We came for the weather, but San Miguel conquered us because of what we didn’t hear.
Photo by the author
Why San Miguel?
When friends ask Rebecca and me about our January in Mexico, we start with the weather. At 72 and 74, we finally decided to become snowbirds for the coldest month in Iowa, where we live. Iowa’s weather pushed us away.
San Miguel de Allende, in central Mexico, promised an average daytime temperature of 73 degrees Fahrenheit. I took the first photo at 4:17 pm in shirt sleeves on January 3rd from a balcony outside our bedroom. San Miguel fulfilled its weather promise. This turned out to be a typical day.*
Around this time last year, as we were considering warm-weather options, friends Peter and Mary highly recommended San Miguel, which they had visited yearly. While their stories helped seal the deal, we mostly wanted respite from frigid Iowa.
Throughout 2023, Rebecca polished her Spanish daily on Duolingo. I intermittently thumbed Moon’s San Miguel travel guide. When family and friends heard where we were going, they asked if it would be dangerous and what we would do there.
Moon’s excellent guidebook confirmed what Peter and Mary had told us about San Miguel’s safety. Plus, we knew 10,000 American and Canadian ex-pats lived in this community. Throughout our month, we never felt threatened.
We never had a good answer about what we would do in San Miguel. Rebecca said she would use her Spanish. I added what I could remember from Moon’s section on The Best of San Miguel. The weather was our default.
We could have said, “We would let San Miguel work its magic on us.”
We didn’t.
But San Miguel did.
It seeped into our pores.
Quietly.
And that’s why we’re returning.
No Honking
I took the first photo from our apartment’s 3rd-floor balcony, which you can see in the image below. We spent hours on that veranda, especially late afternoon, with gin and tonics.
Photo by the author
Across Aldama Street was Parque Juárez, a popular park. Sounds from the park included the giggle of children in a playground, the thump-thump from a basketball court, and, on Fridays, the romping rhythms of a Mariachi band playing the Sea Snake Dance at a wedding reception.
And, constantly, in the background, the heavy rumble of cars on Aldama’s cobblestone pavement. You can see the stone covering in the lower left corner of the photo.
What we never heard, not once, was a honk.
On January 31, our last day, we were picked up by a van shuttle service to take us to the Guanajuato International Airport in Leon, about an hour away. Ten minutes into the airport journey, traffic slowed to a crawl on the two-lane highway. All the four passengers in the van could see was a long line of slow-moving cars in front of us. Our driver didn’t seem concerned since we had plenty of time to catch our flights.
After twenty minutes, we passed through a town, crossed a highway intersection, and our van began to speed up. Now, on our right, down the other highway, we could see what had slowed us down — tens of bicyclists following a pickup truck with a religious icon sitting on a pedestal.
There are always a few with fraudulent birth certificates
Photo by the author
*
The 39-year-old James beat a rookie nearly half his age off the dribble, blew past another young, spry athlete and powered up for a strong attack on the rim. He drew the foul and, punctuating his spectacular night, swished a pair of free throws to give the Lakers the win, 145–144. James’ 36 points, 20 rebounds and 12 assists in nearly 48 minutes indicted his birth certificate for fraud. (Marcus Thompson II, “Lebron James vs. Stephen Curry is Still the NBA’s Best Theater.”
81-year-old Joe Biden
In 2016, 71-year-old Donald Trump brushed aside Republican Presidential challengers like they were fleas. Fifteen were squashed until only Ted Cruz was left. Poor “Lying Ted.” It wasn’t pretty. He was 45. (source)
Seasoned, at 69, Hillary Clinton lost a close contest.
In 2020, incumbent Trump faced no in-party challengers.
Chomping at the bit, twenty-nine Democratic Party Presidential wannabes approached the starting line. (source)
Experienced, at 77, Joe Biden beat them all. He then selected one opponent, Kamala Harris (55), as Vice President and another, Pete Buttigieg (38), as a member of his cabinet.
After defeating a sitting President by 7 million votes with the largest popular vote total in American history. (source)
In 2024, 77-year-old Mr. Trump will coast to the Republican nomination again, beating much younger opponents. Only Nikki Haley, 52, remains at this writing.
To face off with the 81-year-old incumbent.
80-year-old E. Jean Carroll
In addition to President Biden, Mr. Trump will confront other opponents this year. You can read a summary of the criminal and civil cases against the former President here.
Trump rarely loses in court. He’s been sued over 4000 times. (source)
But he has been beaten soundly twice in the past year by E. Jean Carroll, 80, a woman he sexually abused 30 years ago. Thanks to Ms. Carroll, Trump has been legally outed not only as a sexual predator but as a liar. (source)
What does age have to do with beating Mr. Trump?
If age has in some ways been a hurdle for Ms. Carroll to overcome in this case, I’d like to think that it was also age that let her see it through to this conclusion. That it was age and wisdom and the confidence that comes along with it that allowed her to make the genuinely audacious claim that an 80-year-old woman still has good, creative, vivacious, maybe even profitable years ahead of her.
“I couldn’t have done it back then,” she once told me, of coming forward sooner. “I didn’t have the guts.”
But now? “It was just time. It was time,” she testified.
This is an excerpt from Jessica Bennett’s New York Times article “The Audacity of E. Jean Carroll.”
Age can bring wisdom and courage.
Joe Biden ran for the American Presidency two other times, in 1988 and 2008. When he announced a third run in 2019, he said Trump’s reaction, there are good people on both sides, to the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017 was the deciding factor. (source)
We are in the battle for the soul of this nation. If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.
Rebecca and I have just returned from four weeks in San Miguel, Mexico. The beaten-down white Volkswagon Beetle in the photo was parked in a different location outside our apartment every day. It was driven by someone who had a food stand in the park across the street.
It looks its age, has experienced every conceivable road condition on the cobbled streets of San Miguel, and is still running after many of its contemporaries reside in landfills.
Even Lebron James will someday be too old to play in the NBA. The average age of an NBA player is 28. Most retire before they are 30.
James is an exception.
His declining physical skills are more than matched by the experience and wisdom culled from 20 NBA seasons.
The same is true for the two people who have proven Donald Trump can be beaten.
Photo by the author of Maurice Harron’s Hands Outstretched Across a Divide Sculpture in Derry (Londonderry), Northern Ireland.
Healing a broken society takes time
I took this photo in 2018 on my seventh visit to Derry (Londonderry), Northern Ireland.
Six trips were with college students, and in 2018, I was accompanied by twenty-four adults aged 50 to 80.
Everything in this little statelet of under two million people is contested, including what to call its second-largest city. Catholics prefer Derry; Protestants Londonderry.
Historically, Catholics identify as Irish and with the Republic of Ireland.
Protestants as British, and with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
It is a conflict about national identity more than religious dogma.
The killing goes back 800 years.
Many wars, with The Troubles, from 1969–1998, the most recent. (source)
Wikipedia’s Dog with a Stick search produced many options.
I liked the first photo.
I’m a serious writer and don’t need no dog or cat photo tricks.
Besides, I don’t like cats, except for Wilbur and Orville, who are in the family — or cat stories, except for Cat in the Hat.
A red check.
Roz also urges us to “get to the point.”
And “put the reader in the scene.”
OK.
I’ll start with my tiny butt.
Photo of the author, by the author, and for the reader.
To compensate, I wear low-rise, close-fitting, stretch pants that conform to the contour of my body.
Have I put you in the scene?
*
Rebecca and I reluctantly began our journey back to cold Iowa from warm San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, two days ago. For the first time, we had become snowbirds, spending January away.
The only thing we had to check through customs were two colds I wrote about here.
After checking our bags and getting our boarding passes at the Guanajuato International Airport in Léon, we proceeded to Security.
Moving through airport screening has been smooth since we got Global Entry passes five years ago, making us eligible for TSA PreCheck.
So smooth it is easy to get sloppy.
I put my coat, backpack, phone, and hat in the tray and lined up to go through the X-ray scanner.
The female Security Officer motioned me through, and we heard the beep.
My belt, I thought.
She said, while my hands were in the air,
Sir, I need to see what’s making your right pants pocket bulge.
With my right hand, I felt this package in my pocket.
*I have worked on stories twice with Roz. But not this one. Please don’t blame her. She is a terrific editor. Below is one of her stories that includes a link to a beneficial tutorial.
**And, of course, there’s this line attributed to Mae West: “Why detective, is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me.” I first heard a version of this joke from a college friend, Tom, who said that a girlfriend once said it to him as he approached her. Bad form, I know. He was politically incorrect before the term was created.
Fortunately, we arrived early at the concert to position ourselves inside the exit door for her likely exit.
To a cafe chair just outside the little venue with the door propped open.
All [her] troubles seemed to fade away.
Several days ago, we learned this positioning lesson from another event in the same public venue at the San Miguel library.
Believing our coughs could be controlled by Vicks 44 and cough drops, we found two seats at a lecture on “The Soul of San Miguel” in the front row of the crowded venue far from the exit door.
At Rebecca’s first cough, the man at my left leaned slightly forward and briefly tilted his head toward her. At her second, he added a sigh and a lengthier glare to the repertoire. I wanted to give him a roller derby elbow, but he looked a decade older. Besides, Rebecca was already working her way down the aisle and out the exit door.
Throughout the 90-minute lecture, I coughed four times. I counted 20 or so additional random coughs in a room of 150 people, including one from the guy on my left.
After the concert, I joined Rebecca for a coffee at the library cafe. We sat, sipped, occasionally coughed for about an hour, and noticed two people at a neighboring table get up and leave before their food arrived.
The Conflict
As the first photo suggests, we feel pretty good, even before the Margaritas. I just took a COVID test, which told us what we already knew. Our bodies are fighting a cold virus. Rebecca’s cough is her dominant symptom. I have mild congestion and a twice-an-hour cough. We are operating at about 70% energy capacity.
Because this is the last of our four weeks in San Miguel, we don’t want to be cooped up in our tiny apartment.
We’re managing the symptoms and staying hydrated.
Photo by the author
We canceled a dinner with an older couple we’ve become friends with in San Miguel because we didn’t want them to catch this virus.
This experience has brought us back to those COVID disputes. We played by the rules, masking, distancing, and vaccinating. Today, Rebecca and I are among the 22% of American adults who have gotten the latest vaccine. (source)
And we resented those who chose not to do these things, thinking them selfish or wrong-headed. I’m sure I matched that concert guy’s glare more than once at maskless people in closed places in the summer of 2020.
You might ask, why didn’t we wear masks at the concert and lecture?
There are two reasons. We’ve gotten out of the habit even though we have them somewhere in our suitcases. And we both find it difficult to breathe with a mask on, particularly with our colds.
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I wore the mask. Further, I sometimes resent community members who still wear the protection in public. I feel judged.
Just as Rebecca and I felt convicted by the glaring man and the couple who left the cafe.
However, the glaring man has a powerful point, reinforced by our decision to cancel the dinner with 87-year-old Herb and 81-year-old Adrienne. Despite our hand coverings, our coughs do spread germs. Out in public, we can’t confine the harm to ourselves.
During COVID time, I masked, distanced, and vaccinated for you as well as me. And it became the norm in our community, strengthened by laws.
But that’s a long time ago.
And it’s our last week in San Miguel. We have sites to visit. And our apartment is small. And, if our germs found their way to the stranger sitting next to me, well, he’s a stranger. He’s not Herb or Adrienne.
Caring for strangers is not easy when it costs us.
Rebecca and I love the pancakes we make from Krusteaz pancake mix and were surprised to see it on the shelf of a grocery store in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
It looked like a Krusteaz package, but what were those black stop signs plastered over the brand?
The translation was easy: the labels warned against excessive sugars and sodium. Mexico’s Health Department has required those warnings on the packaging of unhealthy foods since 2020. (source)
Mexico and other Latin American countries are fighting an epidemic of obesity. One regulatory tool is the front of the package warning label.
Of course, the food industry fought the labels.
Do the warnings work?
Jonathan Levi Rito Medina, a general practice physician in Hildago, says about 20% of his patients ask about the labels. For those with diabetes or hypertension, he tells them “to avoid the black label products completely.”
Mayelela Lopez runs a grocery store in Hildago. She’s observed that about two out of every one hundred mothers tell their kids they can’t buy the black label product.
Like Mexico, America has a severe health problem.
It’s estimated that 42% of Americans are obese, and that includes 20% of its children. (source)
In recent years, The Food and Drug Administration has required food producers to provide more explicit messages about Nutrition Facts. The font is more significant and bolded. And it includes a new category, added sugars. (source)
For those interested and concerned about what goes into the food products they consume, it’s all there and easier to read than ever.
Some American health advocates want the FDA to go further and require Mexican-style-front-of-the-package warning labels.
Sixty-two years ago, I left Davy Crockett for Marilyn Monroe
Photo by the author
*
Four days ago, I spent two minutes gazing at Marilyn Monroe in a restaurant bathroom in Guanajuato, Mexico.
You see the evidence in the photo.
It wasn’t our first tryst.
*
Marilyn Monroe died in 1962 when I was 13.
In the year of her death, I had wedged a well-creased Life Magazine cover photo of her between my mattress and bed spring. In the open, on a table next to my bed in a bedroom I shared with my 11-year-old brother, Peter, sat a new, small, orange transistor radio with earphones.
I didn’t understand why I liked listening in private to the music played by local disc jockey Lou Guttenberger and why I wanted to look at Marilyn repeatedly.
Or why I only did either in the dark.
I recall my index finger and thumb placing the earbuds carefully in each ear, first the right and then the left, clicking the tiny vertical on-button, and then unfolding Marilyn.
Our weekly vocabulary word test in eighth grade at Sacred Heart School never included décolletage, cleavage, or puberty.
Two years earlier, I had slept with my fingers clasping the fake fur of my Davy Crocket coonskin cap.
I left Davy for Marilyn.
Two years later, I hid a Playboy in a nearby wooded ravine my friend Jim had stolen from his older brother John.
Under some brush, deep enough, my old paper route customer, Mrs. Coleman, who lived next door, could not see me. She knew my mom.
I left Marilyn for a centerfold with a staple in her belly button.
Could the false teach me about the real?
Magazines were all I had. I needed to know what I was missing.
Gazing was safe.
Touch, sound, smell, and taste would come later.
My school’s nuns and priests were no help. Nor were my parents or younger brothers. I had no sisters.
*
Next, I slept with one of my mother’s discarded nylons as a stocking cap to try to straighten out my curly hair.
A friend told me girls liked guys with straight hair.
Lou, the DJ, still played songs that soothed my desperation.
As I finished this story, one thought came to me unexpectedly. Looking back from a lifetime away, life was easier for that scared half-man me than it was for Marilyn Monroe. Or the Playboy Centerfold.
Our two weeks in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, demonstrate the value of balance between old and new, tried and true.
Photo by the author of Juan Vicente Urbieta’s “En Equilibrio” from the Fábrica La Aurora Art Gallery in San Miguel, Mexico
*
For my partner Rebecca, it starts with a firm bed. For me, it’s a suitable place to write in the morning.
When you travel, there’s a built-in tension between old and new. You leave the comfort of your home, routines, bed, and writing room, the tried and true, for the new.
The toe-touching left leg and the free-form right in Urbieta’s En Equilibrium.
In equilibrium.
Too much of either, and you lose
Balance.
It’s not easy, as you can see the powerful grip of both hands and the concentration on the face of Urbieta’s gymnast.
The same is true when we travel.
Our Casita
We are spending January in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. This is my first time south of the American border and Rebecca’s first time in Mexico. We live in a small house, a casita.
Here’s a view from the outside.
Photo by author
The window on the third floor is a bathroom connected to our bedroom. The bedroom opens into a deck with a wood-constructed covering you can see to the left of the bathroom window.
Our neighborhood, in the late afternoon, from the deck.
Photo by the author
I won’t show you the bed, but it meets Rebecca’s exacting standards. Our tiny first-floor dining room doubles as my writing place. You can see the galley kitchen in the mirror.
Photo by the author
Two stairs connect this floor to a second-floor bathroom and our third-floor bedroom.
Photo by the author
Last night, two weeks into our San Miguel time, sitting with Gin & Tonics on the third-floor balcony, watching the sunset over our neighborhood, and thinking about January 2025. Apartments and houses are snatched up a year in advance, so we must decide now.
We love the location of our casita. More on that in a minute. And our Mexican hosts treat us very well. But we’ve made friends who have invited us into their homes, and we can’t reciprocate. Not comfortably. We have no room.
Yesterday afternoon, Rebecca spent four hours online on the third-floor balcony and found a larger home in the neighborhood in our price range that would accommodate our needs.
When she described her discovery, I told myself I had seen that concentrated face somewhere.
The Perfect Location and a Temptation
This is San Miguel de Allende’s central plaza, the Jardín. Presiding in the background is the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcāngel Catholic Church.
Photo by the author of San Miguel’s Járdin
It is a seven-minute walk from our casita. We are seven to twenty walking minutes from almost everything we want to do.
Beginning with this street, just outside our front door.
Photo by Rebecca Wiese
We walk Aldama several times daily because it connects us to the Jardín and Bonanza, a small grocery store, the Biblioteca, San Miguel’s library, and Fábrica La Aurora. It was in this art gallery where I discovered Juan Urbieta’s En Equilibrio.
Notice the narrow sidewalk and cobblestone street. These are typical throughout San Miguel. Each presented a walking challenge. Fortunately, we brought thick-soled shoes and learned to concentrate on every step.
And we learned something else. Most other walkers accommodate. They either step into the street to let you slip by or, more often, tilt their bodies to give you more sidewalk space. Of course, we do the same.
It’s a two-step that works but requires close attention. And reciprocity. And accommodation to the other.
Here’s Rebecca today on our walk to the Járdin. See the subtle shoulder and hip movements by both.
Photo by the author
It’s what we love most about San Miguel.
But, of course, there is a temptation at the end of this cobblestone road.
When I took the previous photo of the Járdin, I had my back to a Starbucks. Starbucks is comfort food — like McDonalds. There are also two yellow arches in San Miguel. So far, we’ve stayed away from both. But we’re not so pure and have transgressed, leaning too much toward the toe on the ring.
On two four-month trips to Malta in 2018 and Romania in 2021, Rebecca and I bought hot fudge sundaes and fries at Ronald’s place. We’d had enough of the superior Italian gelato in Malta and European chocolate in Romania. Our systems yearned for McDonald’s mediocre soft serve and fudge. The fries? Well, there’s a reason McDonald’s has long waiting lines in 119 countries.
I’m weaker than Rebecca. Yesterday, I spotted Spaghetti Bolognese on the menu of Hecho en Mexico, a neighborhood restaurant. We were with new friends, so our communication was silent. Her look was enough. I ordered something Mexican.
I need help to stay strong. I spent a month alone in Krakow, Poland, with a Pizza Hut outside my apartment door in 2004.
Hello, my name is Paul, and I’m a comfort food addict.
I remember my first trip outside America, to England, in 1987, with a group of American teachers. Before ordering the first night in a pub, one of our lot said disappointingly, “There’s nothing on the menu I’m used to.”
I’ve regretted that comment for 47 years.
Travel, for me, is an antidote to complacency.
It throws me new, I feint with old, and the tension enriches.
It helps that Rebecca is watching.
Photo by the author of Rebecca in front of the Járdin
Every few years, I bend over the wrong way, pull the Iliopsoas muscles in my lower back right side, and feel like the old and falling apart tree pictured above.
I asked my friend Alan, 78, who is dealing with a more serious back problem, how this condition influences the way he thinks about himself.
Who am I? Am I the 78-year-old who enjoys playing golf, leading workshops, going to rotary and the film festival, or am I a person whose back pain affects my range of activities and limits my world? I now have two senses of identity; whichever one is dominant is driven by a level of pain.
Alan’s right; pain matters to identity.
So does age. Alan has had a handicap since childhood. Decades of his putting weight on one leg have now resulted in pressure on a sciatic nerve.
I first pulled my SOAS muscles stepping out of a car 40 years ago, at 34. The pain forced me to my knees. Three days later, I was fully recovered.
Now, at 74, the recovery time is two weeks, during which my identity, like Alan’s, focuses on my physical limitations, the limitations of an aged person.
Somedays, I feel old, and some days, I don’t.
This experience and Alan’s thoughtful answer have made me think about how important age is to my identity.
So, I asked other friends.
Here are some excerpts.
Age is everything to my identity. That may be because I am 78, and age and identity seem symbiotic, reflecting the other in everyday life. (Dale, 78)
Being older is not important to my identity at all. I am still working as a university professor. Mentoring students keeps me mentally and psychologically young. (Jim, 67)
Now, on the edge of 80, I live in awe of my age each day, even though many of my 80-year-old friends take their age in stride. (Ruth, 79)
Age is quite important to my identity [because] I have too many regrets and wasted years, [so] having 10–20 years available doesn’t seem the same as it did 20 years ago. (Wade, 67)
Much of my identity at this age is satisfaction in reflecting on all the different things I’ve undertaken and as an explorer of what life has to offer. (Peter, 82)
I’ve gotten to the top of the hill and got perspective. (Rebecca, 72)
Isn’t it a gift to have thoughtful friends?
Like Alan’s reply, my friends’ answers helped me develop two more ideas regarding age and identity.
They may also trigger your thoughts and stories.
Please share them in the comment section.
Chronological and Psychological Age
Jim is a university professor who plans to work for another five years. He introduced me to the distinction between chronological and psychological age.
He writes:
I mentor quite a few students, which helps keep me mentally and psychologically young. Psychologically speaking, I don’t think of myself as 67, probably in my late 40s or early 50s.
And elaborated:
The concept of psychological age is real — Pam [Jim’s wife] and I are chronologically the same age as many of the people with whom we are interacting, but in terms of our behavior and psychological age, we are much younger.
I retired in 2018 at 69 from 40 years of college teaching. At my college’s Christmas party that winter, I looked around at the crowd and, without thinking about it, gravitated toward my younger, still teaching colleagues. That’s who I identified with. I wanted nothing to do with the country of the old — not even their company.
For about a year, I did not enroll or teach in my college’s Life Long Learning program, join retired friends for Thursday breakfast, or attend the monthly emeriti lecture series.
And then, one day, while shaving, I noticed I had kept my sleep t-shirt on while lathering up. I had covered my aging torso.
I was turning away from what?
A part of who I had become. Turning away rarely works.
At that moment, I pivoted toward the country of the old.
That’s me below, in the red hat, a few months ago at a lecture by a retired colleague.
Photo taken by Rebecca Wiese. That’s me in the red ball cap.
I’m also a student and teacher in Life Long Learning seminars, a regular at the Thursday morning retirees coffee klatch, and at this year’s Christmas party, looked over at my younger colleagues and felt sorry for them.
I like to visit their country occasionally.
But there’s no dual citizenship.
Experience and Wisdom
Why did I feel sorry for my younger colleagues?
My friend Dale, 78, describes one reason.
When I turned 65, my age allowed me to control my life completely.
For Dale, a ceramist, that meant new hobbies, including hiking and fishing.
In the country of the old, trails, streams, and libraries are always crowded.
My friends still in the country of the young have to go to work in the morning.
But there’s something else at play. It’s why I also lament my younger self. My friend Wade wrote about how regret looms large in later life.
Across the breakfast table, my partner, Rebecca, answered the question in the title of this story with the top-of-the-hill quote. I asked her to say more.
My life experiences have solidified my position on many things. I know more things, including that having the wrong position is okay.
Rebecca speaks for many of us.
Not all older people are wise. But many, including me, are more perceptive than we were.
Age builds a free lending library of experience.
Peter weighed in.
I have spent a lot of time in 80+ years exploring what I think the nature of reality is and have sought philosophy and science in that pursuit and with am with the conclusions I have drawn that give me satisfaction if not ultimate truth.
So, being an elder feels good.
“He Was Complete”
Roughly corresponding to my turn toward the country of the old five years ago, I started to read biographies of my sports heroes: Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Muhammad Ali, Sandy Koufax, Bill Russell, Buck O’Neil, and Roberto Clemente.
I didn’t think much about why I was doing this until a friend loaned me a book of essays by Roger Angell, Once More Around the Park. Angell died at 99 two years ago and was considered the finest baseball chronicler. In the preface to Around the Park, he’s contemplating the retirement of relief pitcher Dan Quisenberry with these words:
He had closed the book, and in that moment had become fresh and young again, and…wonderfully clear in my mind. He was complete.
I no longer cared about my hero’s athletic accomplishments. I was more interested in the kind of people they had become.
When I get my Country of the Old passport, it will be stamped complete.
By that time, I will have seen it all.
And made sense of my life.
Photo by the author
William Butler Yeats’s poem Sailing to Byzantium can be found here.
William Stafford’s poem Waiting in Line can be found here.
Photo of Indiana Pacers Assistant Coach Jenny Boucek, by Rebecca Weise
*
Two nights ago, we ate at Aga’s Restaurant in Sugarland, just outside Houston, Texas.
The WE were six white Americans who differed by age, gender, profession, and family status but shared a visible skin tone that differed from the overwhelmingly Indian and Pakistani crowd.
Aga’s advertises itself as the “#1 Indian-Pakistani Restaurant in North America.”
The proof of its claim was in our waiting time (90 minutes), the number of people in Aga’s three serving rooms when we sat down (500), and the excellent, authentic dishes.
Because of that waiting time, I walked through Aga’s three rooms to get to the toilet when we were seated. White faces made up roughly 5% of the patrons.
*
Similarly, Jenny Boucek, who you see in the first photo, is not the only woman coaching in America’s National Basketball Association. Currently, there are six female assistant coaches. (source)
Each of the 30 NBA teams is allowed three assistants. Below are the three Indiana Pacers assistants surrounding Head Coach Rick Carlisle at The Houston Rockets Indiana Pacers game a week ago.
Photo by Rebecca Weise
The NBA assistant coaching room seats 90, so Coach Boucek and the five other women coaches make up a little under 6%.
The four Indiana Pacer coaches had just finished barking at a foul called on one of their players by this referee.
Photo of NBA referee Dannica Mosher
Dannica Mosher is one of eight female NBA referees. (source)
Out of 74.
11%
*
I’m a 74-year-old white male, heterosexual as well. I was born in 1949, two years after Jackie Robinson stood alone in the batter’s box in American Major League Baseball.
My Catholic compatriot, John F. Kennedy, would break another barrier before I started high school.
When I looked back at my 1967 high school yearbook, I discovered no “girls” sports teams, only this.
Photo by the author from 1967 Davenport Assumption Yearbook
Weirdly, I don’t recall a single conversation with friends, parents, or teachers about girls not having teams. Or not being coaches or refs.
Photo of President Barack Obama by Chuck Kennedy on Wikimedia Commons
Two nights after Obama was elected President of the United States, I sat next to my son, Ben, at a concert listening to Bob Dylan sing Blowin’ in the Wind.
My tears were not the only ones in the concert hall.
*
Whites in a sea of Browns, women amidst men, and a Black man joins an exclusive club.
All in my lifetime.
I felt completely at ease at Aga’s.
Boucek yelled at Mosher, who yelled back.
Obama was reelected.
*
None of this was easy.
Or finished.
And some forces are pushing back.
This competition — about change and inclusion — is now the defining feature of American politics.
But the reactionaries will lose.
Today, too many see all of this and more, not as change but as ordinary.
The way things are.
When I mentioned my Aga and Houston Rockets’ takeaways to a family member a generation younger, he looked puzzled. He didn’t notice either because he sees them all the time.
I notice them because they are new to me.
Bob Dylan, of course, was right in Blowin’. It always takes too damn long to do the right thing.
