From the Editor’s Desktop: People Matters (Premium)

This is the longest time we’ve spent outside the U.S. I was hoping it would provide some clarity, but I only have some answers and, predictably, even more questions.

As I write this, we’ve been in Mexico City for almost three months, and we still have over a month before we return home to Pennsylvania. But the amount of time we’re spending here isn’t the only unique aspect to this trip. When we arrived, I did something unusual for me, something that I hoped would be a small step towards addressing one of my biggest personal shortcomings. I reached out to several individuals and couples we’ve met here in Mexico City.

It’s probably not obvious why that’s a big deal, for me or just in general. But I’m not good at this kind of thing. Like everyone else, I have family, friends, and acquaintances–the “hello” people–and I see them or not on whatever schedules, and birthdays and other milestones come and go as time passes. But sometimes too much time passes. I don’t speak with, see, or even text or email some of these people. Depending on the person, this may or may not be problematic. Most seem to have a similar experience, and some even seem relieved if I mention it, apologizing, when I do see them or speak with them.

And so I stepped outside my normal insular routine and started sending messages, mostly via WhatsApp, because that’s what everyone seems to use for everything in Mexico. In some cases, I knew we wouldn’t see these people; for example, one couple we met with a few times last November had left Mexico City and is now traveling through Southeast Asia. In other cases, I wasn’t sure. Some might be here, or not, during this stay. But whatever. We’re here. This is the schedule. If you’ll be here, too, we’d love to see you.

The responses were wonderful and a pointed reminder of why my normal behavior in this regard is so wrong. This is a change I maybe can’t make, not permanently, or whatever. Or maybe it is, I don’t know. But as with so much else in life, all I can do is try. And trying, in this case, felt like the right thing to do, from a mental health perspective, or maybe just from a normal human interrelation perspective. I don’t know what this is. But I do know that me doing this pleased other people, and that did feel nice. Perhaps that positive experience will help me take the next step, which is to keep it going.

I mention this now because we met with one of the couples I’d reached out to last night. The man lives in San Miguel de Allende, which is about three and a half hours northwest of here, and his girlfriend is from the extreme southeast of Mexico City, at least 45 minutes from here, and they see each other here in the city every few months. This was the first time they did so since January–we had just missed them then–and they were with a friend we’d not met before. So we met at one of our favorite cocktail bars in the nearby Condesa neighborhood, and then had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants that’s just a few blocks away.

It was great to catch-up with them, an even better reminder of why my usual way of stumbling blindly through life isn’t the healthiest way to be. We had seen them twice in November, and then, as now, I was struck by how our similar life experiences and resulting opinions kind of intertwined. This is a normal interpersonal dynamic, I guess, maybe not worth discussing, but whatever, sometimes things seem to click. It’s interesting to me, at least.

Their friend was interesting as well. He is the same age as me and the others, again with similar life experiences and in a similar place, trying to figure out what comes next, with kids in school, one almost graduated. I felt like I already knew this person, there was something about the way he looked and talked that was curiously familiar, and I had a weird out-of-body moment when he started asking me questions about how we dealt with wanting to be here, but also wanting to be back in the States, and he was getting abandonment vibes from his kids. This is exactly the type of thing I ask of others. I’m always looking for answers. But there are no answers. And there are always more questions.

In any event, this was all very normal and natural, and it was like we had known these people forever and not just over a few get-togethers over a few months. It was … nice. People often disappoint me over time, I’ve found. And who knows? Maybe we’re still in some honeymoon period and that disappointment will come. But rather than obsess over that, I will instead remind myself that there were plenty of opportunities for this disappointment already. That my wife and his girlfriend often naturally drifted off into their own private conversations, and that she told me afterward of some of the unbearable terribleness that life had rained down on her and that she emerged as an even better person in my wife’s eyes as a result. And that the guy was a beacon of positivity who likewise provided examples in our own private discussions of how one might deal well with bad outcomes and still push forward.

Reflecting on this, I worry that I was somehow testing them, almost daring them to disappoint me. That’s not the case, not really, it was only afterward in walking home and discussing all this with my wife that it sort of dawned on me that they had in a way passed a test, though it was a test I didn’t realize I had been administering. I think–and hope–we similarly passed this test in their eyes. I don’t know.

This was just one of so many connections here. I’ve written about this in the past, about the seemingly odd way we keep making connections here in Mexico City, a megalopolis of over 20 million people, how we in inexplicably keep running into people out in the streets or in bars and restaurants. And how damn nice everyone is here. Not because they necessarily have to be, perhaps in a restaurant or other service situation, but just because they are. And we wonder what forces aligned to make all this true, and whether those forces are somehow responsible for the connections we’ve made here with people who likewise drawn to this place. Is this coincidence? Fate? Or is it just natural, a normal thing that we’ve been isolated from in our suburban and rural lives back in the U.S.?

I am not a fan of the too-common “Only in …” memes, where someone from some place or visiting some place will capture some moment and then declare that such a thing can only happen in that place. Most of these things are just common everywhere. For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic while commuting home in, say, Boston, and you describe this atrocity starting off with “Only in Boston,” virtually everyone who sees this will think, yeah, sure. But that happens here too. So I don’t believe that these things I’m experiencing are necessarily unique to Mexico City. Some of it is probably just the normal city life experience, where being out in the world, on foot, in what is essentially a large neighborhood, causes you to run into people you know. In the street, and in those third spaces. Because they are out doing the same thing.

That’s part of it, I guess. But I was engaged in a different get-together with another of those I had reached out to back in January, when he asked about these connections out of the blue. Was something in the water? he joked. But then he began speculating about what it could be. Was it the weather or climate? Was it something societal, something handed down almost as tradition, perhaps even dating back to the pre-colonial era? Sure. Maybe. I think the natural niceness of people here is something common to much or most of the country. How it happens in a city of this size, with all the traffic, the poverty, the seismic uncertainty, and whatever else is unclear. Or maybe that all contributes. I don’t know. It seems miraculous to me. And to him. He noted that he’s only experienced people arguing here once. That’s one time more than me.

I coincidentally just read that driving a car is us being our worst selves, and that is an observation I support and believe given my lifetime of experience. But there must be a corollary, a contradicting observation of how it is that we can be our best selves. And that surely cannot be living in a city, for all the obvious reasons. And yet, it is fascinating to me that we’ve lived in quiet, rural places and felt isolated from our neighbors. And then we come to this loud, busy, and chaotic place, and we feel closer to them somehow. We have expanded our sense of community in ways that just don’t seem possible back home.

As I write this, a noise is rising from outside, mocking me. It’s Sunday morning, this is Mexico City, and there are two cafe/coffee-type places across the street. One inexplicably sells the best croissants I’ve ever had, and I write that having spent more time in France than most from the U.S., and one just as inexplicably sells terrific bagels, a food item that is mostly unknown here and thus fascinating to locals. Both are popular and often busy, and because of this, they attract street performers and beggars. The performers are, to my ears, universally unwelcome. The noise that just interrupted me is an organ grinder, out of tune, and unique to this city, a local treasure that no one treasures. But it could be anything and often is. An equally out of tune and unwelcome trombone sometimes appears, a sound so horrible it has the vibe of a first-time learner, one even his parents would criticize. Point being, not everything is perfect here. Sometimes the Mexico-ness of Mexico and this big city collide in ways that are not positive.

I’m sensitive to noise. And that was a big fear for me coming here, that and the altitude, given my bout with high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) back in 2005, which is suddenly 20 years ago but still an ever-present shadow lurking over everything I do. Noise in a city like this is unpredictable. What’s loud to us here on the 6th floor can be nonexistent when we take the elevator down to street level and step outside. I wonder about this every time I experience it. But thinking on it now, it almost feels like Mexico City is reminding me that it’s better outside, among other people. People we may know, passing us on the street.

At some point, I told stories about how welcoming people are here, about how a restaurant opened around the corner a few years back, and that when we visited the first time, its owner and chef told us how we were always welcome, that this was our home. And how this welcoming embrace had been repeated by others we’ve met over time. I can’t possibly explain the web of coincidences tied to this in any way that makes sense. Even cutting it down to some specific examples will likely just be confusing. But I will try.

The most recent place this occurred was at Rubi, the cocktail bar we went to last night. The people there are fantastic. We had heard about this place from friends after discovering, to our surprise, that several new cocktail bars had opened in the area since we had left in November. This was one of them, and when we paid the bill and left after our first visit, one of the bartenders slipped us a note with the receipt, which I saved. It reads, “Welcome to Mexico! This is your home, ALWAYS!”

People matter. There is good food all over, terrific drinks, nice spaces or views, or whatever. But it’s always the people that can put some place over the top, or sink it forever. This was sweet, and they were fantastic. And then a week later we found ourselves back at Rubi, because you go where you feel welcome, I guess. Across from us at the bar–it’s ruby-shaped, so it has an unusual, triangular seating area–was a couple. And the woman looked really familiar to me, though I couldn’t place her. I mentioned it to my wife, and I finally asked the bartender who had left us that note if she knew who the woman was. Maybe we had seen them there.

She did know who the woman was, and she told me that she had likewise just asked about us. And just like that, introductions were made, and we discovered that she was a bartender at another of those new cocktail bars, this one called FORM+MATTER (FOMA), which is just two blocks from our apartment in Roma Norte. She hadn’t been our bartender the one time we had gone, but she did help us briefly. And that explained that, just a minor coincidence. We’ve since seen her several times, and her and some of the others there have shared notes with us on other places to try locally. Again, the people here are amazing.

We’ve now gone to Rubi three times with people I reached out to in January. The most recent, last night, was a couple we ran into originally at Café Tacobar, a favorite of ours, and a place we go at least once each week. We then ran into them coincidentally the next day at another restaurant that had been recommended to us by a friend we had met at Bolero Café, yet another local favorite of ours, when we had run into each other on the street. And that led to an invitation to an event and Condesa … and on and on it goes.

I wrote earlier about having met the son of the owner of Rubi and how amazing that was, and we ran into him again recently too. As with the couple from last night, it was a curious meeting of like minds, an instantaneous hitting off that I find unusual and yet increasingly common here. During that second time with him, he gave me a tour of the building, showing me the restaurant they owned next door, inside and out, and the speakeasy upstairs. A big part of that discussion was about the culinary school they also run there, and about the many chefs and restaurant owners who had graduated. I joked that I may know one of those people, as the discussion immediately reminded me of the owner/chef of that restaurant around the corner, the guy who first welcomed us to Mexico City in that uniquely Mexican way.

Well, he did graduate from that school, and the son of the owner of Rubi did know him. That restaurant owner now has two Michelin Guide recommendations to his credit, and has expanded into a bigger place across the street. We talked about how amazing that was, but more amazing to me is that we now run into that guy all the time, too. We’ve run into him on the street multiple times on this trip. We ran into him at that bagel shop. We ran into him at the little cocina economic we often eat lunch at. I was able to tell him that he makes two of the very best foods I’ve ever had in my life at his restaurant, and we’ve eaten at the new place three times already. So of course the son of the owner of the bar who also runs a culinary school knows the guy who owns the restaurant that’s around the corner from our place and … yeah. The mind boggles.

Last Thursday, we went to Gin Chan, the local sushi restaurant we likewise visit each week,and the sister of the owner, a friend who makes the cocktails there and is terrific, told us she had seen our recent photos from Rubi. She told us she knew the two bartenders there who we know there, naming them, including the woman who had written that note. Her take on these people was as positive as ours, and I mentioned the importance of people, how they were as key to our love of Rubi as she and the others at Gin Chan are to our love of that place. And she just smiled and nodded, like this was as obvious as it was wonderful. Which, of course, it is.

I feel like I’m forgetting parts of this, but I guess that’s a natural side effect of this vast, growing, and interconnected web of people and places. It’s like a fabric being woven into some design that’s not obvious at first. But as it comes together in time, the design starts to take shape and become familiar, and then obvious. And that shape is a community, groups of people living together or in close proximity, lives intersecting in more ways than I previously thought possible. It’s chaos and noise here. But it’s also home, and community, and people and something shared.

And we’ve booked our trip home. We had come here leaving it open-ended, knowing we had to come back to Pennsylvania by early May for a variety of scheduled events but putting off finalizing our place. But now we fly home May 3. I find myself not wanting to fly home on May 3. Or on any other day. But I will. We have things to do. And then we will come back. And then go home. And then come back again. The same old uncertainty. I came on this trip looking for answers, and to be fair, all of this contributes to my evolving understanding of what it is that I want from life.

So I guess I have some answers. But they always just seem to lead to more questions.