Just another day

The rottweilers stared at me, their smiling faces displaying all of their teeth and their ample jaws. The street was completely empty. Instead of facing the escaped dogs, I decided it was a good time to clean the patio. My neighbor pulled up in her minivan. "I'm afraid of the dogs!!" she screamed from her window, as she honked and gunned her engine in an attempt to scare the dogs so that she and her kids could get out of the car and into the house. She ended up opening her garage door and cramming her van into her driveway between clothes lines, plants and kids' toys, so that she could close the garage door and enter the house safely. A tremendous pile of dog shit sat in front of my gate, with a tire track through it. Eventually the dogs returned to their yard through the hole they escaped from and people quickly filled the street again.

I decided to visit a doctor for two reasons. The pinching pain in my chest whenever I laid down and because I had to after calling in sick on Friday. After the dogs went back in their cage, I braved the street to walk to the little clinic next to the pharmacy. I thought these small, 30 peso clinics existed only to satisfy prescription requirements of Americans buying drugs in Mexico, but Profe Hector insisted that they are convenient and thorough. As I walked, I noticed something in the street and dodged it. Two chickens, smashed completely flat. I arrived at the clinic, was immediately seen by a man in a white coat who weighed me, listened to my lungs and took my temperature. I left about fifteen minutes later with a bag of medicine, all for around eighteen dollars.

I really wanted to be well by Sunday. The couple that normally oversees the majority of the cooking on Sundays at Casa del Migrante were going to be out of town. A full time volunteer had asked me to come early so that we could prepare the dinner ourselves. I didn't want to leave her alone to cook for sixty, eighty, one hundred people. I was imagining it as a replacement for my Thanksgiving that wasn't.

Casa had been a little lower key the previous week. I spent most of my time with the older couple that carefully prepares the Sunday dinner. When I am in the kitchen with them I have these Like Water for Chocolate fantasies that I am going to learn to cook Mexican food from an older, knowledgeable Mexican grandmother who will eventually think of me as one of her own. Though it's not really turning out that way, I do like assisting them and listening while la Doña sings all of the songs on San Diego 102.9. They have no idea how many years I spent working in kitchens and seem pleased that I don't mind getting dirty and seem to know what needs to get done. They think it just comes naturally.

Sometimes I think of returning to kitchen work. The only problem is that I like health insurance and labor laws. After dinner, I sat in a little room with my imaginary grandparents and passed razors, soap and towels through a little window to the migrants that passed by. We put tooth paste directly on passing toothbrushes and handed the stick of deodorant through the window to be used by various people. La Doña kept on singing with the little boom box they bring where ever they go.

I ended the evening by making eighty sandwiches and helping a long term volunteer with attendance. Previously, I was intimidated by taking attendance. Something about entering room after room, some inhabited by up to twelve men made me nervous. It was okay. The migrants were ready for us when we came, many already had their ID cards in a little stack, in alphabetical order. One room had the atmosphere of a boys sleep over party. The men giggled and joked in their bunk beds and called out various English words they knew before calling "Good night! Good night!" multiple times as I left.

The weather was not helping me get better. We experienced our first cold, rainy day in Tijuana last Saturday. I spent the day laying on the couch, watching an entire season of America's Next Top Model on my computer. I found myself wondering how, even when I was eighteen, I couldn't maintain a 90 lb. body weight. I hadn't bathed since Thursday and had no intention of taking a cold shower. Alec and I ate some cold leftovers as we still could not cook and I am still suffering from some sort of food poisoning as a result. Sunday finally arrived and I took my filthy, sick self to Casa.

Like most carefully laid plans, my Thanksgiving that wasn't didn't really turn out like I had imagined. But, the sun did come out.