Time to remember

Another benefit of the voluntary confinement to which the covid_19 forces me is that now I have enough time to remember what I had forgotten, perhaps not forgotten but relegated. When my life was full of work, meetings with friends, attention to my family and the daily routines of an executive, the past was relatively close because for me it was defined, in those days, by events that occurred two or three months before. Something that had happened a year earlier was not relevant to my present. Youth, adolescence, childhood, who had time to think about them?

But now, yes. I have plenty of time, because the hours of the day slide smoothly bye, perhaps filled with movies seen on television, books read, chats on WhatsApp and food prepared by me and eaten in front of the television, by myself.

The memories of some years ago consist of vacations with the family, partying spree with friends, unpleasant work meetings, trips, constant trips, taken for reasons of work, and the occasional flirtation or temporary love affair.

But today, in the solitude of my apartment, with the music of yesteryear playing loudly on the bluetooth speaker that my son gave me, memories begin to spring up that had been relegated to oblivion.

The first ones were evoked by a list of recordings on YouTube, all of them by famous guitar trios of the fifties and sixties, with some that were recorded as far back as the forties. The songs that my iPhone played evoked a program that was popular with the youth of the 1950s in Nuevo Laredo, my hometown. That program was broadcast on a Nuevo Laredo radio station late at night and was titled "Serenata en tu Ventana." (A serenade at your window) Young men called the radio station and dedicated a "serenade", which consisted of three songs chosen by the caller. The host of the program gave the name of the girl to whom the young man was dedicating the serenade. The program was very popular and the girls of the town listened to the program in the hope that some young man would dedicate a serenade to them.

I was only about eight or ten years old but I found out about this because my older sister, who at that time was about fourteen or fifteen years old, listened to the program every night. She would bring the radio close to her bed, modulate the sound as low as possible so that my mother wouldn't scold her and urge her to go to sleep. My sister whispered the details and the names of the lucky girls to whom a serenade had been dedicated, to a cousin who visited us every summer.

The nights, in those times, were so peaceful and with so little traffic noise that you could hear the bells of the clock in the square that was several blocks from our house. Therefore, I could easily hear the whispers of my sister and my cousin. The two girls were attentive to the program until twelve o'clock at night, when it ended and the radio station stopped broadcasting. Curiously, this station did not end its broadcast day with the national anthem, as many stations did at the time, but with a jaunty version of a Spanish song whose title I can no longer remember.

Listening to these serenades, I became familiar with those romantic songs, so much so that I can remember lots of them verbatim.

One of the songs that evokes specific memories of my childhood is "La Enramada" (the climbing vine) performed by Los Tres Ases. When I was six years old, I went to school at Colegio América, a religious school for girls but attended by boys while in kindergarten and first grade. By the second year of primary school we would be sent to Colegio México, also religious, with Marist Brothers as teachers.

Colegio América was a short distance from our home. Therefore, Elba, an assistant to my uncle the doctor, came for me and my sister every midday to take us home at lunchtime. On the way from school, we passed a house that had most of its facade covered by a climbing vine. Invariably, Elba began to sing "Ya la enramada se secó, el cielo el agua le negó..."(The vine has dried up, the sky has denied it water) ..." My sister and I smiled when we heard that large brown-skinned woman, with generous breasts, and white teeth that contrasted strongly with her almost black complexion, to be so moved by who knows what memories that the song conjured for her.

Once we were past the house with the vine, we crossed the Plaza México, which was torture for me because the walkways of the plaza were covered in red and purple berries, which were a temptation but that Elba prohibited me from picking up and eating because according to her they would infest my stomach with worms.

Once Plaza México had been cleared, there were only two blocks from Guerrero Avenue, the main street of the town, to walk in order to get home. These two blocks were full of businesses: a pharmacy, a jewelry store, a beauty salon, Aunt Pepa's haberdashery and other stores and businesses, among which was the Sanchez Funeral Home, the main funeral home of the town in those times.

Given that these businesses were almost our neighbors, and that we passed in front of them every day, we knew, and therefore we greeted, the owners and workers of the various businesses:

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Florinda (the owner of the pharmacy)

"Good afternoon, children," she would reply, "say hello to your mother for me."

"Good afternoon, María Victoria (we greeted the gay guy, owner of the beauty salon, who liked to dress like that renowned film star and singer.)

"Hello, children," answered María Victoria.

"Good afternoon, Aunt Pepa" (we greeted the owner of the haberdashery and the aunt of the Sanchez boys, our childhood playmates: Aunt Pepa did not stop knitting while answering our greeting.)

"Good afternoon kids.

"Good afternoon, Don Carlos" (we greeted the oldest of the Sanchez brothers, owners of the funeral home that bore their name.

"Good afternoon, children. Come tonight because I am going to show cartoons for you (Don Carlos had a 16-millimeter film projector. When funeral activities stopped at night, from time to time, Don Carlos would hang a white sheet on the wall of the garage of the business, and on this he'd project for us Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse cartoons.)

Once the door of memories opens, they begin to fall, one on top of the other, like objects stacked in a long-sealed closet. Then sunny summer afternoons come to the eye of the mind in which I, as a little boy, would be running from shadow to shadow (because the pavement of the sidewalks was so hot that it burned bare feet), when I was sent to buy the tortillas, freshly made, for lunchtime. Or the image of the restaurant where they would take us on warm nights to have a "refreshment" (fruit smoothies with ice that were once called trolleybuses). Then there would come to mind, the image of my mother and my grandmother sitting in rocking chairs, after dinner, on the sidewalk in front of the house, talking and commenting on the people passing by. I remembered that here was so little vehicular traffic at night that we children rode bicycles on Avenida Guerrero, the main street of the town, without fear of being run over.

Those were the days! When Nuevo Laredo was a peaceful, innocent town, in which all the "well to do" families knew each other and the municipal president was a doctor much loved by the townspeople. The days when there were empty lots on the main street of the town that we boys took over to play baseball on summer afternoons.

That town has disappeared. Time has moved it to another place, to another dimension where the boys can ride their bikes at night without fear and the ladies talk softly on their rocking chairs on the sidewalks of the town where I was born.

The First Victim of a War

They say that the first casualty of war is the truth. Well, I'd say that the first casualty of isolation is personal hygiene.

Friends report that when they went to COSTCO here in Mexico City, they found that in the clothing section the only things on sale were pijamas and sweat pants. I am not surprised because I soon found that if I didn't have a video conference programed for the present day I found no reason, much less motivation, to abandon my pijamas. In fact, I have started to routinely wear the same set of pijamas for a week and changing them on Saturday mornings. Three sets of pijamas are available for the routine but it is obvious that soon they will need substitutes because, like good soldiers, fatigue and combat wounds have started to take their toll.

Another victim of my isolation is the schedule of my meals, as formerly imposed by social and professional contact. I've always had my breakfast at eight o eight-thirty in the morning, because I've always started to work, either at the office or at home, at nine. Lunch was between one and one thirty in the afternoon, and dinner at eight or eight thirty at night once I got home. I'm afraid that said routine fell mortaly wounded just seven days after having been in self-imposed quarantine.

Now I find that I'm eating cereal and having my morning tea at eleven in the morning once I've seen the morning news while in bed. I take a lunch break at three or four in the afternoon, and dinner is delayed until nine or ten at night while watching the opera transmitted by the New York Met. Oh! The consequences of that schedule is heartburn that forces me to read until two or three in the morning. But as they say that always something good is a consequence  of something bad, this has allowed me to read several books from the pile that was gathering dust on my bedside table. Once I've cleared that pile, I will start on the many half-read books lollygagging on my Kindle.

And as in any other war, the number of victims and casualties continues to rise. Exercise fell like many other heroes have fallen: without making a sound. It used to perform its duty faithfully, if minimally, before in the afternoons when I went for a walk in the neighborhood (not without a stop at the great bakery on the corner of Juan de la Barrera and Pachuca streets). Now I have an excuse to stop my walks altogether, since I am not supposed to leave my apartment. I do have a patio, which is about six meters by five meters. But walking around and around in it depresses me more than it helps me because I feel like those prisoners in a James Cagney movie who were taken out to do an hour of walking around in the "exercise yard."

To do any meaningful exercise in my patio, I would have to be dragged out of my chair like Cagney was dragged into solitary confinement after the riot he caused in "White Heat" when he was told that his mother had died:

I fear for the other brave soldiers in this battle which I am forced to wage in confinement. I am talking about the daily bath and washing dirty dishes and clothing. These two activities, odious enough during the best of times, require all my will in order to carry them out in these the worst of times.

My children, when I visit their homes, do not allow me to wash any dishes. This is not of consideration for their poor, tired dad, no. Its because they consider me the worst dish washer in the world. My youngest says that if I ever needed to work as a dish washer, even if it were in a street corner taqueria or neighborhood restaurant, I would probably be fired after just one day on the job.

I tried an innovation: filling the sink with water and soap so that by soaking the dishes they would wash themselves. The result was a horrible soup of food, soap, water, and particles of something that seemed like life that came from another planet. The result of this experiment was a pile of greasy, dirty, smelly dishes, far from the clean shiny plates I had envisioned.

Oh, well. Even the toughest guys have to submit themselves to this unavoidable task.

Robert Mitchum, the "bad boy" of the 40s y 50s movies, washing dishes.

I had to admit that I would have to revert to the "tried but true method" of using soap and a sponge to scrub the things if I wanted them clean.

Washing clothes is easier because I have help from a mechanical friend: the washing machine. But, here I face another problem, a physical problem. Better said, I have to exert myself physically much more because said washing machine is on the rooftop terrace of our building. I live on the street level apartment; the washing machine is six flights of stairs up! Therefore, I have to take the dirty clothes up, put them in the washer, wait while it fills with water, go downstairs to wait for it to do its magic, go up to hang the clothes up to dry, go down to wait for the sun to do its magic, go upstairs to take down the dry clothing. Uff, by the time I'm done, I am plum wore out.

Nevertheless, the visit to the rooftop does offer a break from the confinement and while I wait for the machine to fill up with water, I can look down at our street, which is usually empty of people. I can also look at other rooftops, many of which have been converted to indispensable spaces for families and individuals, because I can see how they are being used for social and family gatherings. Mexico City has always been a "rooftop city." Because of overcrowding few people can afford space for a garden, as one can see when you land at the International airport. It feels like the plane is going to land on someone's rooftop.

Now the Corona Virus is forcing people to use their rooftop for another purpose: vegetable gardens. I am seriously thinking for starting a garden in my patio and/or the rooftop. I've had vegetable gardens before. In France, we used to rent garden space from a retired man. For 30 euros a month to cover water usage, he gave us a large piece of his backyard to plant in. All the things we planted gave us something to eat: tomatoes, squash, potatoes, radishes, onions, cucumbers, melons, and several kinds of herbs. In fact, we grew more then we could eat so we gave a lot to our neighbors and then preserved a lot for the winter.

But, boy is it a lot of work! And then there was the continuous fight against pests. Birds loved our cherry tomatoes, especially the red ones. Rabbits chewed our squash, potatoes, carrots, and the like. You would be surprised at how many rabbits there are in an urban environment. I felt like Elmer Fudd fighting off dozens of Bugs Bunnies. The worst were the rats. They seemed to just nibble at things to make them inedible to humans. I don't know how many pests exist in rooftops. We'll see. Well, that is, if I gather up enough strength to start a "victory garden."

Tomorrow: Fighting boredom.