Mutiny - by Daniel

I shouldn't be writing this post and look forward to the mutineers speaking their piece.

It's getting ugly around here - everyone said it would happen but one is never prepared for what it feels like to be accused (with reason) of torturing one's own children. School has started, homework has started, getting up at 6:30 am has started, not understanding what the hell the teacher and students are saying has started. Homesickness has deluged us.

There have been plenty of distractions up til now - the drive down through Mexico, housesitting in paradise at John and Adele's, our new puppy. But now the realization that it's not just summer vacation has reared its ugly head. And we, the nutcases that thought up this brilliant idea to spend a year here, are the targets of some serious mud slinging.

How do you forge ahead with life, even try to enjoy it, while leaving plenty of room for the kids to feel the sadness of leaving friends and the immense difficulties of fitting in here? I look forward to the wisdom of others like Chuck and Tricia and Nora and Harry and Liz and Lilliana, Isabel and Elena (two families - friends of ours - that charted this path prior to us). Will we find family peace and cultural adventure and openness here - or will we be dashed against the rocks, our vessel in splinters? Stay tuned and stay in touch.

Pin the bald spot on the head - by Daniel

What better way to celebrate one's birthday than to have loved ones play a friendly game of pin the bald spot on the head? Such was the short straw I drew for my 49th birthday.

Brian, Susanna and I returned from an amazing hike some way up the nearly 10,000 foot mountains just out our door - Tyler had feigned a belly ache (not uncommon in these parts) and peeled off to prepare a surprise party for me. We had Anna and Meena (Anna is a dear, dear Australian friend with whom we worked in El Salvador who had the amazing foresight to hitch up with the equally dear Meena) and their children - Rahoul and Asha as well as the Moss Haaren and Bloom Moore clan. We ate, danced, laughed, and not surprisingly, found the bald spot.

Afterwards, we went up the road a quarter mile to the appropriate technology center of CAMPO - the Center for Support of the Popular Movement of Oaxaca. CAMPO is a non governmental organization that I've come to know through Grassroots International. We've been supporting them for many years. They are a mix of community planners and organizers, engineers and lawyers working with indigenous community to protect their human rights and develop their communities through a grassroots process - trying to undo the damage that Mexican party politics of exclusion and marginalization of indigenous communities has wrought. The community where we are living - Casa del Sol - was founded by many of CAMPO's founders - and is an unusual and unusally welcoming sort of co housing community.

Fortuitously, CAMPO was celebrating something (life, they said) and it coincided with my birthday. With watermelon, mezcal and salad in hand (no Entemann's baked goods nearby to bring), the gringos (sorry to throw you in the same lot, Australia) descended on the party. They'd slaughtered and cooked a couple of their sheep and rabbits, we feasted, and then played Mexico vs USA in the CAMPO cup. We lost rather badly - despite the stellar efforts of Arlo and Talia.

Too Much Time in the Car - by Talia

Too much time in the car
By Talia

We are finally in Oaxaca. It was a long trip and we had a lot of arguments but otherwise it was really good.

We got to watch movies, we got to play on our Nintendo DS, we got to listen to music and talk to each other. I liked Virginia because we got to see Alex and Liam’s grandparents and I liked Tennessee because we got to swim and go out to dinner. The next day we went to the Martin Luther King civil rights museum and we learned what Martin Luther King was like. We went on the real bus that Rosa Parks went on and we saw where Martin Luther King was killed. I liked Houston because the place that our cousins Sheila and Isaac live was really nice and we went to a really nice Vietnamese restaurant.

The next day it was really fun because we went to Shlitterbahn, a really big waterpark with an awesome wave pool and this awesome waterslide thing because you went side to side and I went off the side – caught some air - and then I got back on the thing. The next day we went to a desert campout and there was this awesome spring that had a pool that we went in. We saw big catfish on the bottom of the pool. Then we crossed the border and we waited there for half an hour and signed all this stuff. It was pretty boring. I thought it was going to be worse because I’d seen a bad movie about it.

Then we went to Ciudad Juarez and we went to a priest’s and nun’s house. It was scary because they said that burglars came. After that we went to Randy’s and Sagrario’s house in Chihuahua. It was a pretty nice view. Then we met up with Ruby and Arlo and headed off to Copper Canyon. It was fun to see Ruby and Arlo – they’re the people we go camping with every summer and we’re going to spend the whole year with them in Oaxaca.

Copper canyon was really fun and we met these really annoying kids – Android and Rachel but Jackie was nice. The Copper Canyon view was awesome but we went on this really boring hike for 350 miles I say. The villages were pretty boring and all the girls wore dresses.

Then we went to this weird hotel and Arlo and Mommy were sick. After that, we went to another hotel in Zacatecas. It was pretty nice and we went into this awesome mine. We went in this little train thing a ma jobber and I thought it was going to collapse. Little kids used to work in the mine.

Then we went to Guanajuato. Attacking earwigs came into our room, but the hotel was really cool. Then we got to Oaxaca! It was so good because I was bored of the car like heck. We saw Tilly the dog and little puppies. For all the people that are coming, our new house is real small so beware. Nice writing. Goodbye.

Now in Oaxaca - by Sabina

We are finally in Oaxaca, Mexico it was a long car ride that had many goods and bads. Overall the car ride was not as bad as I thought but there were at least 20 fights between Talia and I. Stella did stay in her spot and was good for mostly the whole car ride, we mostly watched movies and listened to books on tape and on non windy roads sometimes we read.

This was not as bad as I thought it would be but still I would be much happier in Boston with all my friends. Last week we went to language school to practice Spanish at first we had a horrible teacher but then we got a great one and as soon as we got home we would all jump into the pool.

Oaxaca at Last - by Tyler

OAXACA at last!

A great road trip had come to an end. We spent out first night outside of the city of Oaxaca in the hills of San Pablo Etla. We had been to this beautiful place before when dear friends Tricia, Chuck and Nora had lived there during their year in Mexico. Fortuitously the home they had house sat was purchased by their neighbors, Adele and John, who happened to need housesitters while they returned to visit their home in the states just as we were arriving.

“Housesitting” included feeding their Burnese Mountain dog Tilly, 2 cats Tigre and Amlo, many turtles, chickens and turkeys while basking in the remarkable views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. The kids were in heaven as down the road at the B&B Casa Raab, Rebecca, the proprietress, was the Doctor Doolittle of the Etlas. She had just received a drop of 8 puppies and 2 kittens. Her menagerie includes burros, horses, cats, dogs, puppies, kittens and wounded birds. Talia, Sabina, Ruby and Arlo were young vets in training with Rebecca while the adults ran around the city markets looking for paint and furnishings for our little homes on the other side of Oaxaca .

No surprise that when we left for San Luis Beltran a couple weeks later we were fostering a 5 week old Mexican mutt named Lila. Stella gets to play mom. I get to wake up at 4 am for “play”sessions (read: cleaning up wet spots). School starts on August 18 and there is a lot of anxiety brewing about going to a Spanish speaking school, making new friends, all against the backdrop of missing dear friends in Boston. We went by Colegio Teizcali last week and all the kids were kissed by all of the teachers. We are off to a good start!

A Discount from the Mexico City Police - by Daniel

A Discount from the Mexico City Police
By Daniel

They get a bum rap those Mexican policia. All we hear about is the intimidation and extortion and very little about the deep discounts and excellent escort service. You might wonder: How did I get a 50% discount on my bribe to the cops as well as police accompaniment back to the superhighway?

It started in Guanajuato – an amazing place of labyrinthine alleys - a day out from trying to skirt around Mexico City’s sprawl (population 25 million – take that NYC!) en route to our final destination, Oaxaca. We were preparing ourselves for a bad day of marathon driving, hoping to make it slightly less wearing. We were eager to find THE route around Mexico City’s traffic snarls and smog. With map in hand, I went in search of travel advice. After many fruitless queries, I was told to look for the knowledgeable bartenders at the Fly Bar. An hour later – well-meaning directions proved to be contradictory - I entered the Fly Bar. A young, dreadlocked bartender, as friendly as our bouncy Labrador, Stella, listened as I described our dilemma. “I don’t know my way,” he responded, but his friends might.

Down the stairs we went to find them. They too listened, politely to my anxious plea. One pronounced, “no hay pedo” (literally “there is no fart”). In Mexican slang this means “it’s no big deal”. Dreadlocks invited me to a rock reggae party that night and sent me off with a complicated handshake which I could not follow. My hand hung lonely in the air.

Not much relieved we set out at dawn. Six hours later in a traffic snarl, we were pulled over by state police. The kids lifted their heads from their Nintendo devices to inquire what was happening. A police man who looked as though he’d had a broken beer bottle dragged down the left side of his face, informed me of the crime: we had the wrong license plates. To cut down on air pollution, Mexico City allows only certain plates with certain final digits to circulate. I’m all for that; I just didn’t know about it. The procedure: come down to the police station, get your vehicle impounded and the judge will receive our 5000 peso ($500 US) fine the following day.

I asked if there might not be some other, more expedited way to settle the matter right here and now. I was offered a discount to 2500 pesos. I asked for a moment to consult with Brian and Susanna – our partners in this adventure. Brian is a lawyer – a good one – but even he did need see fit to challenge the Mexican police and legal system. We’d seen bumper stickers saying “I don’t give bribes” and as admirable as that message is – and essential for transforming a rotten system - we saw no way around contributing to police corruption. I accepted the officer’s kind offer of 2500 pesos. He leaned his head far into the car, watching me count out the bills when I expressed that we might not have enough. Remarkably, because Brian and Susanna had the correct digits on their plates, they did not have to contribute to the police officer’s fund.

How to avoid getting stopped again en route to Oaxaca, I asked. They would lead us to the super highway. Follow me, he said. Tyler was convinced they’d lead us yet to an even darker, more abandoned alley for further fundraising and encouraged me to slowly lose the officer in traffic. He found us. An hour later after having signaled to other police not to stop us, with a cheery wave, he bid us adios and sent us south to Oaxaca.

Three dead a day in the Eden Mine - by Daniel

Three dead a day in the Eden Mine
By Daniel

Ever since El Paso, we’ve never descended below 4000 foot elevation. We entered the Eden silver and gold mine in Zacatecas at over 7000 feet.

A very bad joke indeed to name the place the Eden Mine. I guess it was a sort of Eden for the investors (those with the naming rights) who made astronomical profits. But it was hell for the enslaved and indentured workers who died at the rate of approximately 3 per day over more than 3 centuries of production. That adds up to over 300,000 dead at just one of hundreds of mines.

Most of the silver coinage in Spain and so many of the riches of Europe were extracted from mines like Eden here in what was then called New Spain. We took the kids on a spooky tour of the depths, hokey, but illustrative mannequins of indigenous people taking picks to the metallic veins, eight year old children carrying out the dirt up etched logs

Some wealth stayed in Zacatecas, Guanajuato and other mining towns. The Spanish brought their architects with them on their colonizing vessels to replicate the Spanish cities down to the very last arch. The Dominicans and other Catholic orders brought their blueprints from their hometown cathedrals. On a plaza in Guanajuato, you feel as if you’re in a European medieval town.

So it’s sort of a funny feeling, this colonial immersion. I don’t mean to be a sourpuss, I like the idea of sipping cappuchino on a Mexican plaza as if I’m in Sevilla, Spain as much as the next guy. And it sure is cheaper than traveling all the way to Sevilla. But it does make you think twice – when we marvel about Mexican colonial jewels like Oaxaca, we’re marveling about European constructs, slave labor and razed indigenous settlements, in many cases erected directly on top of indigenous cultural treasures. And that’s not to say that Oaxacans aren’t proud of their colonial jewel – of course they are. I’m just fumbling to make sense of it all..

Toll road blues - by Daniel

Toll road blues: No such thing as a $2 toll in Mexico
By Daniel

There are parallel highways in Mexico – the free “libre” and the tollway “cuota”. The pleasure of the untrafficked, high speed travel is slightly diminished by the cost – as much as $11 per toll, or in a good driving day, $60 US.

With kids anxious to not spend extra days in the car, one can’t squawk too much about the tolls. At least the roads are speedy. Part of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, has been the construction of superhighways to move freely traded goods north and south. Truly, it’s remarkable infrastructure.

Who does squawk about these toll roads, and with reason, are Mexican common people who 1) cannot afford the tolls to travel on them; 2) whose lands are taken to build the roads and whose communities suffer the subsequent environmental damage; and 3) who watch the 18 wheelers inundate their markets with imported goods and cause to plummet, the prices of goods, say corn, that they might produce. You may have heard about opposition to the Plan Puebla Panama – a network of dams, roads and factories from Mexico to Panama. Well, that’s local people’s beef. A whole lot of “economic development” of no benefit to local folks who still haven’t been able to get the government to cede them a rural road to get their squash to market.

So strong is the free trade pull that we have to physically restrain ourselves from simply outfitting our houses with cheap goods from Walmart – called Urreape here. Even friends in the Mexican social movement, responding to our queries about where to buy mattresses and kitchenware, point us towards the beast. One of a couple of Walmart stores sits across from the Plaza del Valle. So abundant are the US chain stores there that one new Mexican friend remarked that you can go to America right here in Oaxaca….and without a visa. (We did discover by the way that in Ciudad Juarez, some folks can obtain “shopping visas” and in that way, cross the border to the U.S., drop their money in our stores, and shlep it back to Mexico. You can’t live in the U.S., but you can shop!)

How much longer can Mexican small business hold on in the face of this globalized trade? One can only imagine that 50 years hence, a far smaller number of Mexican enterprises will live in the shadow of a few powerful US chains. I pray that I’m wrong but I fear that even our dear Obama has the interests of those retail giants at heart rather than the hundreds of thousands of displaced Mexican merchants and farmers.

Tarahumara Happy Hour in Copper Canyon - by Daniel

The Tarahumara are famous for being tireless runners through the canyons. They ran to these canyons from the plains to escape Spanish conquistadors. They hold a race while balancing a ball on a cricket-type wood bat.

Tarahumara Happy Hour in Copper Canyon
By Daniel

Our guide and former migrant smuggler, Jorge, generously poured the “margaras” as he liked to call the margaritas. His boss had instructed all lodge staff to imbibe, ensuring an even happier happy hour. But so plied, it was wise to stand back from the canyon rim as it dropped in stages over 5000 feet to the Urique River.

At 36, Ernesto had had multiple lives. He’d grown up in Ciudad Juarez and endured the drug trafficking there. He’d crossed to El Paso to work construction across the west and endured Prescott, Arizona’s draconian no Mexicans welcome municipal laws. He’d nearly perished with a group of smuggled migrants that he misguided in the desert and was rescued by the US immigration service. Down on Mexico’s southern border, he was nabbed by Mexican authorities smuggling Central Americans north. He spent a year in prison.

Margara inspired, Jesus (nicknamed Chuy) sung rancheros and boleros of such misadventures. Brian accompanied him on guitar as he crooned of Chihuahua, lost love and narco tales. Drug traffickers pay up to $100,000 to have songs written about their feats.

Here in Tarahumara land (the dominant indigenous group in Mexico’s north), amapola (heroin input) and marijuana are king. It sure beats trying to grow corn with its plummeting prices. No matter the harvest, the Tarahumara are famous for being tireless long distance runners, up and down these ravines, with or without burros, ferrying loads. In fact for the running competitions, they balance a ball on a stick over mountain paths, while they cover great distances. A running club from San Jose, California, had come to race with them and couldn’t keep up.

Copper Canyon dwarfs the Grand Canyon (perhaps 700 miles to its north and please don't let that observation be misconstrued as anti patriotic and thus ruin my chances of running for office someday) and is home to thousands of Tarahumara who settled here to escape enslavement by the Spanish during the conquest. The terrain is steep and crumbly, cactus abound, goats climb trees for forage and the women harvest sharp grasses with which to weave baskets. The hikes were a glorious mix of nature and culture – spilling waterfalls, frightening drop offs and verdant villages along mountain streams. To the kids, the hikes were death marches, but they’re not writing this blog. From the lip of a waterfall, still dripping from a swim and squinting to see the villages on the far side of the canyon, I followed military macaws across the sky – turquoise, black, and red. I’d hike a long way to see that.

Families Converge in Creel - by Tyler

Families Converge in Creel

We arrived in Creel, Chihuahua (perhaps 10 hours south of the border) a good 45 minutes after our agreed upon meeting time. We had already walked through the town and scoured the train station for any signs of the Moore-Bloom clan – our co-conspirators in this Mexican adventure. Talia and Sabina were jumping out of their skins with excitement at the prospect of being with Ruby and Arlo, Brian and Susanna’s children.

This was the adventure that had been proposed, picked apart and planned over the course of many summertime camping trips in the sierra of California. As childless couples, Brian, Susanna, Daniel and I had all worked together as volunteers in El Salvador after the peace accords and had promised that once we had children, we would return to Central America or Mexico to work and live for a time.

Where were they? Brian is never late. Had they headed further into the canyon? We watched Tarahumara women in colorful skirts wrap their tender babies in slings on their backs. We watched expert basket and shawl weavers’ ply their trades. We bought soda and chips to pass the time. Suddenly, a street kid pops his head through the open window in the car and yells something in my ear. It’s Arlo!! Hugs and hellos and road stories abound. Their morning hours of driving were windy dirt roads and slow travel. Let the next chapter of the road trip begin!

Ciudad Juarez and the Tabor House - by Tyler

Pictures: Mural painted by Betty. When visitors come, they inscribe the name of the dead, for example, a migrant who has lost their life in the desert crossing to the U.S. or one of the thousands of women who have been raped and killed in recent decades. Upper right: Peter and Betty. Lower: Looking north from Juarez to El Paso, TX mountains. Some few Mexicans obtain a "shopping visa" to spend money in U.S., but must return to Mexico.

We had met the remarkable priest-nun team - Carmelite Father, Peter Hinde, and Sister of Mercy, Betty Campbell, in San Antonio, Texas over 15 years ago when participating in the Crispaz orientation to prepare ourselves for post civil war El Salvador. Crispaz (Christians for Peace) was the volunteer service under whose auspices Daniel and I worked in El Salvador from 1992 to 1994). At that time, Betty and Peter welcomed us to Tabor House, their house of hospitality in the tradition of Catholic Worker houses, which provided hospitality to, and accompanied, the surge of immigrants pouring into Texas from Central America and Mexico and educating any who would listen about the atrocities of the US backed war in El Salvador and the history of repression and crushing of social movements in Central America. In their free time, Peter at 75 was running over 5 miles a day and Betty was growing an amazing garden and delivering its bounty to the community. Tabor House was a place for community, prayer, reflection and ultimately, action. Since returning to the states, every New Year we anxiously await their newsletter which documents their bus trips throughout Mexico and Central America visiting communities and getting the pulse on the impact of US foreign policy on the average campesino (small farmer) as well as celebrations and tribulations in their daily lives.

Over 10 years ago Peter and Betty relocated the Tabor House across the river from El Paso, TX to a very poor barrio upon a hill top in Ciudad Juarez. A small adobe house surrounded by tin sheets and wooden fences with plastic tarps is flourished with carefully painted murals of faces of young women, people crossing the desert in the blazing sun, images of martyrs. Long lists of names of the dead accompany each mural. Betty asks visiting delegations (church and university groups) from the states who come to learn about the border to honor those who have died by writing their names on the adobe walls.

I sit in a chair that has been chained to a post (to prevent it getting ripped off – even the local parish priest has had his dog stolen from behind barbed wire) and imagine all the grieving family members who wonder what happened to their beloveds. I can barely contemplate the last hours, let alone the last moments of the deceased’s lives. Within this shrine of discarded tin sheet walls and plastic rooftops a beautiful mandala that invokes the universe, community, and the spirit is painted on the wall behind a stone walking labyrinth. Betty created this stone labyrinth for neighborhood women and has walked this labyrinth with the women who find peace at Tabor House after long hours worked in the maquilas, after dealing with their angry unemployed husbands, and hungry children. Betty explains that if we destroy the world as we know it, somehow the beauty of the universe will survive.

Peter and Betty’s mission of accompaniment with the poor, hospitality and education remains as present and profound as ever as this extraordinary team persists amidst the warring drug cartels, gang violence, and ongoing brutal killings of young women. Of course despite these harsh realities children play happily in the streets, old women bless themselves in front of the Virgin painted on the wall of Tabor House, and people work hard providing for their families. Through leading their own humble lives of community service, Peter and Betty gain the community’s trust and learn about the realities for the poor of Ciudad Juarez, the city that has become the poster child for: the failures of NAFTA, the impact of globalization and ultimately the disintegration of community and families. Peter and Betty bid us farewell and make a plea for a return visit as we hit the road to the city of Chihuahua.

Memphis and Onward - by Tyler

Memphis, Tennessee and onward
By Tyler

We were grateful for my friend Nan’s mother’s offer of hospitality as we passed through Memphis after a long days drive across the state of Tennessee. Finally we have a day to relax and take in the breadth and depth of our nation’s history.

I was not prepared for the power of standing at the site of Dr. Martin Luther King’s last minutes while looking in at his motel room left as it was at the time of his death. The remarkable history, photos, videotapes, audiotapes, personal and deeply political and spiritual stories held and honored in the museum, demand a much longer visit in addition to ongoing reflection and action. Talia and Sabina experienced first hand what it was like to be yelled at to sit in the back of the bus and then threatened with police intervention. An important reminder that it was just over 40 years ago that James Meredith had to escorted by the National Guard to attend the University of Mississippi as the first black student.

In the ninety plus degree heat we set off for Clarksville, Mississippi and the Blues Museum where I laid my eyes on Lucille, B.B. Kings guitar and watched lengthy footage of Muddy Waters life. After driving through mile upon mile of cotton fields we camped outside of Natchez, Mississippi, the heart of the antebellum south. We learned the following day at the African American Cultural Museum that there is a movement afoot to rename the Natchez State Park to honor the gifted author Richard Wright as he was born on that land, son of a sharecropper. The brutal history of slavery and the trail of tears were never far from our car conversations and consciousness on those southern roads.

Talia, Sabina and Daniel were the brave ones to swim in a Louisiana bayou as we made our way west to Texas while listening to Lucinda Williams sing about “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”. Later that day we watched a really ugly alligator skulk about in the muck before our last leg to Houston. I was really glad the gator was behind a fence and we were on what appeared to be an “alligator blind”. Houston and Daniel’s generous cousins provided us with a sky-high view of the city, an amazing bird’s nest and place to regroup - an extra day to prepare ourselves for Schlitterbaum understood, in those parts, to be the biggest waterpark the world has seen (nothing’s small in Texas). The circular tidal wave was body bumpercar heaven and like an addiction for Talia and Sabina. That eve we pushed off from the parking lot as the kids reported it was the best day yet of the road trip.

Emergency CPR…on a Yorkshire Terrier - by Daniel

News flash – Daniel does emergency CPR…on a Yorkshire Terrier
By Daniel

You know that green bikini Speedo, the one I wear that makes my family embarrassed and ought to make me feel the same? That’s what I was wearing when I gave mouth to mouth resuscitation to the Yorky.

It was at the Hungry Mother State Park, Marion VA, the girls and I were playing a friendly round of snapping turtles. The biggest, scariest snapping turtle being our over affectionate chocolate Labrador, Stella, dog paddling too close with razor claws.

A fat fisherman and his teenage boy paddled by, sitting on beach chairs in a flat rowboat - looked a bit rickety to me. Stella yapped, she smelled the fisherman’s dogs before we saw them. The boy got his line snagged, rod bent, he was reeling and yanking. I was doing my damndest to chat up the fisherman but he didn’t seem to be paying mind to my questions and frankly he looked a little agitated. Next moment, he leaned out over the bow and extracted a limp Yorky, raising it high by its scruff like a trophy fish. The Yorky had jumped into the water to greet Stella; the fisherman’s boat mistakenly steamed over him.

The doggie was a dripping rag doll and the fisherman breathed heavy. “What am I gonna do? Don’t die, Angel, don’t die.” He looked at me, kind of desperate, though he didn’t seem the expressive sort. Water was still dripping off my green bikini when he looked at me, “You know anything about what to do?”

Tyler yelled from the bank, “do CPR”. I grabbed the boat gunnel and pulled it to shore. The fisherman passed me the Yorky. Its eyes were bugged out, glassy – eyelids wouldn’t shut and it wasn’t breathing. It looked like Sabina and Talia had just drowned one of their stuffed animals.

I wrapped my mouth around its snout. “We just recently lost one,” the fishermen panted. “We were driving to the vet, he peed in my lap and he died.” I exhaled into its mouth. I did my best to cover it’s tiny nostrils with my index finger. I blew one, two, maybe five breaths into Yorky’s mouth. Tyler offered, “massage its heart”. I couldn’t find it. I blew some more.

I was thinking of Sabina. This trip had been hard on her, leaving her friends and hating the car and hating her parents for this whole damned adventure. She loves animals more than… well, I’m not going to say it. If this dog dies, I thought, we’re going to have one traumatized girl on our hands. We might even have to turn back. I gave the Yorky everything I had.

The dog’s eyelids closed, real slow. His snout opened, mouthing doggy words. “His name is Angel, he sleeps with my wife, she loves him.” The fisherman’s boy was still trying to unsnag the line. He hadn’t said a word.

“Thank the Lord,” the fisherman said.

I did some last CPR and then Sabina wrapped the dog in our towel; it trembled and then shook violently. We offered the fisherman the towel. He didn’t want to put us out. We insisted.

In the boat was a slatted crate of live bait - crickets. The fisherman wound in his lines and dismantled his rods. The wind picked up, the sky darkened. It thundered. “I can take you back to your car,” I said. “I’m awful grateful for what you done.” Still shocked and stupid, I said, “I never done that before.” “I’m glad you did,” he said and I shook his hand.

Down the road, Talia and Sabina got Moose Tracks and Raspberry ice cream at a soda shop. If we’d had more time, we would’ve played mini golf and taken batting practice. It started to rain and we made for Memphis. I’ll never wash my mouth again.

On the ferry - by Talia

There was a guy who came to our table and said there’s blue water in the toilet. Also, he told us to protect him from his friend. Sabina was talking in a Scottish accent. I thought it was really funny. On the beginning of the ferry, I thought we were going to crash with a iceburg (but we didn’t).

Teary Goodbye from Boston - by Daniel

Good-bye party hosted by
Nora, Tricia and Chuck

Our friend Chuck discovered that the swimming fins (a necessity for a road trip!) fit nicely under the back seat and that the far back seats folded into the wheel well. With the gained space, we stuffed everything into our minivan…and then some more. We’d already bickered about what to take and not take. The bickering and the

cleaning kept the feelings about leaving at bay. When we’d finally slammed the rear gate against loose odds and ends, the leaving was real. Our wonderful Hampstead Road friends who’d been scrubbing our fridge in a last dash to leave, hooted goodbyes. By the time we looped around our hill to head out, all four of us were crying. Stella panted.

As we made the first turn heading south, we felt the joy of the connections and the sadness of a widening distance. The girls’ sadness didn’t take but a moment to turn into anger. “I hate you. Why are you making us go to Mexico? What a dumb idea.” When we hit nasty traffic on 95, Sabina begged, “we’re going to miss the ferry anyway. Just let me have one more night with my friends. One more night. I beg of you.” I just about turned back. I hated to break her heart. By the time we hit the giant fly on top of the exterminator business just outside of Providence – one of the kids’ favorite landmarks - their sobs had muffled and they both were asleep, emotionally and physically exhausted. Tyler and I held hands. We made the ferry but we left an amazing community behind.

Leaving Boston by Talia

Leaving Boston

When we were leaving boston they surprised us when we were leaving hampstead rd. after that the whole family started crying. We where so sad to leave are friends. That is writing!!!