Hospitality, Mexican Style

During my second week here (I’m clinging on to this chronology lark…), Mike, being lovely, invited me to his house. I met his wife, Norma, who is Mexican and vivacious and elegant and generous, properly for the first time, and his younger son.

My expectations were modest – dinner, pleasant conversation, that sort of thing. A nice quiet evening. And I was so very wrong, in the nicest possible way.

It seems that your average Mexican household is a bit like the Mad Hatter’s tea party – everyone changing places all the time, and celebrating an unbirthday every day. People drop in on each other all the time without warning, and there is always plenty of food and tequila ready.

When I arrived, their next door neighbour was installed at the dining table that is clearly the hub of the house, a sweet lady with a sweet face. She disappeared for a brief interval to see to her children, but plenty more guests arrived in her absence: neighbours, friends, and a subset of Norma’s enormous family (her brother is called Plutarco, Plu for short… how great is that?). And of course, whenever anyone arrived or departed, they kissed and/or shook hands with everyone – I was cottoning on to this by now, and ceasing to feel self-consciously like the greeting line at a wedding reception.

It’s a bit overwhelming in such circumstances not speaking any Spanish, but also there were my boss boss David and an Australian girl who was back visiting Mexico, having lived nearby with her uncle for a while. Anything and everything was talked about in English (in a motley collection of accents) and Spanish, cubes of cheese and handfuls of popcorn were gobbled, tequila was drunk, and at some point there was food – which some ate and some didn’t, and the conversation flowed on.

The next Friday, I was invited over again, this time for a bit of a party (read: more people, more tequila, more music, later into the night). Apparently Friday nights at Mike’s used to be a bit of a legend, back when his old band was still playing. This Friday, Mike, and Victor (djembe player in the old band; Puerto Rican who’s lived everywhere and never stops grinning) were getting together with the catering manager from the centre to try out playing together.

Half of the guests I’d met the last time, and greeted me like a friend even though I could barely say a word to them. They included neighbours, Norma’s old college friends and one of their mothers, more friends, and Norma’s family – her cousin Tere who is now my Spanish teacher and her daughter Veronica who speaks frighteningly good English with an accent like someone in a teen movie; her brother Plu who I’d met the previous visit; and another brother/cousin whose name escapes me but who I’d met at his Italian restaurant. When Mike says Norma is related to half of Texcoco, I’m beginning to suspect he’s not joking.

Norma, Tere and Veronica were kind about including to me and talking to me in English, but when it all got too much trying to follow the conversation in Spanish, I went down to the basement and listened to the boys playing – lots of things I didn’t or vaguely recognised, rock and roll and various kinds of ballad, with a sprinkling of things like REM and the Beatles. They might’ve been playing in a garage to an audience of one, but these boys were gonna rock regardless.

As the pumpkin hour approached I began to think about going home, being an old and tired fogey. Until someone said that if I stayed, Lilia (one of Norma’s friends) would sing some traditional Mexican songs. Of course, I couldn’t say no to that.

It was amazing. I didn’t understand the songs, but they were electric nonetheless. They seemed to me to be full of the passionate, maudlin nostalgia that seems to be a common thread of folk music, the love and heartbreak and tenderness. Not all of the songs were sad – some were love songs, some more rousing. Lilia has a deep voice, powerful and resonant, and often everyone else would join in, sometimes quietly, sometimes lustily. And at some point Norma started handing out a collection of shakers and other percussion instruments, and the whole wide circle around the table began picking out the different beats of each song. They were clearly the songs that everyone knows and always has, kept as snugly inside them as the alphabet or the names of ordinary things.

When the party broke up I got a lift with Smiling Victor in his bizarre red jeep – the windows are done up with zips. Knowing all the beer and tequila he’d consumed I was kinda holding on tight all the way, but he chatted away remarkably cogently. Nonetheless I was relieved when I made it home alive – the perfect end to a remarkable evening.