By Tom Bridges
March 2004
Kids in Mexico seem never to leave home. They do but they never leave very far. They may go to the US or even further afield but they still are close to home. When I first came to Mexico I thought this to be a flaw in the child-rearing process. I pitied the poor children who could never escape the family influence. I thought that the youth of the nation were being held back by the invisible hand of Mexican moms. I mean, I understood that mamas shouldn’t let their babies grow up to be cowboys but for Pedro’s sake, let them grow up!
Then another thought occurred to me. I thought that maybe the children were showing respect for the parents and coming back to ask their opinions about all manner of things. Or maybe they were giving their own children a chance to get to know their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so on. All those things are true. You can see all of that happening on any given Sunday nearly anywhere in the country. But I still felt uncomfortable with my thinking.
Then one day it dawned on me. It wasn’t that the children were being held back. It was that they loved their parents and didn’t want them to be lonely, grouchy, and otherwise hard to get along with. If they came back to see mom and dad every weekend, then mom and dad were still connected to something and didn’t drift off into negative space. Mom and dad knew they were still valuable and needed, in other words.
It was at that point that I began to ruminate about our own, north-of-the-border attitudes about family. Then I began to think about some of the shenanigans I observe with dislocated more north American types. It would seem that there are a few folk around here who need someone to love! This might be particularly pertinent for those who opt to live in exclusive, gated, lonely, isolated communities.
Now, I know that there are folk who live in those communities who do their utmost to integrate themselves into the local flow of life, but there are also those who do a good deal of loud complaining about nearly anything and don’t get outside those blessed walls for anything more than hunting and gathering. It might be hard for those folk to feel wanted or needed by anyone all cooped up like that. Might tend to make a person combative.
The shame of all of this is that for the most part the very people who hide behind those walls are bright, well-educated folk who held interesting positions back when they were working. I had a heck of a time figuring out why such people wouldn’t be at the forefront of the war on ignorance being waged here in Mexico. Then one day it came to me. They are scared. They are scared to venture beyond the safe confines of the golf course and the western edge of Ajijic for one simple reason. They might have to ask someone for help changing a tire, or for directions, or for some other insignificant thing and they can’t do it.
As a great man once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” So let’s get off those collective duffs and get out amongst the living. Go by a local school and arrange to take a bunch of adopted grandkids to the zoo. If you get lost, the kids will ask the way and you will all have a great time. Teach a class in English. You will learn more Spanish than they will learn English. Ask your maid if you can babysit a couple of kids of working mothers. You will involve yourself with the local community and the bad boys will leave your house alone. These are but a couple of ideas. I’m quite sure that folk as bright and useful as you can think of lots and lots more.
The important thing is to replace that scaredy-cat with someone who is needed and valuable. I have to make the observation that many of the Americans and Canadians living here remind me of Mexicans living in East L. A. They live in their own little communities, they refuse to learn the language, and they live in fear of being found out.