Wednesday, December 27, 2023
My Grandpa Kimball wrote a book called One Silent Sleepless Night. It was about his thoughts on a long night after having major surgery in which he lost one vocal cord and part of another and than had an infection.
Last night was my silent sleepless night. Not because of surgery, but because we had our whole family crammed into one bedroom in the Ayala’s house. Betty and I and River were on the middle of a three-level bed. Alicia and Anahi were above us, and Kimball was on the pull-out mattress below us. Ian was on an air mattress next to Kimball.
River NEVER sleeps still when she’s with us. She rolls and fidgets and she likes to grab my love handles. That is not conducive to sleep. Alicia is also what you might call a mobile sleeper. I think she rolls over every 10 minutes or so. Kimball has central sleep apnea that comes and goes, but when it comes he breaths in, holds his breath, and then lets it out in a creaky moan that might last 10-15 seconds. And Ian is allergic to pretty much everything, so his throat is scratchy at night, and he (in his sleep) scratches at this throat from the inside -- like trying to hack something up.
With all of that going on, I thought maybe I should put in my noise canceling AirPods, but then I was afraid that if there was an emergency in the night, I wouldn’t realize it. So I just laid there, fending off River’s attacks, and waiting for the morning.
Oh, and I’m sure all the Coca Cola isn’t helping either.
When the morning came, Vale invited Kimball and I out with him to get supplies for supplies for breakfast. We drove to a little corner store to get totopos (extra thick tortilla chips) and veggies and queso for chilaquiles. Martha is a great chef, and her chilaquiles are different than Betty’s, but at least just as good. I ate way too much of those, along with more of that super spicy salsa macha. The problem is that my own plate is heaped up big, and the kids’ plates are as well. But they almost never finish their food (except Kimball -- he ALWAYS finishes), so I end up eating all of the leftovers from the kids.
Shortly after breakfast, Ian came running in the house to tell me that he’d found some cool birds in the trees outside. They were yellow-headed blackbirds, which are a bit bigger than the red-winged ones we have back home. I think it’s wild that their song sounds really similar to each other.
After the Christmas festivities of last week, and a day of travel, I was falling behind again in the blog, so I took some time today to get some writing done.
In the afternoon, we drove up to a lookout over Hermosillo called El Cerro de la Campana (The Hill of the Bell). It’s called that because there is a rock that if you strike it with another rock, it sounds like a bell. The views of the city are really great, and the kids had fun scrambling around on the rocks. We also paid to have a drone shot taken of us :)
After that, we went down to the cathedral to look around. The kids got delicious street corn and homemade ice cream. I walked around and took some pictures.
Now a word about Betty’s father. One of the purposes of this trip is to see if Betty can learn anything else about her father. He was not married to her mother, and Betty only ever saw him a couple of times each year when he would visit her and her brother. He was a much older man, and she was mostly just scared by him. He passed away in the 1980s, when Betty was still a little girl, and Betty has had only limited contact with his other family, and they have given her only limited information about him. As you can imagine, it’s a delicate situation for them.
Betty actually attended her father’s funeral and burial, but the last time we came looking for his grave, they told us that he had been moved. Betty heard that maybe he had been moved to the cathedral, so we went looking. It’s very difficult because inside the cathedral there are niches where people’s ashes can be stored, but there are tons of them, and many of them are high up on the walls and can’t be seen well. We looked for him, but didn’t find him. I asked in the church offices if they could tell me if he was buried there, but they were very cold and told me that they could only give out that kind of information to the direct family. It was a bit frustrating.
But the cathedral was still beautiful.
They had a big bounce house in the plaza, and River told me that she wanted to go and make some friends, so she and Ian went to play for a while. It was really fun for them until some little girl started beating up on River. That ended that activity. And the kids had fun looking for birds -- that is until just as the sun was setting thousands of birds all started to congregate in the trees in front of the cathedral. Seriously, huge flocks of yellow-headed blackbirds and grackles would darken the sky like thunderclouds and their ear-splitting cacophony felt like it was working its way into our brains. It was like something from a horror movie. I thought it was awesome, but the kids were pretty done with the cathedral at that point.
On our way back to the Ayala’s house, we had a memorable moment.
Following Vale in the Sequoia is like playing a real-life video game. He has a little gray car, and Hermosillo is FULL of little gray cars. They all look the same. It’s like one of those shell games you sometimes see on the streets where you have to follow the ball that is hidden under one of the shells. Vale is weaving in and out of traffic, and I’m trying to follow as best as I can in this big tank.
So we’re following along, and he stops in front of this gated community. We’re thinking “Oh, he must need to grab something from here,” so we pull in behind him. He goes past the gate, and we try to follow, but the barrier arm thingy comes down almost on top of us. The guard says “be careful!” I tell him: “We’re with them,” and he lets us through. We follow the car through the neighborhood, and it stops in front of a house. Then a lady gets out who is NOT Vale or Martha. We had lost the Ayalas and been following the wrong car. I rolled down my window and apologized to the confused looking couple, and we all had a good laugh.
Valentín’s daughter, Valentina, was in the car with us, and she told us that the couple we had been following must have been terrified to see a big black SUV following them. She told us that car like ours (minus the top carrier) would be labeled a raptaniños (kidnapper) by kids in Hermosillo, and if she had been followed like we had followed that poor couple, she would have been certain the narcos were after her.
My kids looked at me and said sarcastically: “But Mexico is totally safe, dad. Right?”
Valentina didn’t help my cause as she proceeded to tell the kids that she basically lives her life in fear. She also taught us all about how to identify the narcos by their clothes and the cars they drive.
Thanks, Valentina ... thanks a lot ;)
After that adventure, we went to the church for a big carne asada. It’s like what we would do for a barbecue, except it felt totally different. First of all, the men set up and lit a grill with mesquite wood on it. As that burned down, the women got to work chopping veggies. Then the men put tomatoes and peppers on the gill and let them toast for a while. After that it was the meat, which in Sonora they say is the secret to the amazing carne asada tacos here. No spices necessary -- just a little bit of salt. It took quite a while to get all of those veggies roasted and worked down to a salsa, and then the meat went on, and it took some time as well. But in the end, we had some of the best tacos I’ve ever had. And we had all done it together.
The other great thing that happened at the carne asada was we met up with Valentín’s brother, Daniel Ayala, his wife Brianda, and their three boys Hyrum (who recently returned from an LDS mission) and Heber and Helaman (teenagers). And their daughter Sara (9 years old). They immediately connected super well with our kids, and within no time Sarita and River were running around and chatting. River also almost immediately fell madly in love with these Ayala boys, whom she now just calls: “the boys with the hair.” You can practically see the little hearts coming out of her eyes when she looks at them, and they love her.
After filling our bellies with amazing tacos, we all headed back to the Cerro de la Campana to see the city lights and to visit more. The kids had fun scrambling around on the rocks. Even Kimball, who usually hates climbing around on rocks, got into the action and had a great time.
It was just an awesome day!
