there is a trail that winds 'round the river

photographs taken in guacetepec where i learned to make tortillas,
walk in mud, and how to love again.

i'd wake up early to the sound of roosters. readjusting myself in my hammock, i would lay waiting for the sun to seep through the windows of the church i was sleeping in. breathing in the smell of early morning fires drenched in the wetness of the night's rain, i'd soak up the stillness of the time before the sun rose. while everyone else lay sleeping around me - i was tiptoeing, quietly through my mind, my dreams and desires and memories and my longings. the sun would start to sneak into the darkness, and like a summoning, it would call to me, and i would rise.

the first day, i just stood there. the kitchen was dark, filled with women standing around the fire flipping the tortillas as the smoke filled the air. the light would shine through the cracks of the wood beams of the shack and the light would make their skin shine like gold. they were quiet at first - shy. when i watched them, they would giggle - covering their faces to hide their embarrassment. the women hardly spoke spanish and so we were unable to talk to one another. inspired by the absence of words, i would just stand, silently, enjoying the simple act of being.

i noticed mariann first because her hair was curly. she stood to the side, usually looking at me, and then looking away - like she was flirting with me. her husband, isidro, told me that she loved my hair. that she would go home and talk to him about it all night long. and so i asked her to do my hair like hers. i remember how gentle she was with my hair. and i remember how she touched my nose like i was her child.

by the second day, i was hiding behind the kitchen with the women while they dressed me in their clothes. we were all giggling, together. their bashfulness vanished, and what emerged were these incredibly silly, wild, and playful women who began to treat me as if i belonged to them. they paraded me around to their husbands, they invited me to each of their meals, they taught me how to make tortillas, they gave me jobs to do - and even invited me to kill the chickens and clean them. and even the foods that i knew would make me sick, i couldn't refuse.

if you were able to see inside of my chest before leaving for mexico, i imagine that you wouldn't have been able to recognize my heart. it'd become so brittle, hard, and dead. as the women welcomed me, i could feel their hands touching and healing parts of me that had become so dark. it was only my second week there - and it was only the beginning of a journey - and i could already feel myself changing. i came to them weak, begging for something - and they had no idea that i had come to them in order to learn how to live again.

on the last day in guacetepec, i sat between pastor antonio and his wife at the lunch table. as we passed around communion to one another, these tears started streaming down my face. for i was hungry, and they gave me something to eat. and i was thirsty, and they offered me something to drink. i was a stranger and they took me in. even if we spoke the same language, there still would have been no words, and so instead our tears ran together down our cheeks and chests. they ran together into the release of the joy and hope that the women from the village and i had given each other. and as i stood on the truck, keeping my eyes fixed on them until the road turned and i couldn't see them anymore, i finally found the words and whispered to them, thank you, thank you, thank you.

some way baby it's part of me, apart from me

photographs taken in san caralampio where i ate my first bug, made a lot of bread,
and slept in my first hammock

in the morning, i woke up in a city. a woman was calling to me through the window in spanish, i rushed quickly, realizing i was late for breakfast. the morning was blue. having arrived late the night before, i looked out of the window seeing for the first time ocosingo. a beautiful valley. i'm not in america, i can tell because there are colors here that i've never seen before. the sounds of roosters, motorcycles and people talking as they walk to the market are new to me. the air breathes a different language, even.

after breakfast, santiago, juan and i got into the black explorer. i was quiet. i was still self-conscious then about my spanish and santiago's ability to speak english seemed to be contingent on his mood. we drove for four hours in silence into the depths of the chiapas jungle. i asked no questions. i knew that i loved santiago and juan the moment that i met them. i knew that it was okay to be quiet. my eyes were fixed on the countryside passing beside me. the window was down as we drove along the bumpy dirt road. i breathed in the smell of fires burning and the smell of fresh rain soaking into the earth.

santiago broke the silence, pointing at a river, calling it the chocolate river. i said to him in my awkward spanish, "let's go swimming!" he laughed. and i knew that he already loved me as much as i loved him. making people laugh in mexico became my favorite way to communicate and in some ways, the only way that i knew how to. i flirted with everyone i met - because i knew no other way. my spanish is pretty good, but mostly it's just cute. it made me vulnerable to everyone i met. i was at the mercy of every person i spoke to and i relied on their kindness in order for me to survive there.

mostly i got along fine - i just sort of trusted that nothing was so important that you needed to actually talk about it. and that's how i drove four hours into the jungle of chiapas without having a single idea where i was going, if santiago and juan were even the right people to have picked me up, or what i was going to do when i got wherever we might be going. it just wasn't really that important.

two hours after we left ocosingo, we stopped in a small town. later i would find that this was the town where santiago and his brother, pablo, had grown up. i stayed in the car with juan. i had gathered a few things about juan in our 24 hours together so far: juan had a cold. juan was not santiago's son. and juan was from matzam, the village i had visited with my church in may. juan only spoke when spoken to. and when juan did speak, he spoke in a whisper.

santiago got out of the car. a man and his daughter walked towards him. santiago shook the man's hand, and then picked the girl up and twirled her around in a circle. she was beautiful and his rough, worn face became gentle in her presence. this was the first time i really got a good look at him. he cocked his hip to the side and rested one hand it. when he walked, he looked at the ground, watching his black cowboy boots as they pressed down on the green grass. sometimes he looked up, and he always had this smile on - this smile with these wise, knowing eyes, that held secrets, memories and wisdom that were buried so deep that i knew i could never really know this man. he was made of mystery, full of the things that men used to be made of in myths.

santiago dropped a few things off with them and then we drove on. he never told me it was where he was born. he never told me that those people were his family. it just didn't really need to be mentioned. i could tell that it was a good place, and they were good people, and that santiago seemed happy there. that was enough for me. and as the weeks would pass, santiago would never really tell me anything about himself. he would never tell me about his wife who had died, or what it was like working for his brother, or if he wished he would have had the same opportunities as him. he'd never tell me about his children. or why he always sat outside of church and never went inside.

but as the summer would go on, i would get these precious chances to glimpse what was inside of him. and in these glimpses, i saw a man with a heart made of gold. who treated me gently. who treated every person with care and affection. who asked me if i was okay when i seemed sad. and one day, he would eventually walk into church, look around the room awkwardly and shyly. he would spot me from the door. he would stand next to me, as i was seated on one of the benches, and he would motion to me to move over. and despite never learning about his past, and never telling him much about myself either, i knew he felt comfort sitting next to me there. we were the kids in the back of the church laughing too much, because they didn't quite feel like they belonged there. we were the kids who would sneak out of church early to buy coca colas across the street.

the last week i was there, he asked me in perfect english to wash his clothes. although he was joking, i still responded to him honestly, "it would be my honor."

eventually, we arrive in san caralampio. we turn right up a small road. ahead of me i see a mixture of white people and people from the village. i see pablo and jan and the people who work for them. these people will eventually become like family to me. the journey begins here, i breathe in deeply, and step out of the truck.

whatever fear invents, i swear it makes no sense

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

every morning when i was in ocosingo, i'd wake up and go to the kitchen. usually jan would be in there, and we'd talk a little. she was a morning person - she said she had to have her mornings, and plus she was the cook so she had to be up early. sometimes i'd help her set the table, other times i would just grab a cup of coffee. sometimes she'd put the sugar in for me. i would go sit on the roof of the bible school before breakfast and watch the fog slowly rise from the floor of the valley.

jan was the wife of pablo. her eyes were the color of the light blue morning sky. she was always looking at me lovingly. she was always timidly and softly putting her hand on my back at dinner when i was acting particularly american - loud, funny and sensitive. sometimes her eyes were sad and sometimes i felt like all of the joy in me couldn't be enough for her. moving from michigan to chiapas hadn't been easy when she'd first done it 30 years ago, and it hadn't gotten any easier. so i stayed close to her, hoping maybe the naive, innocent love i felt for mexico and life there could be enough for the both of us. she said that she could never move back to america, but i knew that didn't mean that she was perfectly settled in this culture either.

i loved to hear her talk about her family in michigan. i loved when she told me about the flowers that used to grow at her mother's house and how much she loved watching football with her dad when she was growing up. i loved going to her house and asking her about everything on her walls - because i loved to hear her talk about her mother, who was a painter. i loved talking to her about my mother too. both of our mothers made us cinnamon toast and hot tea. both of our fathers made popcorn on sunday nights. jan and i both loved fall the most.

every morning now before work, i wake up early. to take a walk, or just to sit, and drink some coffee. i allow myself the time to get acquainted with the day. i meet the softness, the gentleness, the quietness of the morning. i used to overlook it. but now i can't live without it. it is because of jan that i am now able to love morning.

in so many ways, jan and i were complete opposites. and i watched us all summer-long learning from one another, thriving off of one another, and quietly adoring one another in our differences. she taught me humility. she showed me what it was like to be selfless. she said that people had always been making decisions for her, that she never really knew what she actually wanted. she was devoted to her family. she was quiet. she was dangerously vulnerable, but sometimes cooler than the morning breeze that would blow over us both when we'd wake, in separate rooms, as separate people, with separate histories. And though we were separate, we woke early for the same purpose.

to get those couple of minutes to breathe life. to try to learn hear our own voices before other people and things started to overpower them. to find peace. to believe in a new day. for the stillness.

and now we both rise, in separate cities, in separate countries, with separate days ahead of us - but every morning reminds me of her. its gentleness, its humility and its quiet. it reminds me of a woman, so unlike me, who taught me to be more like the morning.

mexico, part 3.

we rode in a cattle truck to get here. the wind blew in my hair, and even around the tightest corners, looking over the steepest ledges, i wasn't afraid. i was too alive to be afraid. the town was beautiful, and small. dylan and i stood on the back porch looking out, as small children peeked out between cracks in the walls to giggle at us, and wave shyly. they are the same people as the people in matzam - these people had moved to this area from matzam. they farmed here, and then about 70 families moved onto their land and settled the town.

in church, we sang amazing grace in three languages. and for a moment, the sun was shining into this small church, and i felt like i was absolutely sure of what life meant, again. i held all of its meaning in my hands, that were open and facing towards the sky.

we shook everyone's hands. and some of the women cried, and i couldn't figure out why. i felt so far from them in this moment. i wanted to tell them, but i couldn't, that i am the grateful one. i am the one who is lucky to be in your presence. you are the beautiful ones, you are the wise ones. instead of saying that, i just called them my sisters and my brothers while they walked past me and shook my hand.

i couldn't help but keep thinking, "this is what life is!" - this is a woman who is actually beautiful, and this is a way of life that is actually meaningful, and this is actually community - and i felt so free from myself. like i didn't even matter at all. and that is the single greatest feeling that you can feel when you are surrounded by such love, compassion and belonging.

mexico, part 2.

martha the great.

tavita