Week: rain and leather

Talabarteros, I think, aren't what they once were. I peer inside the shop, briefly, hoping for the smell of tanned leather to fill my senses. Instead I gaze upon neat stacks of machine-crafted wallets and bags. Nothing here to see, move along.

The ground is damp. It rained in that way that feels like the earth is being pummeled, but here in this neighborhood, though there is a park where we tried to sit, earlier, to calm our collective anxiety, with muddy puddles, I don't feel connected to the earth. I also didn't jump in puddles. I remember when I. was a small child, and how she loved to puddle-jump, splashing a slurry of brown water on whatever pink dress her mother had put on her. I never cared. That's why we have a washing machine, I would always say. Of course, back then we didn't have our own washer or dryer, but rather, a small apartment with coin-operated machines nearby.

There is something about walking alone through this city, I am reminded. Its flat grid, unending, spreading out beneath the rubber soles of my, yes, I'll admit it, orthotic sandals. My last visit to this beloved place left me crippled for months: I hobbled around, stubbornly resistant to any sort of medical intervention because I knew that it was all a product of my mind and my emotional processes, until he arrived on my doorstep in the thick of the summer oppression, the ac unit broken, in Phoenix, a crime against humanity, or at least human decency... sometimes I wait too long to make a decision. I don't listen to my body screaming at me, telling me to flee, to be alone, to lick my wounds. At least he encouraged me to deal with my own shit. For that I will be forever grateful.

But today I walk, with a spitting drizzle misting from above, before my feelings get the better of me. I am learning, I think. I'm not the same person I was before. The thing is: I am torn between hopefulness and resignation, the pull of something new and the comfort of what once was but is no more, the sting of a harshly stated boundary, and the recognition of my own failure at establishing neat edges, to protect myself from disappointment.

Maybe we're all just swimming around in puddles of mud, inside our own heads. I'll just keep walking, I think.

I decide to break my recently-acquired habit, my footfalls, now in the sandals that the doctor told me I'd never be able to wear again (boy, did I show him!) veer to the left while I distractedly answer texts that I don't feel excited about, rebuffing attempts at intimacy that feel like invasions of my privacy, but that I don't just simply ignore. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, but I think it has to do with old habits, and my penchant for always keeping my eye on at least three escape routes, in the physical as well as the emotional realm. I should really work on that in therapy, I think, but the idea of finding a new therapist on returning to the desert makes me tired. I don't want a new one, but I have no choice. I don't even really want to go home.

But today I had a choice, and I took it. My heart hurt, so I chose to walk, to walk away from the excess emotional baggage that isn't mine, that is overloading my filtering apparatus. At times like these, I'm reminded, it is better to just be alone. I poke my head into the Mercado Lázaro Cárdenas. Most of the stalls have been shut down, but I wander the semi-abandoned market alone anyway. I imagine it as the scene of a crime, the blood being washed down the drain, the pungent chlorine penetrating my nostrils. I buy 6 guavas, 2 of the flatter yellow mangoes (they call them Manila here), and 2 semi-ripe plantains. A one-armed woman kindly overcharges me and I don't care. I feel the heft of the fruit in the bag, imagine it as a makeshift tool for defense if swung with proper force, feel the eyes of the swarm of men that are exiting the building behind me and step to the side to let them pass. I don't like feeling like there are people behind me and I don't like sitting with my back to the door in public places, always worried that I won't see the danger upon me until it is too late.

But I always see it. And I always ignored the signs anyway, convinced of my own ability to steer the outcome. Foolish, I know. I am fighting the urge to close up shop. I've said too much, I always do. I am too much, or at least that's the narrative I tell myself, but really, I think it isn't about me at all. Breathe. Remember that everyone else is on their own damn roller-coaster and you don't have to get on.

The phone rings and my girl cries, "mama, I'm sick..." and for a few moments I coo and comfort, make suggestions about what mix of magical ingredients will make her feel better. It sounds like things are under control, so I try to let go of the control myself. It isn't easy. I raised a child, I think, though it puzzles me. When did it happen? The puddle-jumper who would swing like a monkey, grasping two hands, bouncing over cobbled-stone is now, officially, on her way to college... why haven't I grown up? I wonder, as if the passage of time glided smoothly over my head, in aerodynamic patterns and flows, and all that happened was my hair got a little messy.

I keep walking, now, in my mind. I smile a half smile at the dude that sells artisanal coffee sourced from Chiapas and Oaxaca, I avoid eye contact with the shoe-shine guys who followed us around the other day, in the middle of our banking crisis. I nod at the tortillera next to the house. I hold my breath. Stop. Being. Hopeful. I try to talk myself down off the ledge. It doesn't work. I decide to make another lap around the block before climbing the 9 stories to my city oasis. I feel raw, naked, overexposed. I don't ever learn.

And then something changes, and the rain stops, and the sun comes out, and my chest eases up. The zapatero's shop makes me smile and wish that in my dash to leave the house in Arizona I would have remembered to bring my dancing shoes in need of mending. I remember that I can continue with my previously planned activities, as if I never stumbled, as if this never happened. No one has to know. Or, as Joni once sang: I think I understand... fear is like a wilderland.