Morning Thoughts

It is Wednesday, market day. I love market day. It is so much fun to be able to buy anything I want. This is the first time in my life I have had that privilege.

 Towards the end of her life, my mother told me one of her memories about grocery shopping. I was a young girl and my friend and I went to the grocery store with her. We wanted to try some exotic fruit but it was very expensive.  We begged her to buy it for us. My mother finally decided to not buy some other things she needed and she bought it. When we got home, no one liked it. We ended up throwing it away.

I can't tell you the point of her story because I couldn't figure out why she even told me about it or why she remembered it so many years later.

Maybe it was just to express a feeling of lack that was in our lives all the time. Poverty creates that. I always felt inappropriately dressed or out of step with my peers. I didn't have money for outside activities or special equipment. I went to my prom and refused to go inside because I realized as the other girls were entering that my dress wasn't a prom dress. It was something I borrowed from a friend and not dressy enough.

So why am I writing about these things this morning? Maybe because of some dreams I have recently had about lack and loss.  We all experience those things, some more often than others.  We may finally get our lives together and have enough money and time to do all the things we want but then we are too old and we have to deal with various physical problems.

Maybe this world is a classroom of sorts and loss is one of the subjects. How we deal with our losses teaches us how to be better people. Soul shaping lessons. 

Maybe I am thinking of these things because of recently watching an educational series on Netflix about the concentration camps. I was born in September of 1944. It was all going on then. The horrors. The far reaching losses not only to the Jewish people but to all of humanity.

Returning to my own simple life here in Mexico...... Market day means to me that I can buy any food that catches my fancy. The poverty mentality isn't part of my experience here. I feel like I belong to the community.  I feel accepted to both the expats and the Mexicans. The majority of people living here are friendly.

Sure, there is an undercurrent of violence. That exists in most of the world. But my everyday existence has nothing to do with that underworld. I walk among kind and gentle people. I am so grateful for my life here.  I can buy all the exotic fruit I want and if I don't like it, I can throw it away without feeling guilty.