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Published January 2001
I just have to tell you....I am moving to Ajijic.
I am going thru a metamorphisis I can hardly believe myself. After being attached to my family, single mom for many of those years -- now they're grown and gone and doin' good on their own.
And I'm ready to make some changes in my life.
A friend and I used to sit and chat about Mexico...she was approaching her retirement too. She mentioned San Miguel de Allende and Merida.
Long story short...I began to research as I prepared for full retirement. And one month after my retirement, I had a flight booked and 10 days in Ajijic at the Hacienda Aldama, John McWilliams and Earl French, being our hosts for the time.
I love to walk and walk I did. And when walking got tiring, I took the bus....all classes....enjoyed every one....the 3rd class busses are so individual..each driver's own stamp on "his" bus...his music...his decorations...and so on. I sat in the thermal waters at Villa Bordeaux....I went to mass at the church in Jocotepec the last night of the fiesta patronales...indeed we arrived without realizing it for the last two nights of Ajijic's fiesta patronales. I loved it. Every rocket. Every band.
I was getting hooked. I had made friends with a gal in a real estate office there over the internet....our emails were fun and friendly and it turned out we really like each other. We spent a very very good time with my new friends doing things and going places we would not have done or seen otherwise. And I began to look at rentals.
 I even fell and sprained BOTH of my ankles in the middle of the main street in Chapala....but ..... altho I quieted down for a day...I wrapped them and the next day I walked some more. I told my traveling companion later that my ankles slowing me down some were the reason the place that I found to rent happened. And if perhaps we meet, and have a limonada together one day perhaps, say at Los Playas on the plaza....I will have a chance to tell you the funny and enchanting details of THAT little story. Sufficeth to say, I found MY place in Ajijic....put a deposit on it....and flew home to tell my family what I had done....and how I would be leaving in about a month or so.
I had not read your article until tonite....stumbled across it as I was researching on the net for information about good Mexican road map.
When you said you were from the Pacific NW...and how you felt about the weather....I loved it. I had been having this little inner voice tell me the same thing when I would hear lakeside residents make some kind of, albeit fairly minor, complaint about the weather.....something would always tell me......what YOU said. *smile*
I got to see a play while I was there at Lakeside Little Theater. What fun! Years ago I was in the Portland Civic Theater. I was mostly just a prop girl....but I tried out for a part in Oklahoma! I sang the song that one girl character sings...."I'm Just A Girl Who Cain't Say No!" Lord, did I know then that it was going to be a principle for my LIFE? LOL
Well.....when I read the review in El Ojo de Lago of Karen Blue's book, Midlife Mavericks....that was one of my day's goals....find and buy that book....which of course I read was on sale there in the Plaza...at the little travel book shop.
I still haven't finished the book. I've been too busy sorting and packing. What goes inside my little 1986 Toyota Camry ..... goes with me. What doesn't....goes away pretty much. So my piles are "I think I can't live without this." --- "I'm giving this to ....." ---- and "This goes to...." bags and boxes everywhere...and a thing in my head that says....I am going to make it.
I have a man, and he is totally behind me on my adventure. We can't be together right now as he has responsibilities to elders in his family that he must currently meet. But his support and encouragement mean a lot to me, especially in the face of the difficulty of reconciling my decision with my children, who are, of course, the concerned parents of my grandchildren.
Mom is really leaving home.
Home meaning ..... home base; i.e. the Portland, Oregon area ..... as my children and I have all lived near each other in the Portland area....since they have gone out on their own.
So it's really Mom who's shaking it loose.
And frankly.....just loving every minute of it.
Thank you for sharing what you did. I look forward to my days to come.
Marilyn Geary-Symons
Oregon
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