Travels with my Grandmother and Mom

☀ A contribution for @unkool
 #unkoolsubmission

☀ Issue 22
☀ Sight


I will confess...I am a rather stationary person. However, the summer before I started middle school I had a chance to travel with my mother and grandmother to Guadalajara. Mexico. At the time, I lived in a rather rural part of Texas which is vast with the lower prairie of the states. So, this City, on the west coast of Mexico, was the the largest city I had ever traveled too. And of course, I didn't know the language.

Thankfully, my mother did, but I'm not sure that was a plus, since she was so nervous to be with my grandmother that she made the most of the mini-bar in the hotel room.

Oh, the food was much finer than what I was used too, of Tex-Mex fare in a border town. Fresh fruit and lush ingredients in this uptown place. Maybe, even too good for me. It was my first encounter to eat with strangers. Many of the places we visited were packed with people, so you squeezed in where you could. My first time to be felt up from behind. I was definitely a fish out of water.

The city was so urban with smells I was not used too. Even on the street, one had to jump to the walls of buildings, hoping a  Taxi didn't run into you. Yes, the streets made me dizzy. 

It was my first time to witness rooftop homes, massive open markets that were layer upon layer in an open building. 

Oh, those scary moments!

1. Getting lost in the market and unsure if it were a monkey, or a strange screeching bird, after me. And were those seeds in the Watermelonaide, or flies on the watermelon?

2. My mom playing with a mariachi singer's hat. Yes, she was such a flirt. Even this Latin didn't know what to think.

3. Taking the bus with my grandmother, sitting with locals. Unsure where we were going. But leave it to Granny, to find the murals to stand in front of, and adore for hours on end... of the blood shed history, from once upon time in Mexico. 

4. My mom almost lost it with a deaf teenage boy who was selling magazines. She was ready to call the cops on him. It took me forever to persuade her, not too. It was possibly the only employment he had.  

5. On the way back to the airport, for a moment I thought I might be left to my own devices at a gas station. When I looked at the tree out back, I thought I saw a dead dog being skinned.  One more thing to give me the shivers.

Honestly, I don't travel much. Usually, by car, these days. Yet, perhaps I'm the only one looking for those sure real moments, thanks to my mom and grandmother.