essays

Papa, He Say Holey Moley

Oh dear. Beach vacations have historically had the ability to cast a spell that drenches the lowest rung of service workers in sex appeal, transforming restaurant sailors with fish sticks on a tray into navy seals and fishing guides that wear bathing suits as underwear into rock stars. That’s just the way the beach is, and although, with the wisdom of maturity, I am mostly immune to the condition these days, (inoculated, no doubt, by the dozens of unsuitable love affairs that made my youth so much darn fun ) given the right conditions I can still feel symptoms.

Going to Puerto Vallarta with two dazzling brand new college graduates constitutes the right conditions. Celebrating their achievement with a sunset ride on a pirate ship that has an open bar and boy dancers doing sword fights, well, all I can say is that the wisdom of maturity has no place on a pirate ship.

Some years ago, my older step daughter was shopping for a formal, an event which inspired the first of many moments of the vertigo that comes from aging ungracefully, when you realize civilization has actually made some dramatic advances in your lifetime. It occurred to me that neither the fabrics that prom dresses were being made of, nor the lingerie to go with them, had been invented when I was in high school. I had the same sensation on the pirate ship. Boy, there was nothing like that around when I was looking for it, I can tell you that! Good looking Mexican twenty somethings swooping around with daggers in their teeth and a deejay spinning Sex on the Beach (with it’s compelling chorus; ” Champagne! Mojito! Tequila! Boom Boom!”) while the sun sets in the Pacific and fireworks are sent up off the bow. If you can imagine a higher goal than getting one of the swashbuckling staff to run your panties up the mast along with the Jolly Roger in a situation like that, I defriend you. Not my panties, obviously, because I’m past all that, and also because my foundation garments are made of stern stuff these days. It turned out that my darling girls are themselves made of pretty stern stuff, and had no problem whatsoever keeping their wardrobe in place.

They don’t have anywhere near the degree of toxicology required to get up to shenanigans like I did back in the day, and it turns out, they have wisdom of their own. But they still felt the love! By the end of the week the three of us were exhausted from falling in love with ATV drivers, zip line tour guides, waiters at Senor Frog’s, jet ski rental clerks, time share salesmen, and of course pirates whose English vocabulary consisted of the word “Yar”. Which, looking back, they may well have thought meant “Nice to meet you.” My husband watched all this with amusement. And amazement, I’m sure, that his middle aged wife, charged with chaperoning his precious daughter, could regress so horribly into her own round heeled and rum soaked juventud.

Luckily, the girls didn’t travel back to my village home with me. The first week of June is when my village celebrates its fiesta patronales, the nine day hootenanny celebrating St. Anthony de Padua,the saint for whom our pueblo is named. But I know what it’s like to rejoin the real world after a vacation like the one we just had, to cry all the way home on an airplane, to wake up surrounded by responsibility instead of ocean. I didn’t have to suffer the shock of re-entry because I live in Mexico, and when the band took a break to allow the stage to be set for one of the endless beauty contests or raffles for pick-up trucks that go on night and day during fiesta time, the DJ took over. With his help, on my first night home, I was lulled to sleep by the catchy rhymes— “Mama, she say roly poly, Papa, he say holy moley,”— of this song, number one on the pirate ship hit parade.

Elliott Joachim pulled the plug on life in Metro D.C. and headed South of the Border. In her blog, Lifestyle Refugee (honey, what the hell are we doing in Mexico), she regales you with how a middle range baby boomer builds a new life in Ajijic.

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