Tijuana profunda

I. and I went on another of our famous road trips, this time with a car full of rotating travellers, some met for the first time that morning and great friends by the end of the day, others, dropped at another carpool point, and still others, picked up, only to be turned around twenty-five minutes later because of a missing passport.

All the while my sweet child read her book quietly, tried to be sweet and accommodating while her back-seat kingdom was being invaded by more stuff than thought humanly possible in a Honda civic... Our trip, which began at 9 am, ended as our new friend Liliana careened across the border of her two home towns, zipped along the known thoroughfares and deposited us at our destination.

While I was upon the stage, presenting in the opening panel of the homage to don Luis, on his 101 years of life, she sat, legs crossed, in the crowd, rapt attention on her book -- ghost stories, of course. Her contract with school, so as not to lose them their 27$ a day of funding for student attendance, was to read two chapters. She read the novel from cover to cover, through several hours of what I found very interesting, but what she, if she had been listening instead of reading, would likely have found quite obfuscated. At 10 pm, we went to the reception dinner that the CECUT had invited us to, and by midnight we were eating. And not once, in the whole entire day, was there a protest of even the meekest sort. My heart swells with pride, each time I think of it.

She crawled into the hotel bed with me, at the Pueblo Amigo, just before 1am, and in the morning, we were up and wandering the streets of TJ by 10. I'll admit, all three times I have visited this city thus far, we have always stopped at the "bola" the CECUT, (centro cultural Tijuana) because it is both an architectural lure, and a state of the art cultural center and museum of Baja California culture, but this time I ventured beyond the safety of these institutional walls. She and I marched forth, hand in hand, congratulating one another on the luck we had to have eachother respectively as mother and child, and we walked under underpasses, over overpasses, and around plazas to the center of the city, or rather, the tourist center. Calle Revolución. We had been there once at night, by daylight it was an equally surreal experience, of flashing colors, and varied merchandise, but there was something else that I felt this time, a sort of comfort that I hadn't felt before, something akin to the way I feel walking around DF where instead of fear, I feel as if I am being protected. I stopped to look over the vast open space, a trickle of water, the landmarks that simultaneously welcome and astound. I smile to myself, allow my good little girl a few moments of consumer glory. She buys herself a little purse made from folded cookie wrappers, a bracelet, and one for a friend. We stroll around, avoiding invitations to break our fast, because we already did so on our trusty mom-planned emergency granola snacks and hotel coffee. We look and look for Sanborn's to no avail, but finally find an open newsstand, and purchase her all important "Por ti" magazine, so she can read about American pop stars, repackaged and retro-marketed to the youth of Mexico. I figure, she doesn't get to actually watch TV, so I might as well let her read about it, in Spanish... She clutches the magazine happily to her chest and I stop to buy her some locally manufactured socks. Eso sí que es... Socks. Yes. Why? Well, because we always seem to run out of them before the rest of the laundry, and because I forgot to wash before leaving town, or rather, ran out of time, so 5 pairs of cute socks for less than 4$ seemed a reasonable investment, that bought us an extra week of laundry.
She wants to take a taxi, but I want to retrace our steps, and furthermore, I am enjoying the cool bright morning. So we head back, shower and meet Lili and her family. The rest of the day is spent with real Tijuanenses, her mom and sister, her nana and tata, off to her father's ranch. We eat more red meat than I care to admit, tortillas, queso, nopales... the day before I indulge in caldo de huitlacoche and I think, yeah. This is Mexico after all, especially as we are driving up into the hills and the hand-painted signs, fabulously clever make-shift commercial-spaces and corner stores make themselves manifest.

We spend the night in her family's home, alone, with just a friend of the family to watch over us, and in the morning her generous father comes, having first avoided a possibly unpleasant situation (he was being followed by an unknown car) comes bearing Tijuana style burros: small flour tortilla, frijoles and chicharrón en salsa verde. I wait until he leaves the room to sneak the soggy pork-rinds out and eat only the beans and green sauce. I wish I could just make myself eat one, but I can't, and José doesn't rat me out. Together, they watch over me until the very last moment, heading me into the fast lane across the línea.

On the other side, I. and I pull off the highway in San Diego, head to Balboa park where there are pro-Obama manifestations and scads of local residents mulling about in the sunshine. We plant ourselves in a grassy spot in the shade, do some homework and then explore the monarch butterfly garden, part of their migratory trajectory, where they were gathered. At 2pm, we pick up K. at the airport. She is in town for a Public Health conference. We break bread, or to be specific, Naan, on little I.'s request, and then relax by the pool of her hotel by the harbor for the remainder of the afternoon. We drive back south to San Ysidro to pick Lili up from her family, (not without a pit stop for cornnuts, the ultimate in salty deliciousness for the road) back north to drop K. off once more, and home by midnight.




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