FamilyTravel | Meandering Family: Beyond the Nest

Friday, 30 May 2025

Almost every Friday morning, since sometime around 2018 (at best guess), Pati and I go out for breakfast at a local cafe. Pati has Fridays off from work, so we take advantage of it as a date before the more crowded weekends.

Today, we went to one of our favorites, Cien 24, on lower Umaran. We love the atmosphere, the food is rich and tasty, and the prices reasonable. An under-discovered gem, in our opinion.

Menu at Cien 24. I can recommend most everything, and the jugo verde is well worth it.

We often follow up with a coffee at Mama Mia up on Hernandez Macias. We love the vibe in the coffee shop at the front of the restaurant. It’s one of the few cafes in San Miguel (or the world, frankly) that still has perfect hanging about music.

Above: Some of the decor at Mama Mia on Calle Hernandez Macias. *Hechicera* (meaning sorcerer, witch, or wizard), btw, is Mama Mia’s own craft-brewed brand. They have a restaurant and brewery out near Atotonilco, which is worth a visit.

Below is the street sign for Hernandez Macias. Interestingly, it was renamed (I don’t know when) Calle de Locutorios, which means Street of the Call Box. I had once heard stories of how there used to be one phone in town that people would arrange to use. I would love to find where it was located…

The portrait below is the only photo I’ve found of Hernandez Macias, San Miguel’s “mayor” (jefe politica) at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The photo is located in Parque Juarez, which he was instrumental in converting into the park space that it is today.

Part of our tidying up paperwork has been collecting extra copies of Ethan’s high school diploma. We want to have a couple extra on hand since he often needs them for various visas and university paperwork.

Looking north along Calle Hidalgo through the *portal de la casa de la Canal*.

Last week, I taxied up to the Instituto Sanmiguelense to pick up a couple of signed, stamped, and official diplomas. Now, they have to be apostilled, which is not easy in Guanajuato (I can’t speak to other Mexican states).

Here, I take them to a local notario. I work with Sr. Juan Zavala at Notaria 12 on San Francisco. He makes an appointment and takes the documents over to the capital, Guanajuato, about an hour’s drive west of us, where the documents are apostilled. He then returns them to me about 10 days later, depending on when he can schedule an appointment. But at least we’ll have them.

Every time I see someone with the name Zavala in San Miguel, I think of this statue of Jose Manuel Zavala Zavala. If you talk to anyone around my age or older who grew up here, they’ll know him. He was THE local radio personality.

Statue of Jose Manuel Zavala Zavala, local radio legend, across from the Antigua casa del Conde de Loja on Calle Sollano.

When we first moved to San Miguel, it was almost impossible to figure out when anything was happening. It felt like there was no way to learn about events. We finally asked locals, who said you learn everything on the radio, XHSQ, 103.3FM, a tradition that Sr Zavala Zavala was instrumental in. These days, it is a little easier to learn of things…but not much, and the radio is still the best way to know what’s happening. Or the radio station’s website.

As Ethan was in middle school and prepa, we commuted via car to and from school. During my weeks to drive (we traded weeks with another parent), I would often listen to the station to practice my Spanish comprehension and try to learn what was going on in town.

And if you know San Miguel, we have a (semi)ring road, usually referred to as the “libramiento” (or the freeway). The highway’s official name is Libramiento Jose Zavala Zavala, named in his honor. If you watch local Facebook news feeds (another good way to learn the scoop on local news), you’ll often see the road referred to as PPKBZON, Sr Zavala’s radio call sign.

Entrance to the Antigua Casa del Conde de Loja. You can see the radio tower above it, and the radio station is located in the courtyard to the right.

The broadcast booth, with programming in progress.

Señor Zavala, back in the day in his broadcast booth.

Scenes from a walk

Just 35 days until we leave San Miguel.

So much life. So much has happened.

Our son graduated prepa (high school) from the Instituto Sanmiguelense IB program, in Spanish, about a year ago. He spent a summer on his own, traveling in Oregon, visiting friends and family and working…and outrunning wildfires…all while taking care of university visa paperwork. We all traveled together through Europe for six months (futures posts on Turkey, Albania, Poland, and Czechia). And he is now well settled into Prague City University, finishing up his first semester.

Pati and I are back in Mexico wrapping up our lives here, tying up loose ends, taking care of various paperwork, and transitioning our rental home to our friends who will take over our lease.

All transitions are about letting go of the past and moving toward the next phase of whatever lies ahead. The bigger the transition, often the greater the sense of loss—and grief—that accompanies the change.

Pati and I processed a lot of our grief last summer—an overwhelming time, indeed. We also celebrated. Still, being back in San Miguel as empty nesters without our son is difficult. So many reminders everywhere of where he was and things we’ve done together.

But we video call about every week or so to catch up and stay in touch. He says he misses the people and the culture of Mexico. And we understand that. But he is being challenged with his new life and studies and is more than rising to the occasion. He has a small group of friends, most of whom we’ve met, who he seems to be simpatico with. Overall, he seems to be thriving in his new circumstances, so all a parent could hope for.

Meanwhile, it seems like a really good time to try to revive this blog, at least a little. I’m setting an ambitious goal of 30 posts, however small, over the next 30 days to try and document a little of this transition time, while sharing some of the tidbits of life and landscape in and around our home of the last ten years as I go on my (semi)daily walks.