February 2026

The recent violence in Mexico was not close to us. But it was close enough for anxiety to peek around the corner and remind us of the fragility of life and peace. Friends texted to make sure that everyone was safe at home. The kids’ school and the university were online yesterday. The constant noise of central Puebla was, for one day, almost silent.

Yesterday felt far from my birthday last week when I stood in an ancient, ornate room, and my students sang:

Que linda esta la mañana
En que vengo a saludarte
Venimos todos con gusto
Y placer a felicitarte
El día en que tu naciste
Nacieron todas las flores . . .

How beautiful this morning is
Why have I come to greet you?
We all come with joy
And pleasure to congratulate you
On the day you were born
All the flowers were born. . .

The treats I brought sat on a heavy, wooden desk, and I felt so lucky to be with these amazing people, graduate students studying fields from political science, to architecture, to chemistry, to education. When I told them I was turning fifty, one student’s mouth literally dropped open. She is twenty-six; she doesn’t even believe she will ever be forty. And here I am.

What a lovely birthday. Simone and Marie made cards. Simone drew animals and bought candy to make a sign she presented to me in the morning. Langston cut out every single letter to make a Happy Birthday banner. We went out to dinner with Veronica and her son.

Meanwhile, many people walked around with ashes on their foreheads remembering the fragility of life, that we are made of dust and to dust we will return.

Having my fiftieth birthday on Ash Wednesday seems like metaphorical overkill. My birthday has only been on Ash Wednesday one other day in my life, the day I turned 39. I remember getting my six-year-old ready for elementary school, my four-year-old ready for preschool, and dropping my one-year-old off at day care before heading to work. On my way to work, a church offered “ashes to go,” so I rolled through and received drive-through ashes and a prayer. If I squint a little, my forties have been bordered by Ash Wednesdays. I’m delighted to be done with my forties and on to a new decade.

“My fifties were great,” my friend Carol told me. She is one day and a few decades older than I am. My mom says the same thing. Every age has its challenges. I cannot say that parenting teens and a preteen is continual joy. And aging intimidates me.

The streets of our area of Puebla are full of people; a grandpa holding the hand of a toddler, a mother and her adult daughter arm in arm, a gaggle of teenagers laughing. And when I see a bent old woman taking micro-steps, carrying groceries in one arm and holding a cane in the other, I think, what courage. All that my parents and friends at church have been through as they age seems to take such bravery and grace.

“Make him think,” says Wormwood, the experienced demon in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, “that he owns his time,” as he advises his mentee. (Disclaimer: I don’t have the book with me, and I’m fifty, so the quote could be from another book, or a poem, or a conversation. Who knows!) “Make him think that his time, his body, his home, are his, that he has earned them and owns them.”

Ash Wednesday, turning fifty, unrest in a country, these things give me a glimpse into the fact that nothing around us is ours, that every moment, every person, every leaf in the tree is a temporary gift, not mine at all.

When my kids work to make my birthday special, my colleagues take me out to a birthday lunch, and I get a video made by my best friend with many of you wishing me a happy birthday, sending love, these moments between the ashes are shining jewels. I am delighted. And grateful.

Our Sundays have gotten increasingly exciting. We miss our St. James United Methodist family and want to visit the Methodist Church in Puebla. But during our first month here, we met many new people, adjusted to a lot of new things, and we weren’t quite ready for a congregation.

Instead, we ventured to Parque Ecologico, only about a mile and a half away from our apartment. Many of the streets on Sunday are closed so that families can walk together, including the street circling the park which, when we arrived, was filled with runners and cyclists. We entered the park gate and found a walking path next to a cycling path.

A family on roller skates skimmed past us. On the grass, what looked like a church group cheered on children in the middle of a tug-of-war game. The tree-lined path took us down a hill, showing us the snow-capped Matlalcueitl (I think it was Matlalcueitl), one of the three main volcanoes surrounding Puebla.

We wandered to a little lake. “Look at the Mexican ducks,” Langston said.

“Langston,” I responded, “just because we are in Mexico, you don’t need to modify all your nouns with ‘Mexican.’”

He pulled out his phone to show me that the ducks were, indeed, the species called Mexican duck, which happen to be appropriately located here in Mexico.

We crossed a swinging rope bridge.

Scattered throughout the park were playgrounds and exercise areas. These exercise areas for grown-ups are common throughout our part of Puebla and are fun to use.

Visiting Parque Ecologico was just the right kind of worship for us in our first month here.

The historic center of Puebla has so many churches, beautiful churches. Every block seems to have another impressive church on the corner. The Templo Conventual de Nuestra Senora del Carmen, built in the 17^th century, towers on one side of our plaza. When my dad was visiting, he suggested that we try a service there.

The church does not have a website, and no hours were posted outside the gates. When my dad and Simone got fresh bread from the pandaria near our house, the gates were open, and they found a little sign with the service times.

The moment we walked through the huge wooden doors, we were immediately quieted by the majesty of the sanctuary. Gold edging highlight the elaborate cupolas in the ceiling. Enormous bouquets of white flowers and trailing greenery line the sides of the sanctuary beneath enormous paintings. In one painting, angels reached towards Jesus’ outstretched hand.

The pews were mostly full, but we found space near the back of the sanctuary.

Although we could not see the musician, a guitar played meditative cords from the front of the sanctuary. The church bells rang, and the rich aroma of incense wafted towards us.

I grabbed my jacket and smacked it over Marie’s face. She has had an anaphylactic reaction to incense, and, like most mothers, I take my role of keeping her alive very seriously. She whispered beneath the jacket, but this was not my time to budge. The incense lingered, and Marie kept trying to communicate something. I finally realized that I had given her a bloody nose. By now, the sanctuary was packed, and blood was streaming out of her nose. I put the jacket back over her face and tried to navigate between the people lining the edges of the sanctuary.

An abuela handed me a package of tissues. Gracias, muchas gracias.

Finally, her bloody nose abated, and we made it back to the pew for the prayers, the short powerful homily about the beauty of the word of the Lord, and the lifting up of the sacrament. At the front, Mary, holding Jesus in one arm, stretches out her other hand to us, her blue and white robes flowing around her. She is in a circular gold colonnade with both a crown and golden halo.

And all the mothers in the congregation, including myself, know she has suffered the worst a human can suffer and ask her, please, help me care for my children.

“I liked that service,” Simone said after we left the church and entered the plaza. “Even though I couldn’t understand all the Spanish, I knew what the priest was saying.” The beauty of a shared liturgy throughout time and space.  

“I didn’t,” Langston said, “I go to church to get spiritually fed. I can’t get spiritually fed if I don’t understand the sermon.”

“Well,” said my dad, “when you are my age, even when you can’t hear very well and don’t understand everything, there is something meaningful about being together in a beautiful place to worship. But I know we are in very different stages of life.”

I was going to write about our experiences at Iglesia La Vid Puebla with the exuberant welcome, the drums that somehow felt as if they beat right in my heart, and the giftedness of the preacher, but this post is getting very long. We, more specifically I, hope to visit the Methodist church this Sunday.

“Mom,” Simone said about a week after she started school, “I had a great day.”

We were at Mega, a supermarket next to her school, picking up some folders, paper towels, and milk.

“I met a boy,” she continued, her face shining, “who plays chess!”

She had, of course, come prepared for this exact situation. She and her new friend had been playing chess on their phones. The next day, Simone brought her chess board. While many of the kids at her new school had played chess online, not many had chess boards. She had to show them how to set up the board even though they knew how all the chess pieces move.

She has continued playing chess with friends at school. Apparently, a significant group is playing with enthusiasm.

“I went by the classroom where Simone was playing with her friends,” Marie told me last week, “and I wanted to tell all of them that chess is NOT the World Cup.”

Going to school in a new place in a different language is not easy. Some big feelings have been had. But all of them are saying “my friends” now to refer to some of the other kids at school. A few friends is all that I hope and pray for them.