WHERE IS HOME?

by
JOHN SCHERBER

WHERE IS HOME?

         Where is home?  I know it’s out there somewhere.

         Here in San Miguel I recently attended a talk by Richard Blanco, the poet who read at President Obama’s second inaugural, and again for the recent reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana. As the openly gay son of Cuban parents, born in Spain and raised in Miami, he has sufficient reason to be asking this question too, perhaps more than most of us. It is no surprise that he feels a relaxed and supportive welcome in this town that shelters eight or ten thousand expats, also severed to some degree from their origins as a matter of choice.

         Blanco has resolved his search in a series of brilliant poems and in a book on his childhood in South Beach. While his answers are uniquely his own, his questions will stimulate another series from expats here and elsewhere. Let me offer a few of my own answers:

         Home may be where the heart is, but it’s also where the snow isn’t. I’m writing this in the middle of September, a time, when back in Minnesota, we were busy raking leaves. We were checking the insulation in the attic. We were topping off the antifreeze in the car and making a note to use a more lightweight variety of oil at the next change. In spending 58 years there I always knew I had given over too much of my life to the frigid burden of snow boots and down jackets, but in the long demanding grip of jobs, family ties, and friendships, it was hard to find a method of release. Living in México now, I have seen how escape is accomplished by the pros––with tunnels and bribery, a means we never thought of up north.

         Home is where you can stop being yourself, that is, the self you thought you needed to be, the one you had to be to keep your career track open, to keep your kids in check and on the way to being good citizens of a country you were no longer sure you wanted to live in yourself.

         México has a more relaxed system of identity that does not question your ability, even your right to be somewhat different from the photo on your driver’s license––if you even have one. It does not ask what you formerly did for a living. If it asks anything at all, it’s what you are doing today. It does not demand to see your credentials. You are, after all, alive and here even without them. Nothing more is required.

         Home is not needing to be trendy. Even if you weren’t aware of needing to feel trendy before, you will feel even less so here. Being cutting edge is only understood in reference to a machete, or to the man who makes the rounds of the neighborhoods on his bicycle, blowing a harsh whistle, ready to grind your expensive German cutlery to a fine and rapidly vanishing edge for ten pesos. (today, sixty cents U.S.) After six visits you will be carving your roast with a very pricy set of icepicks.

         Home is where not everything works. I wonder if this is any different? It certainly differs in what doesn’t work and what does. It works, for example, to pay five dollars a month here for water that we can’t drink, when before in Edina, Minnesota, we paid ninety-nine dollars a month for water we also couldn’t drink (for different reasons––it tasted vile), but which came with a nice bi-monthly color brochure that told us how good it was. We used to keep that piece of propaganda on top of the five-gallon water bottle in our kitchen dispenser. At least we felt better about it. Here in México we don’t feel as good when things don’t work, but we know we’re getting a better deal on failure. That’s worth something.

         Here the power goes out just long enough to require us to reset all the clocks. Everything you buy now has a clock on it that needs to be reset. There is no reason for this. In Minnesota we lived in a wooded neighborhood (Indian Hills) where the power lines had naïvely been run through the trees. Every time a high wind came through the lines went down as dead branches fell on them. One weekend in May we had houseguests for three days and our power was out the entire time. I did a run to Starbucks every morning, cursing.

         In the eighties there was a movie I never saw called Stop Making Sense, featuring The Talking Heads. The irreverent perspective of its title has stayed with me. Since the turnout didn’t demand a sequel, I believe the entire crew drifted down here and infiltrated the government after shooting ended, where they remain firmly in control today. Their fine hand can also be observed in all the utility companies.

         These are superficial signs of home. Richard Blanco was talking more deeply about identity and how it plugs into our sense of place and family. After eight years as a willing exile I think home is a portable unit, self-contained, and in this country, run by solar energy. We love the sun. We need the sun, because central heating rarely penetrates this far south.

         Home is a shell that protects us from inclement weather, but more importantly, it harbors our ambitions, supports our dreams, and nurses our hopes as creative people living atypical lives among kindly strangers. It travels well, because as compact as it is, it still provides sufficient room for all of our essentials, even if we prefer to get our jeans in Laredo.

         At the heart of this durable shell is our identity, which is the essence of home. It is not the title we have, or what we own, or the image we wish to project; but what we do every day of our lives. That defines us as the individuals we are. And we are all individuals before we are Americans, women or men, adults or children, Catholics or Moslems, Trumpians or Hillarians.

         Home is where we are, not what we left behind.

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AN EXPATRIATE'S TALE

By

JOHN SCHERBER

AN EXPATRIATE’S TALE

         Earlier this year, a woman said to me at a cocktail party, “So you hate the United States?”

“What?” I’m sure my eyebrows leaped nearly to my hairline with surprise. I wondered whether she’d been lying in wait for me.

          “You call yourself an expatriate. You even admit it right here.” Her left hand raised my own book as an indictment, and her extended right forefinger stopped an inch from my sternum, already scarred from previous encounters of this kind. You never know what to expect at a book event. I knew she owned a number of my mysteries, set mostly in México, where I live, because I’d autographed three of them for her at a book signing earlier. She’d also picked up my nonfiction book on the life-changing experience of many Americans and Canadians who also live in San Miguel de Allende.

         “I am an expatriate,” I said, calmly, trying to smile.

         “See! I read that on the cover.”

         “But being an expatriate has nothing to do with a lack of patriotism, it merely means a person who lives in a country he wasn’t born in. You must be thinking of ex-patriot; someone who’s turned against his country. It’s a different spelling, like here and hear. If you’d been born in Minnesota, where would you choose to live?”

         “I think I would’ve declined to be born in Minnesota. My family’s all here.” As if making a point I couldn’t refute, she walked away. I didn’t know whether she’d gotten my message or not, but I still appreciated her as a reader. They come with all different points of view.

         In that book in her left hand, which I’d titled San Miguel de Allende: A Place in the Heart, I investigated what it meant for 32 different people to leave home, often at an age well past youth. To leave the familiar behind and encounter––usually with some discomfort––a new country and a new set of friends, a new way of life. Usually the reasons are about experiencing a new culture and a different kind of weather, as they were for me. And they’re always about reinventing yourself against a background that in México I think of as simpático. It welcomes people in a mood for a lifestyle change.

         But how does it work, really? What is the detail? On the Internet you can easily see the colonial architecture, which reminds you of Europe. After all, San Miguel was founded in 1542, a date when the founding of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts was still 78 years away. It’s old in its bones. You already know in your joints that winters are starting to tell you in unpleasant detail what it means to continue in the climate where you live now. You know that real Méxican food is great, because you subscribe to Bon Appetite magazine, and you also know you can’t get the real thing in the States without a lot of research. It doesn’t hurt that México is also top heavy with charm and character, and the people are warm and inviting.

         But you can’t get by on great food alone; you need Internet, golf, a top-notch dentist, good health care, a trained mechanic to maintain your car, and a sense of community and security––a challenging word, since you’ve read about the drug wars. You know what all the commentators are saying. And even though you realize that it’s all because they are competing for your drug dollar, you don’t use drugs other than Lipitor and Viagra, so it’s definitely not reassuring. Amen.

         It turns out that it’s not about Lipitor. It’s about heroin and cocaine. If that’s your reason to come to México, stop reading right here and stay in San Francisco or Austin. But if you have other reasons to check out this lifestyle, you will do so in a greater degree of safety than you could in the States, contrary to what the media there would have you believe.

         What is the solution to this ugly dilemma? Well, it turns out that staying safe requires nothing different than the method you already use––and it’s been working for you quite well all your life. It’s called savvy. You know the trouble spots in the United States or Canada. That’s easy, and you respond by avoiding them as you lead a perfectly normal life. But you do not shun Pensacola because the thought of visiting Detroit makes you queasy.

         It will be no surprise that the same approach works well in México, where there are 2,500 municipalities. The drug battles are focused in between twelve and fifteen of them. The safety level in the other 99½% is about the same as living in rural Iowa. Naturally, it still pays to avoid cows with horns.

         Once over this hump you will discover a lifestyle blooming with options. Do you have a fondness for horses? Equestrian sports are everywhere in México, from cow sorting to dressage and jumping. Are you a fan of the arts? Art galleries and studios abound. Lessons in painting and sculpture are offered around every corner. Like to dig in and serve your community? San Miguel can supply more than a hundred ways to improve the environment and the status of local people. Or would you just like to kick back and relax after a demanding career? The jardin, our local plaza, is San Miguel’s living room, like others throughout México, where expats and locals mix and trade stories from the weather to life in general, to sports and culture. All this with 340 days of sunshine a year. Don’t miss the chamber music and jazz festivals, the annual writer’s conference, the opera scene, and the dozens of active art galleries.

         Tired of tortillas? Try the two world-class supermarkets at the edge of town, or the Office Depot, the Liverpool department store, and the other big box stores in close-in neighboring towns. How about a Sassoon-trained hair stylist?

         Many of these points focus on San Miguel de Allende, my own town, but similar resources flourish all over México, as do expat communities where others who’ve been there a while can show you the ropes. The communities are supportive of newcomers and the Internet can readily tell you what’s going on almost anywhere.

         México is an opportunity not to be missed, so don’t let yourself be stopped by the border––if it’s anything like mine, your future has no borders.

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