This part of Central Mexico is awash in flowers on this day. It’s Candelaria in San Miguel de Allende. February 2nd is a festival that both honors the part of the year that is ending and looks ahead to what is imminent. On the Island, we look to see if the marmot saw its shadow. We get ready for Seedy Saturdays. Here in San Miguel de Allende, this week is a festival that celebrates both the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of Spring. Seeds for the first crops are blessed with great reverence in the many beautiful Catholic churches. So is the annual candle supply.
Parades of pious old women in their rebozo shawls and face-cracking smiles descend on the Cathedral. They clutch toy dolls representing the baby Jesus, and tenderly lay them on the altar with a deep bow. These little Princes have been gently lifted from their nativity bowers that dominate every family home at Christmas. Dressed in the finest silk baby-baptism clothes with sweaters and bonnets lovingly knit just for them, they are blessed and kissed before they are put away till next year’s Christmas season.
The biggest event for the large foreign community that lives here is the gigantic plant display and sale that goes on all week. Every flower and plant imaginable fills the shady community park to be admired by the crowds and sold in truckloads to replenish all the rooftop terraces and cool patios of the town. It all takes place under the bluest of crystal cloudless skies. By mid-day, all the sweaters are peeled off and the temperature feels like a perfect June day on the Island.
I’ve rented a small apartment in the middle of San Miguel de Allende. For three months I am exploring new ways to be creative, while volunteering as a teacher in a rural area not too far from town. My husband Ed has stayed home, leaving me alone to experience the possibilities that exist for those not attached in a couple. It is a different experience. The best part is the easy way that women make friends with other women. We seem to “get it” that there is no time to waste in posing. It amazes me that even over minutes of shared time waiting for a concert to begin, or a street corner encounter, or a “let’s go for coffee” invitation, the stories we share are so similar.
In this Mexican Shangra La, solo women seem to be having the most fun. And so am I. Fun for me means learning how to meditate after more than 60 years of a jumpy mind. Fun is figuring out the simpler moves of zumba in a crowd of other laughing people. Fun is an afternoon sitting on a rooftop soaking up the sun and the view and finding new angles for my writing. The playful and creative woman inside me has been banging at my interior door clamoring to get out. San Miguel has given her a key. And Candelaria reminds me of the joy of new beginnings.
The way I see it, any community that can dress up it’s dolls to take them to Church, and that can create acreages of flowers to sell or just admire, is a community I want to live in.
Janet Dunnett
Janet Dunnett has lived in Qualicum Beach since she retired from the Federal Government seven years ago. Now she likes to write and have tea with friends, often talking to them about how to create a better world.
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