The Switchback
Hot Dog is the name the kids bestowed upon the 2006 white BMW we bought our third week in Mexico. The name doesn’t work all that well but then again nothing about the car works well. Something swiped off Hot Dog’s driver’s side mirror his first week with us and now he’s got a duct taped mirror no bigger than a makeup compact. The front bumper is affixed by zip tie, and there’s a persistent rattle along the rear axel, and plenty of eager lights on the dash. Needless to say I’ve got our mechanic Ruben on speed dial. Recently he replaced the radiator pump, and three tires, and stapled the ceiling upholstery back on. Nevertheless, Hot Dog remains our family’s valiant Rocinante, even when he’d be better suited to the greener pasture of some side yard full of junkers.
Last week, our family of five piled into Hot Dog. He was already riding low in the back, filled with a week’s worth of food, an obscene amount of swim gear, and luggage. We were heading to Acapulco, the five of us in Hot Dog, and three visiting family members braving the trip by bus. Our visitors–my mother in law and her two children–asked with appropriate apprehension why the bus takes two hours longer than driving. “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but at least it’s got air conditioning.” Hot Dog, of course, doesn’t have air conditioning, but having lived for so long in New England’s coldest state the five of us are still mostly happy to soak up every ray of vitamin D infused sunshine available in Mexico.
We gassed up and drove out from our new home in the central highland state of Puebla, heading south west over the Sierra Madres del Sur, and down to the Pacific coast. The kids’ squabbling in the back was deafening til we put on a podcast after which they were mostly peaceful. It started to warm up and I put the windows down. “We can’t hear!” shouted the backseat indignantly. I tried putting the windows up, but couldn’t last long. 90 minutes from home I toggled the switch on Hot Dog’s dash of simple orange digits to check the temperature. Low-30s and climbing. We drove on. Mid-30s. A little farther. High-30s. The temperature kept rising. 40. 41. 42.
42 degrees.
Of course if we were home in Maine on this mid April day, 42 wouldn’t be so bad—anything over freezing is a win during spring in Maine, though too much warmth activates the true reason for the season, which is to say mud. But even mud counts as a win after a long winter in Maine.
If you don’t know, or you choose not to acknowledge it, winter in Maine begins in November. I know because my daughter’s birthday is in November and most places we’d want to go within easy driving distance of us had already posted their handwritten signs declaring “See you in Spring!” This prelude to winter feels overwhelmingly muted and bare. The grandeur of October’s autumn color show has passed, leaving expanses of the grey-barked scaffolding of the trees and pumpkins in a state of semi-frozen semi-rot. In December the darkness that begins at four is brightened with private and municipal twinkle lights alike. January is brighter still thanks to the brilliant illumination of sunshine on snow, but it’s cold as can be if you venture out. February and March–gosh there’s not much to redeem them, weather wise, but it’s a great stretch of time to cook stew and read by the woodstove. Sometime in April there’s an intimation of spring. The remaining bare branches not snapped by ice regain some suppleness, and a haze of mauve emerges as leaf buds form. The thermometer will reliably rise out of the blue zone and into the red zone, at least for a few hours mid-day. A high of 42 is nothing to sniff at in April in Maine, that’s basically throw the windows open and pull on your shorts weather. If you don’t know, or choose not to acknowledge it, spring in Maine is still kinda sluggish in April. But because my other daughter’s birthday is in April we dive into spring with insistent exuberance. Every April we find ourselves venturing out to all those restaurants who have just taken their “See you in Spring!” signs down, though normally we’re the only ones eating out on the deck overlooking the water–tourists certainly don’t come to Maine for Spring Break. That’s what Mexico is for.
42 degrees.
Moving to Mexico last August, I expected a climactic shock, in a good way. Our town, Cholula, sits more than 2,100 meters above sea level in the central highland state of Puebla, between the Sierra Nevada and the Sierra Madre mountain ranges. It’s the highest up and farthest inland I’ve ever lived. The weather in Cholula is universally pleasant. Year round the mid-day high is in the mid-70s Farenheit, with typical lows in the mid-50s, apart from a few colder nights around January. In the rainy season, we get a daily drenching, but it only comes around 6:30 in the afternoon, which is honestly incredibly considerate. Even once the rainy season ends around November, greenery abounds. Palms dance with their hands in the air while Cypruses undulate. Succulents experiment with every shape imaginable. Bouganvilla brightens nearly every garden non-stop, and I can’t believe how long the Jacaranda blooms have persisted, far longer than any flowering tree I’ve ever seen.
As wonderful as it was not to pack up and hibernate for five months of cold and darkness, our first winter in Mexico felt strange. In so far as it wasn’t, winter that is, despite the puffer jackets local children sported while our hearty New England kids remained in their summer wardrobe. I felt a bittersweet loss of the annual rest, contemplation, and drawing inward that winter’s muted colors and somber weather encourage. The metaphor of the evergreen Christmas tree–God’s ever green love in the midst of the blead mid-winter of our lives–could hardly compete with the bougainvillea’s perennial explosion of bold fuchsia just outside the living room window. But an over-colorful Christmas aside, I celebrated the absence of snow gear, cabin fever, and heating bills. Besides, if I ever missed snow I just had to walk to the top of our road. From there I could look up the eastern side of the massive active stratovolcano named Popocatépetl, who at over 5,400 meters above sea level boasts a bright white peak of snow most mornings.
42 degrees.
That day in the Sierra Madres was the first time I’d seen a thermostat in Mexico register 42. Though the numbers were familiar the feeling was not. Because of course, like cars everywhere outside the United States, Hot Dog’s thermostat is in Celsius.
“42 degrees Celsius?!” a friend home in Maine texted. “Do you know what that is in Fahrenheit?!” “No actually. What is it?” I pecked out. Her reply read three digits: “107.”
107 degrees.
Because Hot Dog is Hot Dog, there was no point pushing the white snowflake button on the dash. I pressed it anyway. Hot Dog threw a fit and turned the vents into hair dryers. Point made, Hot Dog. I accept the only cooling would come from the forceful displacement of one set of 107 degree molecules by another set of 107 degree molecules.
107 degrees.
Hot Dog had conveyed us over the Sierra Madres four times before on the way to and from Acapulco. I knew from these other trips that there’s a point on the road where the weather changes. It’s a sharp switchback in the mountains. Above the switchback sits our home in the temperate subtropical central highlands, and below it tumbles the humid tropics of the Pacific coast. Every other time we’d ventured through this mountain pass, the Acapulco side was oppressively hot. As I write this I feel myself, back in the driver’s seat I’d made slick and sticky with sweat desperately wondering, if it was 107 on the Puebla side, how would we survive beyond the mountain pass?
I searched the landscape for clues that we were approaching the switchback, but I found I barely recognized the route and found only limited comfort in the road signs affirming we were in the right place. The lush greenery I’d expected from the four previous passes was nowhere to be seen. Other than fleeting patches of laboriously irrigated fields, the countryside had retreated into bareness, muted survival amid the depth of drought. Verdant leaves had been shed, emerald canopies shrunk, and branches denuded of the avian flocks that normally roost in their depths. Mountains and valleys I’d finally found familiarity in were rendered once again unknown to me. Disoriented by the bareness, I couldn’t place where we were and how long until we came to the place where the weather would shift.
107 degrees.
It’s not just that the desiccation of the landscape disrupted my sense of place, it’s that I couldn’t place myself in time, in the rhythm of the year. I’d never experienced bareness in heat before. Bareness to me signifies cold, it signifies darkness. Bareness means pulling inward and conserving heat, not wishing for another layer to take off or more sunscreen on my left forearm hanging out the window like the tongue hanging from a dog’s mouth.
107 degrees.
You know, as a reader I skip descriptive passages about weather. I find most writing about scenery and climate deeply unsatisfying. I pass on movies critics praise for their immersive scenery. No thank you.
Writing on this topic is, likewise, deeply dissatisfying. Irritating, actually. I wanted to write about something else this week. Today is Children’s Day in Mexico. I have a whole essay I want to write about that. About the beauty of a culture that celebrates the life of children, and at least aspires to honor their rights. That knows the fragility of childhood and celebrates its persistence.
In that essay, the essay I’d wanted to be writing, I would have tied that theme to a story about our first night in Acapulco. Of course I’d start by briefly sketching the white SUV as it traversed the scorched red-brown mountain passes. I wouldn’t have bothered mentioning he’s called Hot Dog. In that essay he would be an anonymous vehicle whose sole function is to get us to the early second act moment of bounding with my children onto the beach, finally enjoying the long-anticipated destination. I would write about how broadly we grinned as we played in the waves, cooling off at last.
Then I’d find a way for the narrative to feel like it had been pulled under water in a flash. I would disorient the reader for a moment before showing the four of us–me and three children–sputtering in shock, realizing that none of us could touch the sand below us, realizing we had been seized by a rip tide. The story would watch as my younger daughter tumbled farther and farther out than the rest of us. The story would describe how mother and daughter were separated, unable to comprehend their own peril but united in their fear that the worst had befallen the other.
The story would downplay the mechanics of the rescue, keeping the narrative focused instead on how mother and daughter had been forever changed by our fight against the current of the worst. I would toggle in and out of first person. I would try to bring the story back to the idea of Children’s Day. Of what a miracle it is to have children in your life, and how important it is to treasure those children and to protect them.
And yet that’s not the essay that poured out of me. I don’t have some profound reflection on life and almost death that I’ve deftly grounded in a description of some charming and topical cultural tradition. I’ve got observations about scenery and weather. Basically this whole piece is the part that I skip when I read, and normally even when I remember.
Oh now I see it.
You realized it before I did, didn’t you?
But as I type this I’m catching up.
I told you about the day and the drive and the heat because I don’t actually want to let myself tell the story of that night. If I let that story out too often, I’ll…. detach… Instead of situating myself firmly in the discomfort of those hours at 107 degrees, I would be letting go, buffeted by waves of memory, dragged out to the Waters of What If.
Of course the Waters of What If can be warm and relaxing, like when you’re newly in love or daydreaming in a hammock. But the Waters of What If can be ice cold, like when you let yourself think about driving home in a car silenced by shock, with an empty car seat, and not enough squabbling–a switchback in your whole life you can’t cross back over from. A switch of everything I know to be. April forever without its showers, without breezes, without mud. A place where the leaves retreat, not from lack of sun and warmth, but due to a deadly abundance of it. A topsy-turvy place where April is so hot and dry that life recedes, instead of insisting on itself despite the chill. A month, once happily anticipated for its promise of life springing ever forward, now dreaded, freeze-dried in time. A month when a birthday is remembered, but no longer celebrated.
Unthinkable and disorienting what ifs.
//
I wasn’t able to perceive by sight that we had reached the switchback where the weather changes. But I felt the heat begin to retreat. The orange digits flicked back down to the 30s. I tried to remember what the Celcius version of 98.6 is, so I could celebrate the moment when my internal temperature was once again higher than the weather outside.
It turns out this time of year, Acapulco is cooler than Puebla. Winds come off the Pacific and cool the city, though you’ve got to watch out because they can whip up rip tides. In the morning Acapulco was only about 27 degrees, and even in the heat of the day it never got to be more than 31.
Perfect weather for April.
