July 12, 2005 — Last night, I was tired when we went to bed but then my mind clicked into a wide awake and clear state. This happens to me from time to time, and  I just lay there and thought for an hour or more.

I had received a nice email yesterday from a Mexican friend, asking when we would be back in Bernal. I had inwardly groaned at the impossibility of telling how long it would take to sell our house, arreglar our business (that’s a Spanish verb I like, more or less meaning get it together), visit family around the US, and so on, and I had answered her that we didn’t know but it seemed the earliest would likely be November.

So as I lay there thinking, I considered how sometimes I feel pulled to Mexico, and at other times I am filled with so much love for this Colorado community that I hope the summer will never end. (We are not near the big forest fire currently going on outside Pueblo… well, we are pretty close in terms of miles but we are on the other side of the mountains and not even getting any smoke in the air.)

Pushmi-Pullyu. What do I want? Well, I want it all. “All” in this case means involvement in both cultures, Mexican and English-speaking.

Suddenly I understood more deeply why so many Americans and Canadians are drawn to San Miguel de Allende, the Lake Chapala area near Guadalajara, the San Carlos region not that far south of Arizona, and other places with concentrations of Americans and Canadians. It’s how they are getting it all. I hadn’t seen this so clearly before, as we so much enjoyed being immersed in Mexican culture for our six months last winter. Bernal had at the most three other Americans in residence while we were there.

I came to no conclusions and eventually I slept.