It was a beautiful 10-year run. And after many ups and downs the past several weeks as we’ve continued to wrap our lives here, we don’t leave sad but grateful for all we’ve been able to do and see, for all the friends we’ve made and those we’ve crossed paths with. When we return to Mexico, it will be because it’s the next step forward rather than a step back.
Catching the ETN bound for Mexico City Airport with all our worldly possessions. Next stop: Prague.
It’s 4:30a.m. Early, but I can’t sleep. Nostalgia washes over me in waves. It ebbs and flows, where sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in it, and sometimes its distant and remote so I can face it with scorn.
A year ago, E had just graduated. He was packing to leave for Oregon for the summer.
Now, he’s an ocean and a continent away, living on his own in Prague. So much has happened in such a short time. But that will be the way for the rest of our lives, I think.
I’m so very proud of what he’s been able to do; how well he’s handled himself and with such maturity and aplomb. He’ll do well with the challenges ahead of him.
It’s so quiet now. No Olivia the dog in the morning, no snoring away or the little yelps as she dreams of runs through the campo. Not even the crow of a distant rooster, no brakes of the semi trucks coming down the highway in the distance, or the lowing of the train. (I haven’t even noticed the train since we’ve been back…I wonder where it went?) Now, just the hum of the refrigerator, the random creak and pop as the house settles and adjusts.
It’s been very wet this June. And gray and cool. We don’t even have the windows open and i wear sweat pants and a fleece.
I’ve really become aware of the affect of the cool, gray weather on my mood and my waning desire to write. My most creative and abundant journals, I think, are from when it is very warm, and I have to get up early in the morning to escape the midday heat. I guess it just takes the groggy morning stillness.
Today is Wednesday and in one week, we will be on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean en route to Prague.
(this laptop keyboard is so loud! too loud! I don’t want to wake Pati!)
Now as we get closer to visiting, most of what I look forward to is just being back together with our son. Reconnecting with him. Building new memories. Hearing first-hand what he’s been doing and seeing. Maybe having him show us around his new home. Getting to cook our favorite meals together (a recent favorite, vegan lentil bolognese). Getting to laugh and be silly and hug and be silly and laugh while we cook together. And go out to dinner and feed our young starving college student (maybe this excellent Indian spot near his school or this pretty tasty for central Europe Mexican restaurant (he says he really misses Mexican food…how could he not?)).
And the city itself? Yes, I look forward to visiting. But I’m less excited than I would have been in the past (I should DIG into this). Maybe because it hasn’t been that long since we’ve been there—only three months. Maybe because it is such an arduous effort to get there and the jet lag that comes with it. All I want to do is teleport there and be done. Airports and airplanes just suck.
But I do look forward to experiencing the city in a new season. Being able to be out and about without freezing our butts off. Lingering in the outdoors. Savoring the outdoors. Finding a bench and sitting and watching the world go by. Strolling.
11:30a.m. and I’m out. Having a quick coffee at Mama Mia. Doing a little work. Feeling very nostalgic with less than a week in San Miguel. It is very surreal that feeling, knowing we may never be back.
Giving everything up. Again. Moving on, but still here, knowing how much life we’ve lived in San Miguel.
Man, everything I pass, everything I touch, everything I smell or taste or see—it’s visceral how much San Miguel is a part of me, of us. From the big bells that ring at 11:30, 11:45, and noon for midday mass. The small bells that chime the quarter hour from El Reloj in the jardin. The sound of thunder in June from the east as the clouds gather and the wind picks up and I’d better head home before the rain begins to fall.
Even the feel underfoot of the polished tan and salmon volcanic tuff of the sidewalk where you have step carefully if it’s wet or you just might slip. Or the rough plaster and concrete and brick and adobe walls as I drag my fingers along. And when I walk down Aldama or Jesus or Sollano, I feel like I’m walking on the backs of an army of a million cobblestone turtles lined up in the street.
And of course, I can’t help but continually doubt myself and ask if we’ve made the right decision.
But I know we need to go. Pati and I definitely need to go, but I wonder if we’ve made the right decision for E. We’ll always wonder that, I guess, and maybe only time will tell.
Wrote a postcard. Czechia bound for 13 pesos and 50 centavos.
It’s a saxophone and no rain kind of almost-sunny-but-not-quite morning listening to “Tell Him I Said Hello” by Nicole Glover while the aroma of coffee mingled with old wood wafts through the cafe and the gentle sound of sing-song Spanish bounces in the background air.
Tuesday, 03 June 2025. San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Rain overnight. I laid awake in the dark at 3am listening to the storm. Fresh air wafted down from the window with the occasional splash of water. Like an embrace, it left me comforted.
This morning, I had to go up to El Charco to meet and do some training with one of our new guides. I figured the morning was cool, it would be a nice morning to walk. I forgot when the rains arrive, it may be cooler, but the humidity amps up. Which I know, because all the sweat that normally evaporates, now doesn’t. I was drenched.
Regardless, too busy of a day and evening to write much, so I’m just going to share some of the photos from my walk up the hill this morning.
Below are some shots of Santo Domingo, the way up to the Arcos de San Miguel and Atascadero neighborhoods.
Below are the springs that still produce at least periodic water. Even in the dry season, there is a little water coming from these. Most of San Miguel’s springs have long since dried up.
The unfortunate gateway to the unfortunate, exploitive abomination that is the Capilla de Piedra development. Can’t miss it from most parts of centro.
Up, up, and into Arcos de Atascadero.
And on into Atascadero…
San Miguel’s croquet club, located on the old Camino Real. The old royal silver road continued down into centro and eventually turns into Calle Mesones, which was the “street of the inns”.
Mezquite pods ripening from green to brown. When ripe, they’ll be sweet and edible. A local term is dulce de campesino.
And how do you tell a female pirul tree? By the abundant red berries:
Isn’t the bark on the Eucalyptus like an abstract work of art?
More rainy season photos in the late afternoon:
Sunday 1 June 2025
Woke up to a rainy Sunday morning with gunmetal gray clouds draping the horizon.
As we’ve done almost every Sunday morning for the past several years, Pati and I walk out for coffee or breakfast before doing our weekly grocery shopping. This morning, we ended up at Panio on Salida a Celaya, where they serve an excellent shakshuka.
In the afternoon, to stretch my legs and my spirit, I headed toward the nearby Guadiana neighborhood and beyond.
Back in the 1500s and 1600s, San Miguel el Grande was a layover point on the Royal Silver Road (el camino real de tierra adentro). Merchants and craftspeople set up shop in San Miguel, along with the industries supporting them. Many settlers were from the sheep herding regions of Spain and brought their knowledge with them. San Miguel developed a well-known textile industry to process the wool. The local serapes became known throughout the world.
In the 1700s, wealthy landowners began to settle in San Miguel. Many of the mansions in Centro date to this colonial era. With gentrification during this time, others were pushed out to surrounding neighborhoods like Ojo de Agua, Valle de Maize, Mexiquito, and Guadiana, among others. The Guadiana neighborhood of that period developed around the local church, shown below. The church remains an integral part of the neighborhood and plays a central role in the annual spring rituals to the Santa Cruz and the bringing of the summer rains.
One of the current jewels of the neighborhood is the small but charming Guadiana park:
A mix of scenes below, with the narrow sidewalks, occasional tree-lined streets, and blend of the older single-story working-class homes alongside contemporary gentrified multistory homes:
I like the images below where you can see an older but well-maintained tiny home next to the lavanderia and garage, all adjacent to the converted boutique hotel:
And the evening skies with sporadic rain surrounding us:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Meandering Family: Beyond the Nest 