16/ Epilogue

“Once the dust of Mexico has settled on your heart, you will have no rest in any other land.”

-- Anita Brenner

A year has passed since our return from Oaxaca. In some ways the arc of this year has mirrored that of our time in Mexico: six months of difficult adjustment followed by slow, if steady improvement in general outlook. Reentry into life in the Northwest was made an order of magnitude more difficult by our decision not to settle back into our comfortable old Seattle house, having decided to extend the lease to our renters for another year. Instead, we thought we’d try the Methow Valley: a rural Shangri-La just over the North Cascades where we built a vacation cabin more than 20 years ago. We’d rented that place out, too—at least, until the renters skipped out on the lease—so before we could actually move in we needed to wait nearly a month for new paint, carpeting and kitchen updates to be applied. 

Having no place in Seattle to call home during this time, we crashed as needed in my sister and brother-in-law’s basement (muchisimas gracias, Marty and Todd!). We also found ourselves in need of a car, as we had disposed of ours prior to departing for Mexico. (We settled on a Subaru Forester—a perfect match for the Methow’s wintry climate, and with which we are perfectly happy.) There were trips to the doctor and dentist, reunions with people we’d missed and visits to restaurants we’d been craving. And we made countless trips to and from our Seattle storage unit, digging through dusty boxes to excavate items we’d once deemed essential, lived without for a year and now apparently needed again.

Early on it became apparent how my feelings toward Seattle had changed. A year’s absence underscored how rapidly the city was being reshaped and redefined, with even more traffic, crime, homelessness, crowding, and a tectonic demographic shift resulting from the dropping of the Amazon mothership into the heart of the city. On top of my general feelings of bereavement at having left Oaxaca behind, this newfound dislike for my home of 30 years amplified my sense of disorientation, disappointment and depression. Let’s just say that during this time I wasn’t a very pleasant person to be around.

Not that there weren’t distractions—among them a September roadtrip to the geological marvels of the desert Southwest. Wandering through fantastic rock formations carved across eons of time helped to restore some much-needed perspective to my thinking and mood. December found us back in Hawaii, visiting favorite places and beloved friends on Oahu and the Big Island. By Christmas we’d returned to the cabin, where we communed with family and cavorted in the snow—a miracle unto itself after a year in tropical Mexico.

Even with those magnificent distractions, the marquis event of the year took place in November—my return to Oaxaca, five months after we’d left. 

Nothing about Oaxaca appeared to have changed. I arrived immediately after Dia de Los Muertos; the sidewalks were still lined with vendors selling skull paraphernalia, and grinning katrinas still beckoned ominously from shop doors. Tourists had largely fled the city after the big fiesta; the skies were sunny and the temperature mild. I was staying with some expat friends who generously afforded me easy access to all my familiar haunts. 

Being there again so soon—and yet so, so long—after our wrenching departure produced a strangely ambivalent sensation: I wandered around the Centro as a sleepwalker in a dream, or perhaps as one who had just awakened from a frustrating nightmare, only to find myself back in reassuringly familiar surroundings. I couldn’t be sure which was the more accurate description of my state of mind.

The ostensible reason for my return to Oaxaca was the marriage of bandmate Alberto’s son Beto, and in the run-up to the wedding The Geckoz played 4 gigs in 10 days. Although these were intended to help me find my feet again in the band, it was as if I had never left—we rocked with complete abandon right from the start. The final gig was the wedding reception itself—a relatively modest affair compared to the blowouts we’d witnessed erupting from the Templo de Santo Domingo at all hours (complete with dancers, acrobats, brass bands, fireworks and drones), but all in all a completely heartwarming occasion set in a modest villa outside the city. We only played for an hour or so, and to be honest it wasn’t our best performance—but nobody seemed to care. The dancing continued into the wee hours as a DJ pumped American and Latin dance tunes into the cool night air. Sometime after midnight, long after all the mezcal bottles lay empty on their sides, a taquero cart miraculously appeared offering carnitas to the surviving revelers.

The Geckoz perform at the wedding of Beto and Mary in San Andrés Huayapam.

The next day featured the traditional after-party, known as a recalentado (literally, warmed-up leftovers)—a more restrained affair in which only the visiting family and friends (numbering some 40 people) were invited over to the house to nurse their hangovers with beer, savory tacos de barbacoa and more mezcal. Even if I hadn’t felt like part of this family before, these two days of togetherness and celebration cemented the feeling for all time.

Among the things I had been itching to do during my 3 weeks in Oaxaca was to revisit many of my favorite restaurants and bars, where, happily, I was often recognized by the staff and greeted with a smile. (To my astonishment, a barista at one of my regular coffee haunts actually hailed me by name.) Martha arrived halfway through my stay—just in time for the wedding—having stopped off in Texas to visit family. Together we once again enjoyed beer and peanuts in the Zócalo; fresh, hand-made tacos from the ladies at my favorite stand; and several lovely Oaxacan dinners—all as good as I remembered. 

I was also eager for reunions with my intercambiamigos, as I call them—individuals with whom I had spent many happy (if challenging) hours engaged in mutually helpful conversation in both English and Spanish. It turned out that they had genuinely missed me during my absence, and we were able to pick up pretty much where we left off. This was also true of the many other good friends, both Mexican and foreign, who knew I was coming and eagerly agreed to reconnect over coffee, drinks or food. There is something about absence that serves to deepen and reinforce the best parts of a relationship, while other, less enjoyable aspects of it can be conveniently, if temporarily, ignored.

In anticipation of my return to Oaxaca I had feared that my Spanish would be threadbare from disuse, and it soon became obvious that such was the case. But miraculously, after just a few days of re-immersion, much of what I had learned came back to me. By the end of my stay I had actually received unsolicited compliments from several locals—awards which I prized more than if I had won Olympic gold.

Being back in Oaxaca restored me in ways I had hoped for but could not readily pinpoint. I had wondered whether a three-week stay would be sufficient, but it turned out to be exactly long enough time for me to reassure myself that yes, everything was still there as I remembered it, and that the connections I made during that long year had stood the test of time. 

Since that visit I return there every single day in my mind, but the Oaxaca that I knew no longer exists. Covid-19 has the city under lockdown, with restaurants closed, tourism non-existent, and the once-bustling streets empty. None of the things, or people, that I so fervently miss would be available to me now even if I could magically transport myself back. As with everywhere else in the world, one can only wonder what a return to normalcy in Oaxaca will look like—or whether it will even be possible.

The once-bustling streets of the Centro are now deserted. (Photo by Estefanía López Hernández)

So for now, once again, we are trying out a new life in a completely different environment. We have largely made the adjustment to living in the Methow Valley, its serene beauty and utter tranquility serving as a daily balm to ease my soul’s longing. Before the pandemic hit I had been trying to break into the local music scene, paying my dues at open mics and taking advantage of invitations to sit in with some of the valley’s surprisingly large number of excellent musicians. Of course all of this has now been placed on hold, but I have hopes to once again make music in front of people in this genial environment. Sadly, as our investment in adapting to life here grows each day, the one we made in Oaxaca feels increasingly irrelevant.

In the meantime, out of homesickness I’ve been exploring a great Oaxacan cookbook that daughter Julia gave me. I have re-hired a couple of my former language teachers in Oaxaca (now best friends) to Skype with me several times a week, both to keep my Spanish on life-support and to help provide these young professionals with some assistance at a time when their livelihood has suddenly disappeared. Social media, for all its evils, has actually helped ease the pain—there isn’t a day that passes without some sort of interaction with my friends in Oaxaca. 

As I’ve been writing this, I have been reminded yet again of the utter insignificance of my story in the larger scheme of things. Tidal forces are sweeping the world, forces that we are increasingly encouraged to view in terms of good and evil, black and white. My country seems on the verge of tearing itself apart, and although I have always dismissed the notion of the End Times as medieval rubbish, I must wonder if we are indeed now on their doorstep. 

I know that I have lived a privileged life, principally for having been born a white American male during an historical era of extraordinary opportunity for people like me. Accordingly, for better or worse, I have been free to pursue my dreams without encumbrance. Two years ago those dreams took me to Oaxaca in search of adventure and friendship. 

Re-reading the Prologue on this blog’s homepage, I am struck by its prescience: New best friends were indeed waiting for me to arrive in Oaxaca, and I am immeasurably richer for their continued presence in my life. My heart now aches to see them all again in person, mis amigos oaxaqueños, whenever and however that may come to pass. In the end it was all worth it: the dust of Mexico has indeed settled on my heart, and Oaxaca will live in my soul until my dying breath.

Así es.