up at me like a sleepy little owl, then breaks into a toothless happy smile sweet and pure.

I take off my Halloween dress, wash my costume makeup, and settle into the nursing chair: me, baby Callan, and remembrances of Halloweens past.

The pumpkin was too hard to carve... — The pumpkin was too hard to carve…

Ebb and Flow

By the time I get out the door for work at 8:30 a.m., it’s already so hot and humid condensation forms on my forehead in the few steps I take to the four wheeler.
I settle the black helmet on my head, shift to reverse, and start the machine with a roar and purr. I back out of the gravel drive, pull down the dirt alley, and onto the paved street. Motoring down the road creates a breeze that feels like the only thing keeping me from spontaneously combusting from a combination of sun-heat, humidity, and pregnancy.
I love the quad. Not only is it a new kind of freedom to have my own wheels here on the island, but I love how it feels to drive. Surprisingly enough, I never drove one while living in the Upper Peninsula, as many of my peers did, but here on Isla it’s my everyday ride.
My eight month, pregnant belly is a curved-moon shape waxing toward full.

Nine months pregnant and still driving the quad :) — Nine months pregnant and still driving the quad 🙂

I take the speed bumps more slowly now.
My rides to work, as they were in Michigan, are time for myself. Time for deep breaths; a moment alone to reflect, or not; time to notice my surroundings; taste the day; take note of interesting things: the bursting forth of my favorite peach-colored hibiscus tree across the street from the nighttime milkshake place, a fluffy black street dog marking its territory, the bright pile of dragon fruit on a vendor’s table.
A pregnant woman on a four wheeler elicits interesting looks from tourists and locals alike. I just smile and wiggle my fingers in a little wave.
I turn down the familiar street maze, always taking the slightly longer way so that I can drive along the Caribbean. The shimmer and movement of water calms me—it always has. Whether it’s Lake Superior, the Laughing Whitefish River, Big Manistique Lake, or the Caribbean Sea, moving water stills and calms unease and anxiety trapped like a caged bird in my chest.
Local dogs trot purposefully down cobbled streets, their pace and upright tails denoting important missions not to be interrupted.
I pass fruit and vegetable stands with little pyramids of zucchini, carrots, and bright red radishes that rode the ferry over from the mainland early this morning.
Pigeons scuttle and take flight as I round a corner, heat making them slow.
A flash of bright plumeria aroma wafts over me and is immediately replaced by the stench of an overflowing garbage can.
I catalogue and collect each detail, holding them up for inspection like pieces of beach glass—comparisons to other commutes to work: snowstorms; deer dodging, changing season’s leaf budding, unfurling, and falling.
Sometimes I can’t help but laugh aloud at the changes, differences, absurdities from one incarnation of my life to another.
In Michigan, when I lived alone in my cabin, I used to love cutting a hard right part way home on my commute—trading blacktop and yellow lines for winding gravel roads and the thrill of dodging puddles and potholes.
When I was safely off the main road I’d crack a roadie, turn the radio up, take a couple puffs off my onie, and press foot to accelerator.
The gravel road, four wheel drive vehicle and me became one entity—curves and bumps no longer obstacles but part of a terrain that four wheels and me were an extension of.

Windows down, music up, it was some of the most free I’ve ever felt.
It was a high I craved. The moment the car stopped, the realities of bills, loneliness, and work in the morning caught up and slipped clammy hands over my shoulders.
I needed those highs to balance the lows—driving fast; tiptoeing naked through the yard and down to the river for a breathless swim; showing up alone, head high to the bar.
These glorious moments were often followed all too quickly by moments of sadness and loneliness so acute it was almost a physical blow.
Staring out rain-streaked cabin windows, worry about house needs weighed heavy on my head: firewood, would there be enough to pay the bills, that leak in the roof, and on and on. Loneliness and pain from the recent past pressing against my eyelids.
In the midst of it, there’s almost a deliciousness in the pain. It reminded me I was alive as much as those moments of exhilaration. Intense, exquisite loneliness and independence the balance beam I walked day to day.
Up and down. High and low. Ebb and flow.
Two years later some part of me sometimes, almost, misses those peaks and troughs.
The rest of me is thankful for the steady day to day joys that are my life now.

When I first moved to Isla, every little detail thrilled and interested me. I was fascinated by each nuance and felt like my smile would never unstretch.
Day to day sneaks up before I even realize. Imperceptibly the transition occurs—what was at first so exciting and unfamiliar becomes commonplace and normal.
My walks down the dusty alley to and from what was, at first, my boyfriend’s apartment, then our apartment, and now the apartment I share with my husband, went from a thrilling stroll down a Mexican island alley, to my daily walk to and from home.
The foods that were, at first, exotic, unfamiliar, new, have become day to day fare: tacos pastor shaved succulent and glistening from its grilled meat cone; fresh mango, dragon fruit, and Guyana from the corner fruit stand; street tacos of every carne topped with pico, salsa picante, and crema de ajo.
Riding across the island on a moto, arms around my handsome man’s waist, I poke and pinch myself—reminders of how blessed I am to live on this magical island—inhabit this space with my sexy husband, our hilarious dogs, amazing friends, and all the individuals who also call Isla home.

It’s so easy to become complacent—to take for granted the space we inhabit, people we love, small moments of joy.
I’m learning yet another way of happiness—day to day joys simple, small, and often tucked away in little pockets of gratitude: bedside picnics, watching a lightning storm from the roof, swimming with Ryan in turquoise waters.
The intensity of my days at the cabin—highs so high and lows so low, have calmed to steady swells carrying me forward.
A strong, lonely, independent laughing girl running alone and barefoot through apple orchards and over wild violets adapting in two years to a happy pregnant wife on a Caribbean island and a son soon-to-be born.
It’s happiness ebbing and flowing on a whole new tide.

I listen for the four wheeler’s engine purr and press my thumb harder on the accelerator.
Ryan wouldn’t approve of me driving so fast, but the road in front of me is clear, and to my left, the Caribbean sparkles. The hot wind against my face smells of salt and promise.

Changing Tides

Changing Tides

The sun’s in my eyes as I write. The evening’s first mosquitoes, which will soon chase me indoors from my porch bench, begin to whine.
Guaya leaves rustle, branches weighed heavy with ripening, round green fruits I love to eat by the handful. I call them “road fruit” because I like to take them on the moto with me. Their orange, juicy insides taste like a sweet tart. We called them genips when we were kids eating them on vacation in The Bahamas.
Our son kicks in my belly as I sip tea from a brown ceramic mug.
Momma sent me a photo of trillium blooming in a white-petaled carpet that I know blankets much of Upper Michigan right now.

I ache for Michigan, but first have to get this Michigan/California/Mexico boy baby born before I can return.
Then, I will swim in fresh water—cold tears from a glacier long melted.
I will forage for asparagus by the roadside and precious morels hiding beneath last fall’s leaves.
I will bury my fingers in garden dirt, the same that dirtied my childhood knees.

I never thought I’d have a child away from Michigan. For that matter, I really wasn’t sure I was ever going to have a child.
After my marriage ended, I focused on things like how we have a serious over-population problem I didn’t want to contribute to. I told myself that, as a teacher, I had opportunities to help shape and influence many humans, as opposed to focusing my energy on just one. I searched myself and while I like babies and children, I didn’t feel the pull to be a mother that so many feel. I didn’t feel any genetic imperative to create another little human.

When Ryan and I first started dating he said to me, “This might be too much too fast, but I’m 32 years old and I want a family before I get much older. I think if we’re going to date we should have these things out in the open right away…and I think you’d look so beautiful pregnant.”
I laughed, a bit uncomfortable at his honest revelations, but also flattered and intrigued. His candidness was refreshing. But I was glorying in my independence, had just moved to Mexico after 31 years in Michigan, and wasn’t sure yet that I was ready to commit my heart, let alone my life, to anyone but myself.
We carried on like semi-responsible adults living on an island in the Caribbean: working hard, playing hard, drinking tequila and laughing with friends late into the night.
It was a life I couldn’t have imagined for myself on lonely nights in my Michigan cabin with only a fuzzy cat and Bea puppy for company.
There were nights in the cabin where I gloried in my independence, and many others when I stared at the phone, door, window, computer screen, and longed for the company and distractions of a world “out there.” Nights when all the freedom and space of 40 acres and the surrounding wilderness pressed in on me and made me ache for something more.
Life in the cabin was everything I wanted. And everything I wanted to escape from.
Those nights, if you’d whispered in my ear that two years later I’d be living on Isla with my handsome musician, soon-to-be husband, six months pregnant, I wouldn’t have believed a word.

Because of many aspects of our life, I’ve had several people ask in hushed voices, “Was this planned, or…” their voices trailing off in insinuation. Smart blond professor leaves her job at the university, seduced into living an alternative lifestyle on an island in Mexico and then carelessly gets pregnant.
Makes me giggle every time, considering I’m 33 years old and have managed to avoid getting pregnant thus far.
Week by week, one conversation after another, this future that I’m living coalesced. Flights to visit family in California and Michigan. Walking hand in hand down a familiar gravel lane and feeding Ryan his first wild blackberry. Slowly, out of whatever ether they’re born, a shared dream coalesced.

A future I’d never fathomed for myself formed from salty turquoise waters, two people’s hard work, shared ideas, and a love I’d once convinced myself didn’t exist for me.
“Yes.” I said with my throat and lips; my head and heart; every inch of my body.
Yes to a life and future with this good man. Yes to leaving behind the known, loved, and familiar for new loves and new adventures. Yes to making life, a human, a little man. All those thoughts not caring about carrying on my genes shifted, and I learned what it is to want to make a person with someone I love.

Baby Callan kicks once, and then again. It makes me smile every time.

The community on Isla is supportive beyond anything I could’ve hoped for, and eagerly awaits his birth almost as much as we do.
My sister and I were raised in a community of “Aunts and Uncles,” “Grandparents,” and dear family friends who loved us fiercely, and valued us as people. In a world where adults and children are too often separated, Laurel and I grew up surrounded in a diverse group of people from all ages, who taught, nurtured, and mentored us. It’s what I want for my own child, and I’ve found it here.

A group of my amazing Isla friends. So thankful.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record, always going on about how much I miss Michigan. I think we often mythologize a place once we’re not living there anymore. I try to remind myself of the loneliness, bugs, cold, limitations. Those are there too, in the mix of golden evenings on clear lake shores, waiting for the moon to rise so we could dive, naked and free—swimming for hours beneath a night sky broken open with stars, planets, and spinning satellites.
I miss fresh field-grass aromas—green swathes dotted with purple Lupine and Queen Anne’s Lace. It’s like each of these details is inside a kaleidoscope I hold to my eye, and if I’m not careful, could lose myself to. I give it a turn and the images and colors shift: my father’s garden, corn tassels flutter in an August breeze; the flavor of a fresh, ripe wild blueberry, losing myself in a bonfire’s dancing flames.
Dream and reality waver like a mirage on my horizon. Thank

Being pregnant on Isla has many dynamics, many of them more difficult than if I were back in Michigan. It’s a Caribbean Island where people vacation and most people drink like they are. You don’t realize how much a part of life and culture the consumption of alcohol is until you can’t do it anymore.
Overnight not only did I have to quit something I genuinely enjoy, but also became separate from the people around me. Of course I can still participate in social activities with friends, but not being able to have a drink sets me apart and in a different mindset from the people around me. I understand why it’s difficult for former alcoholics to be in public and around people drinking—it’s not just wanting a drink yourself, it’s also feeling like you’re in a bubble, separate from everyone around.
On the other hand, the community here are genuinely delighted by children. I love watching the joy of local men when they see my protruding belly bump—a warm, soft smile spreads across their faces, beneath it memories of tiny siblings, nieces, nephews, sons and daughters. No matter the circumstances for better or worse, children are a blessing here.

Ryan and I walk Bea and OG to a tiny beach near our house. It’s a cove, so Bea can run and frolic without danger of her chasing an iguana into the road. The four of us laugh and run into the surf. OG hits it with his giant Labrador chest, then turns and body surfs the wave into shore. Bea darts into the churning water and out again, up and down the shoreline. The sun’s hot, but the waves breaking across my body and growing belly are cool and salty. I lick my lips once, and then again, loving the briny taste. When I was little and swam in the ocean, I remember air-drying on the beach and taking a tentative tongue lick off my own shoulder, intrigued and delighted by this foreign flavor on my skin. Fresh water didn’t do that.
Ryan comes up behind me and I brace my body against his as the waves churn in. His arms encircle my waist, palms flat against my stomach where our growing son kicks and bumps, as if responding to his father’s touch. I lean into him and turn my face to the sun, tasting salt, and this new way of joy.

Thank you Kate Bessette of Kate Bee Photography for the beautiful photos!

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

November 4th Laughing Whitefish River play time.

The future: photo credit Kate Bee Photos

A Journal Excerpt from 2014

I recently came upon this excerpt in a journal I’d had packed away and pulled out to bring back on one of my trips between Mexico and Michigan. At the time of the writing, I was recently divorced and about halfway through what I would discover was a frightening and emotionally abusive relationship.

The photos and writings that follow show a young woman in transition. My steadily growing smile evidence of the hard work in moving forward from hard times.

A Metamorphosis.

It’s the day after Christmas. I’m sitting on the couch, trying to calm the anxiety I hoped would dissipate after the holidays were over. Instead, my heart still beats too fast, the worry line at the side of my mouth keeps deepening—am I frowning in my sleep?
I feel like I’m caught in a dance I don’t know—always moving out of sync with the rest of my world; my family, my friends.
They say they aren’t mad at me for my divorce and new boyfriend, but I sense it wafting through the room, encircling my neck like a noose. Looking each other in the eyes isn’t easy anymore.
Wedding pictures are gone from shelves and fridge, their absence as palpable as their presence.
I brought this upon them. Brought their pain. Caused their discomfort. Brought a stranger into their midst and took away what was familiar.
I straighten my neck and shoulders, aching with the weight of guilt and pain.

August 12, 2016 Excerpted from the essay “The Mechanics”

I mow approximately an acre. With a push-mower. I understand the lawn isn’t, technically, necessary. However, it helps keep the bugs down, or so I tell myself. In Deerton, bugs are a constant battle. I will also argue the lawn was mowed this way before, and it’s easy to follow the yard line. I also love how it looks. Untamed wilderness at the lawn’s edges makes a startling contrast to thick, impenetrable brush and trees forming a border around the yard line.

I learned how to use both a push and riding lawnmower when I lived with my husband. I liked the rider, as I could have a beer or glass of wine and enjoy my yard one, ever-smaller, concentric circle at a time.

My cabin didn’t come with a mower, so I went down to a dealer in Skandia and looked for something used, aka in my teensy-tiny budget. When I walked into the show-room a gentleman was in the process of buying the only used one available, but changed his mind at the last minute, and for $150 the mower was mine.

I arrived home, unloaded the mower, and surveyed the waving grass blades and bobbing daisy heads. I had just purchased my first lawnmower. Before me were hundreds of laps around the rocky yard, a lot of bug bites, and moments of deep satisfaction, sipping wine and surveying the results of my efforts.

The work is hard–the yard dips and plunges. It’s full of rocks, and unexpected tree stumps popping out of tall grass to quickly stop a mower blade. The bugs are horrendous: black flies, mosquitoes, horse flies, deer flies. I’ve often eaten as many as five mosquitoes in a couple hours just opening my mouth for a deep breath.

But somehow, I don’t mind that much. Perhaps it’s doing it myself; a sense of accomplishment; stubborn pride; single-woman-goal-achievement; forced exercise.
A chance to touch each inch of the land I own and inhabit.

The lawnmower wasn’t my first triumphant act, and it certainly won’t be the last.

I learned how to use a weed wacker, switch the propane tank for the two-burner stove, change the water filter, build stone walkways, swap my brakes (with assistance), and carpentry work will soon be an addition to the list.

My education came out of necessity–I don’t have money to hire someone to do these things, and I’m perfectly capable of learning. But the honest truth is: I probably wouldn’t have learned if I didn’t have to.

My mother asks: “How can you stay alone there, night after night?”

Because I have to. Because it’s my home. Necessity.

I lost my fear of the dark. I lost my fear of being alone. Because I had to–either that or leave my home. Give it up to fear.

June 26, 2017–Excerpted from the essay “A Difference of Seasons”

I’ve shaken with anxiety, awoken from nightmares screaming, pounded stone walls with fragile fists, frustration gasps choking me.
The divorce from my kind ex-husband hurt deeply.
Leaving behind the abusive relationship that came after my divorce, however, takes everything I have.
I stretch my fingers. Stare down at the tattoos, ink and meaning embedded in my ring and middle fingers.

Reminders.
Remembrances of how easy it is to lose yourself. How love can become a slowly tightening noose.
He was always sorry, later.
Every day fading, a living ghost, shrouded in layers of self-hatred, sadness, confusion, fear, exhaustion, anxiety. Always trying to get back to that place when things were good. Until days went by looking in a mirror reflecting, nothing.
I’m one of the lucky ones–a woman who remembered. A woman who pulled apart the veils and shrouds and found her voice again.

Found myself walking wooded paths, Bea-pup by my side–each mossy rock, knobby tree-trunk, and curled leaf edge familiar. Known.
Found myself in long nights half-slept, a loaded gun at my feet, a knife at my head. Stretched between the two stone pillars of fear and determination.

22 Target Practice also helps lose fear.

Found myself in a solo July trip to my beloved Isla isle, when the familiar voice of past and future called out together and my answer was laughter and a one-way ticket to Mexico.

March 20th, 2018

I see myself walking across the yard—tall, strong, surefooted, tangled blond hair tumbling down my back.
Apple and wild cherry trees tilt green-leafed branches in a soft summer breeze.
The river chuckles.

The Laughing Whitefish River--Home River — The Laughing Whitefish River–Home River

I walk, head high, eyes forward, through the gateway between two balsams—straight into Isla’s waiting arms.
Changing apple and cherry blossoms for palms and bougainvillea flowers.
Leaving behind lonely independence for the loving heat of a good man, and a baby in my belly.
The river, cabin, bouldered 40 acres, years of growth and perspective a snow globe in my chest, next to my heart, I shake sometimes. And it makes me smile.

Happy Rachel and Ryan, 2017 Photo Credit Tanya Canam Photography — Happy Rachel and Ryan, 2017
Photo Cred. Tanya Canam Photography

A Good Life

We limit ourselves in so many ways by the stories we tell about our own lives. The narratives we imagine for our futures due to pressures from society, family, loved ones, etc.

What if we imagined something different.
Created a new narrative—a new story.
A story where we’re not afraid of change. The pressures of what our family/society imagines is a good future. The myths of “happily ever after” “prince/princess charming” “The American Dream.” Let ourselves envision what a good life looks like.

Simple Gifts: Fresh fruit from the market

That doesn’t necessarily mean a life on a Caribbean island, but could mean many little or big things. I recently heard a story of a chef friend who “followed his dream” to run a fast-paced, well-renowned restaurant. The pressures of chef-life which involved a high stress environment and days and nights away from his wife made him an unhappy alcoholic. What he really wanted, he confessed, was to work a nine to five job for the postal service and come home to his wife every night. Finally, after the stress became too much and alcohol took its toll, he left the restaurant and took a job with the postal service. He now happily works a nine to five, doesn’t drink, and goes home to his wife every night. From the outside, it looked like he was living his ideal life, but the reality was much different, and it took real bravery to make that change.
We too often look into other people’s windows for an idea of what happiness and fulfillment look like, rather than searching our own souls.
Throughout my northern life, when a rare south wind blew through our Michigan fields and forests I felt like I was the violin, and the wind was the bow. It pulled me up from wherever I was to stand with my face to that rare breath conjured from warmer waters, and deep somewhere around the bottom of my heart, I ached. It was like a siren song pulling every fiber of my being, but my head shook itself at the impracticality of such longing.
Why is it so improbable that I have both a northern and southern soul?

A limitation I set upon myself.
I met my ex husband when I was nineteen years old. We married when I was 24, and divorced when I was 28. I loved him. He’s a good man and will always be a good man. But my life with him was made up of expectations from society and my parents of what makes a good life.
I come from a family of teachers—a path I dutifully followed. I love teaching. It’s truly a fulfilling passion for me, but I never questioned whether it was the only way to be fulfilled and create change in the world.
My ex husband loved to hunt, fish, and wanted to live in a cabin in the woods. These are also things my father loves. I love and value them too. Those were things I never questioned, and I followed that path without a second thought.
I got degree after degree, taught, made a home for me and my husband.
Built gardens.
Held dinner parties.
Worked hard.
All the things I’d been taught made a good life.
I cried almost every day—a bottomless well made all the more deep because I couldn’t figure out why I was so sad. I had everything I should’ve wanted. It truly was a good life.
Yet…
I was still unsatisfied.
When that south wind blew, my heart ached so hard it felt bruised.
It took a lot of fumbling. A lot of mistakes. A lot of struggle, hardship, and boatloads of pain to find my way to the place where south winds originate.
I don’t regret any of the fumbling; mistakes; struggle; hardship; pain. They were lessons that will make up my life-long arsenal.
We’re so afraid.
Afraid of change. Of what other people think. Of mistakes, struggle, hardship, and pain.
My life today still has pain, struggle, and hardship.

Daily I fumble, happily, towards what a good life looks like for me.

Now, if I cry, I know the origins of my tears. And that, is worth it all.

Left Foot, Right Foot

*This essay is dedicated to Ryan Rickman and Daniel Vogel, who remind me to breathe, make me laugh, and love me.

A minute ago, the world was too much. Burdens heavy enough to break Sisyphus pile on like pyramid stone. Bankruptcy, weighted relationship past, family-society-personal pressures mount and disappear on currents of Caribbean breezes and the voice of a man I’ve let myself fall in love with after wrapping independence around my shoulders like a mink coat.

Cenote Zaci — Taking the leap—jumping into cenote Zaci.

“How did you do it?” They ask by the dozens, pouring off boats from Cancun. Flown in from stateside and global destinations.
How does anyone move anywhere?
I made a decision. Packed my life into a storage unit and gave the rest away.
Sold the car.
Put the house on the market–the one two years ago I swore I’d never part with.
Organized logistics: putting bills online, Mexico phone plan, get my puppy, Bea, on a plane and across borders.
Sleepless nights cloaked in anxiety.
Find a new home for Mr. Kitty. After eleven years together, losing him tore a hole in my heart. My cabin-dweller, confidant, snuggle-buddy, constant companion, couldn’t move to Mexico at age twelve. My fuzzy friend found a last-minute perfect home and now makes someone else’s life a bit less lonely.
Bea paperwork came through.
House was rented.
Ticket to fly and a red service vest for Bea so she could travel at my feet from Chicago to Cancun–the little dog from Peshtigo, Wisconsin.
I haven’t been that excited since I was a child on Christmas Eve.

Excited to leave the cold; start new; sleep without fear of my ex; live in a community as strong and strange as I am; make a life with a handsome musician and his big white dog.
Excited for change; to not move snow for months; learn a new language; scare myself; challenge myself; laugh again like I used to. Or perhaps, deeper. Longer.
After being alone so many days, nights, hours; not seeing people, speaking to another human for days if I didn’t want to. Lonely always licking the edges of my consciousness and sometimes waking up to choke me. Other days, taking the alone and wearing it like a crown, running naked into the river, bare toes tipped in crushed strawberries. Laughing, while otters played and rolled in a river current coppered by cedar tannins. Some nights, I’d lie awake listening to owls and coyotes call and loneliness seemed a distant ghost. Some nights. Some nights, I burned phone lines missing friends, company, a lover in my bed.

Nights on Isla are full of people–conversations with individuals from all over the world who want the story of a girl from small town Michigan who moved to a little island off the Yucatán coast of Mexico.
I sleep in a king size bed with my boyfriend, our 125 lb. yellow lab and little Bea. Traffic noise is muffled in our back-alley apartment, but I awake often to unfamiliar sounds of dogs barking; golf carts and motos putter and purr; the air conditioner’s cold whirr.

I walk into water so bathtub warm I can’t tell if I’ve stopped sweating yet.
I’m still working to find my niche–writing, food, editing, volunteer work, waitressing, catering…anything to make some money, but also searching out that thing that fits.
It feels closer now.
Less amorphous.
Solidifying in the silhouette of a family here, and behind that a community, and at the center me and all the paper doll layers coming together in 3D.

Last week, I awoke in the dark wee hours of morning when the big thoughts come to claim you and I missed my cabin so much it was hard to breath.
Missed the inhabited stillness.
Just as the ache turned to tears, I heard sweet-satisfied-sleeping dog sighs, and Ryan mumbled, “I love you” in his sleep, as he does half a dozen times a night, and I loved it all so much I couldn’t imagine anything else.
It’s confusing, how to fit the disparate pieces of self that make up “Rachel”, birthed and forged in rural Upper Michigan, to this Mexican island home.
All the fall season’s of my life have been made up of duck hunting, readying firewood, frosty-evening saunas, last harvest canning, apple picking and cider press churning. The first snowflakes falling.
Where does my ability to can pickles, tomatoes, beets function here?
My skills tracking a wounded deer, foraging fiddleheads, building a fire on a cold winter day?

They say time heals all wounds. The quick march of days on Isla seems to be doing just that. The changes are subtle, and I take note of them one by one with some surprise.
Tense lines on my face begin to fade.
My skin, prone to stress breakouts, has cleared.
Painful aches in jaw, neck, and shoulders from holding my body in tight anxiousness have eased, leaving a comfortable fluidity in my limbs I haven’t felt since I was a kid.
For the first time, I smile with my teeth–full smiles of joy that reaches my toes.
I cry less.
Wake fewer times in the night afraid, heart pumping, fists clenched, a scream held in my throat.

Two poles, north and south, stretch my rubber band heart.
Walking down Hidalgo’s main drag, a day or a week ago, I experienced a moment of awareness so strong it took my breath away.
Hidalgo, Main Street of shops and restaurants I’ve seen shift and change over the last seventeen years.
That night, a day or a week ago, I took my usual stroll down the cobbled street to El Patio, where Ryan works.

That night, as I approached the restaurant, I heard Ryan’s voice arcing out through the noise and chatter, clear and true. Familiar and joyful, the song’s words and that sweet voice spoke my heart.
If you told me, a cold Michigan-November-year ago that I’d be walking down this island street listening to my handsome man sing, I would’ve either laughed or cried.
My ideas for the future are a universe away from a year ago.
This man, our dogs, a family.
In the past, when days were long and hard, my brother used to say to me: “Left foot, right foot, breathe.”
Some days, that’s all I could do.
Left foot. Right foot. Breathe.
Step by step.
Here I am.

Flavors

The first Michigan Blackberries of the season.

Since I was young, I drew culinary inspiration from myriad sources–many of them random. I loved to read menus in hotel phone books when I traveled, marveling over descriptions of foods I could envision from the photos and short explanations. I read cookbooks like some read romance novels, paying less attention to amounts than combinations of ingredients, flavors, tastes. I’m no good at physics or chemistry, but the alchemy of flavor fascinates me.
The internet has given me such an array of resources that I’m somewhat overwhelmed and find myself going back to hard copy cookbooks for inspiration.
Instagram has provided a wealth of photographic ideas, along with descriptions of ingredient lists that are wonderful guides.
So much of cooking is about experimentation and improvisation. Listening to your senses.
When I read ingredient lists, it teaches me what flavors other chefs are putting together, what might work, and ways I might take both traditional and original flavor pairings and make them my own.
Environment can also be a huge inspiration for cooking. When I’m in Michigan in summer, I have lots of fresh fruit and garden vegetables to inspire meals. Michigan winters make me improvise with available produce–carrots, beets, potatoes, cabbage, rutabagas–that my father keeps in his cold storage. In California, I came across tiny veggies in the grocery store that delighted me. I’d never seen anything like them, and they prompted a delicious white bean and sautéed squash soup. On Isla, I have fresh seafood to glory in. Look around and see what’s local, and fresh–let those ingredients be your guide.

This post’s purpose is to inspire. My travels between Michigan, Isla, and California have afforded culinary experiences I wouldn’t have believed possible a year ago.

If you’re inspired to cook and experiment, or have questions, please share in the comment section. I love to talk food. ❤️

Fish Market Fresh Grouper that made the most delicious sushi and ceviche.

Fish Market Fresh Grouper — It doesn’t get any better than watching your fresh caught grouper get filleted, Caribbean-side.

Poc Chuc Chicken and Ribs — This Poc Chuc Restaurant is just down the road from us. It’s cheap, has delicious sides, and the grilled meat is smokey and full of flavor. Yummm.

Fresh Shrimp and Fish — Lolo Lorena’s elegant fresh shrimp and fish with a creamy sauce made from shrimp broth reduction.

Gravlax — Lolo Lorena’s gravlax with goat cheese and tomato water.

Grilled Chicken Avocado Salad — Salads are a thing in my family–and they’re one of my favorite foods. I crave them.
This salad is made with Bibb lettuce, avocado, grilled chicken, bean sprouts, roasted sunflower seeds/pepitas, and blue cheese.

Slow Down Sliders–one of our favorite island meals!

Homegrown Veggies — Part of Papa Mills’ beautiful garden.

Homegrown Broccoli — I’m blessed with a daddy who raised us on homegrown vegetables. Thank you Papa Mills.

Homemade Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. Mamma loves to make cookies (and eat them, but only in the morning because chocolate keeps her up at night).

Mamma Mills’ Homemade Lasagna with garden ingredients. Home ❤️

Homemade Angel Food Cake — Mamma Mills made Grandma Harkness’ Angel Food Cake recipe for my birthday. My favorite.

Garden-Fresh Dinner — My birthday dinner this summer: Mills Salad and two kinds of lasagna. Wow.

This BBQ Chicken place around the corner from our casa sells a whole chicken, black bean soup, pasta soup, noodle salad, and sauces for 150 pesos out the door–roughly 7 dollars. So. Good. Before he packs up your chicken he adds extra BBQ sauce and caramelizes them on the grill a few moments longer. Yes.

Fresh Shrimp Cocktail — Ryan loves to make fresh shrimp cocktail and I love to eat it. We can’t find horseradish down here, so we ask friends to pirate it to us!

Mar Bella Pulpo Diablo — Delicious Mar-Bella Octopus grilled with a red diablo sauce and served on a bed of arugula.

Avocado Toast — Chef Nick’s avocado toast. The flavors here are fresh, versatile, and perfectly balanced.

Chef Nick's Cream of Corn Soup — Chef Nick’s cream of corn soup–it tasted like the essence of late-August Michigan summer sweet corn.

Strawberry, Pecan, Blue Cheese Salad — Ryan loves sweet/savory salads. Fresh strawberries, Bibb lettuce, blue cheese, candied pecans, and a maple-balsamic reduction. Yum.

Fresh Lemons and Plumeria — Fresh lemons and lemon yellow plumeria from Ryan’s mom’s yard in California. Swoon.

BBQ, leftovers, and good wine — Delicious BBQed ribs, grilled pineapple, fresh cornbread with Yucatán honey butter, sweet potatoes and coleslaw. Yep.

Chili peppers and sungold tomatoes — California fresh chili peppers and sungold tomatoes, which are my favorite. I eat them like candy.

Skirt steak and chimichurri — Perfectly medium rare skirt steak with chimichurri sauce.

Snacks and Wine Tasting in Arroyo Grande–after going for a motorcycle ride of course 😉

In and Out Burger and Animal Fries — My first In and Out Burger with Animal Fries in LA. Oh yeah.

Grandma Walters' Homemade Lemon Meringue Pie — When we visited her in California, Grandma Walters made us homemade Lemon Meringue Pie from her lemon trees.

Seafood platter — This photo is way too dark, but I had to give credit to the amazing seafood and especially the BC oysters we ate on our California trip.

Tiny pineapple — I’ve never seen a pineapple like this…California…☺️

California Roll — This dressed up Tiger Roll was one of the best I’ve ever had.

Seaweed Salad–one of my all time favorite foods. It’s a green/texture thing.

Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles — Roscoe’s Chicken and waffles with a side of candied yams. The yams were like eating the best pie ever.

Tiny Veggies and Fresh Citrus — All the citrus was picked fresh and the tiny veggies I couldn’t resist at the grocery store. I made a delicious bean and sautéed baby squash soup with them.

The North Garden's Tuna Tostada — I’ve learned to love the tuna tostada living in Mexico, and at Isla’s beautiful and delicious North Garden Restaurant, they serve one of the best I’ve had.

The North Garden's Shrimp Tacos and Steak Sandwich — One of the best meals I’ve had on Isla, these shrimp tacos from The North Garden with grilled cheese, poblano peppers, corn, and a smokey salsa and Ryan’s steak sandwich carried the day.

The North Garden's Lobster Tamal — This beautiful breakfast of blue corn tamale and lobster served with salad, grilled corn and an overeasy egg is delicious and such a lovely contrast of colors and flavors. Another win from The North Garden!

North Garden's Walnut Pecan Eggs Benedict — Can’t say enough about how tasty this Eggs Benedict was–The North Garden again. Isla’s restaurants have taught me how versatile this dish really is.

Chef Nick's Salt Cured Veggies — Not only is this dish beautiful, but the salt cure makes you want to eat the radish, carrot, and beets like potato chips. Chef Nick of Madera truly knows flavor. #inspiring

A Difference of Seasons

Walking through the door of my childhood home is a comfort after living in a foreign country for three months straight. Isla isn’t all foreign territory because of a dozen or so past trips, but the fact remains I’m living thousands of miles from home with a rudimentary, but growing knowledge of Spanish.

Sitting on the dock, toes in the warm, shallow waters of Big Manistique Lake, I look at tan lines from my sandals–my body claimed and tattooed by the Mexico sun.

Sun breaks across lake water, a scattering of diamonds. It’s such a different sun than the one I’ve been both enjoying, and dealing with in Mexico. As Ryan says, “The sun in Mexico in the summer makes you feel like a bug beneath a magnifying glass.”

But the Michigan summer sun feels so… Good.

A difference of seasons. In winter the Michigan sun is a lingering wish on a frozen horizon, little to no heat trickling through. In contrast to the Mexico winter sun, which thaws frozen northern bones.

The feel of warm lake water is so familiar.
Three months isn’t that long. But for someone who’s never lived more than two hours from home, it feels long.
The place I chose is so different from this one.

Two bass hover beneath the boat on its lift. Broken clam shells from ducks feeding litter the sandy bottom. One of the biggest leeches I’ve ever seen undulates past like an underwater magic carpet.
I’ve always noticed these small movements in the world around me, but being away makes me notice them in a different light. My senses are heightened. Aromas drift heavy in the air.
All the blooming: lilacs, end-of-spring apple blossoms, spicy-sweet lupin.
The aromas in Mexico are a fast-paced scent-slide-show. Fried chicken overlapped by a tortilleria redolent of popcorn. Moments later overtaken by exhaust, or sewer, or a hot salty breeze overlaid with rotting fish. Aromas in Mexico are heavy, hanging in hot air. Aromas in Upper Michigan are sharper, more pronounced.

It’s so good to be quiet.
But it’s not silent. There’s a cacophony of bird sound, and that’s nice too. A kingfisher, crows, all sorts of warblers.
I was telling my parent’s yesterday, something I thought as we came out of the clouds over Michigan, and I could see an expanse of green and water: ponds and lakes and streams and rivers and swamps, and in the distance the big expanse of Lake Superior. All that fresh water.
I cried. And I laughed. And it came to me that, to be an expat is to always have a little bit of a broken heart, because no matter where you are–here or there–some part of you, and your loves, are someplace else. That’s both such a beautiful thing, and so hard.

***

Perspective and juxtapositions lick my temples–the edges of my ears.

Jungles and mangroves.
Maple woods and spruce swamps.

Salty ocean aquamarine.
Icy cold, deep Superior blue.

Spicy ceviche, taco, tostada, tequila burn.
Green vegetable, fresh berry tang and burst.

Mexico, a love in my life for the past twelve years.
A siren song from the south calling me home.
Michigan’s familiar paths, rivers, lakes, fields, and seasons I know as well as the freckle constellations mapped across my body’s universe.
There’s a familiarity to the heat, laughter, living-closer-to-the-edge-attitude here that echoes deep beneath my breast bone.
An anchor with elastic chains that flex as I board the plane going north.

I’ve shaken with anxiety, awoken from nightmares screaming, pounded stone walls with fragile fists, frustration gasps choking me.
Now.
It’s time for strength.
I stretch my fingers. Stare down at the tattoos, ink and meaning imbedded in my ring and middle fingers.
Reminders.
Remembrances of how easy it is to lose yourself. How love can become a slowly tightening noose.
He was always sorry, later.
Every day fading, a living ghost, shrouded in layers of self-hatred, sadness, confusion, fear, exhaustion, anxiety. Always trying to get back to that place when things were good. Until days went by looking in a mirror reflecting, nothing.
I’m one of the lucky ones–a woman who remembered. A woman who pulled apart the veils and shrouds and found her voice again.

Found it living alone.
100 year old, one-room cabin.
40 acres in rural Upper Michigan’s wilderness.
¼ mile Laughing Whitefish River tangling itself through the property.
Found myself in warm summer nights standing barefoot in cricket-symphony darkness watching fireflies wink and float like tiny lanterns.
Found myself in lazy afternoons alone on the river watching iridescent damselflies dance above eddying currents.
Found myself in back-breaking wood hauling and stacking. Hauling and stacking. Hauling and stacking.
Found myself in nights so cold the split log walls popped and shifted and if I didn’t feed the stove every four hours I’d awake shivering, breath hanging in smoky puffs.
Found myself walking wooded paths, Bea-pup by my side–each mossy rock, knobby tree-trunk, and curled leaf edge familiar. Known.
Found myself in long nights half-slept, a loaded gun at my feet, a knife at my head. Stretched between the two stone pillars of fear and determination.
Found myself in a solo July trip to my beloved Isla isle, when the familiar voice of past and future called out together and my answer was laughter and a one-way ticket to Mexico.