« Read Part One

Rounding the arc of the plaza I stopped at a small street market selling produce, straw goods, copper pieces, and birds. The captive birds caught along the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro were often sold at this marketplace, the Plaza Chica, by bird vendors and for the enjoyment of those who, in makeshift cages, liked to harness small hearts, colored feathers and morning song.

The songbirds reminded me of Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley of Kenya. My guide, Jack, an admirer of birds and amateur ornithologist, who loved his roasted meats, would often use his last few shillings to buy songbirds caught near the banks of Naivasha and the surrounding forests. They were sold on the main road that led out of town, and he would buy as many as he could afford for no other reason than to let them go.

He worked as a safari guide and called all songbirds CAN-are-ies. I remember him pointing to a tiny yellow bird hidden in the tall thicket of the bush. "CAN-are-ie," he whispered. I didn't recognize the name. But then I realized his CAN-are-ies, were my can-ARIES. He was a big man who loved small birds.

Travel and intense sun had stirred my appetite. As I was new to the village I was unfamiliar with its many outdoor cafés that dotted the plaza, but it was a single potted plant of fragrant white blossoms that drew me inside a courtyard off the main callé. The smell of citrus blossom was seductive and a handwritten placard hanging on a stone wall read "comida 50 pesos."

The restaurant was in the courtyard of an old hacienda that had sadly fallen into disrepair. The hacienda's crumbling stone walls, the columns dark with stains from the damp and cooking oils, and the chipped turquoise floor tiles, only hinted of the grandeur that once prevailed. One of the stone walls was dedicated to a dozen cages filled with birds. The splash of color of the songbirds looked like a rainbow that had been trapped in so many wooden boxes and nailed to the crumbling gray stone.

From upstairs came smells from the open kitchen that faced the inner courtyard and where eight tables sat ready; only one taken. The comforting aromas of simmering chicken soup, ground corn, pungent garlic, and ripe fruit were as intoxicating as the tangerine blossoms and I couldn't imagine eating anywhere else.

There was no menu, only the offering of the day, much of what I had inhaled before catching eye of the daily special; guacamole con totopos, sopa de pollo, enchiladas verdes, and gelatin de leche, a Mexican Jell-O of sorts, flavored gelatin made with milk. This version had been filled with fruit cocktail and cut into cubes of primary colors, like giant confetti, and splashed with sweet condensed milk. A pitcher of papaya water sat on a sideboard.

As I made my way to a table I nodded and smiled to the old man in the wheelchair and his wife, strangely enough the only other customers. The stack of dirty dishes on the nearby sideboard confirmed that they were well into their comida.

From the corner of my eye, I watched as the wife patiently fed each spoonful to her husband. They never spoke. He looked straight ahead as he chewed, his eyes alive, vibrant and belying his broken and motionless body. He concentrated on the wall of captive songbirds perched on fragile sticks or a single branch placed in their tiny boxes; for the most part silent, except when one would sing, a calling out, hoping only to hear another bird's reply, that it was not alone.

The man knew the birds and the birds knew the man.

When I first saw the old man being wheeled down the few streets of the plaza, I felt my body tighten as I remembered all too well the pain I'd seen from my past; the suffering of lifeless limbs and scraping bone being maneuvered in a wheelchair until the body disappeared. I braced myself against an old wooden door and forced myself to look up and admire the draping of pale blue plumbago from a mustard yellow window box.

The proprietress, short and narrow except for the soft, swollen expanse of her waist, sweating brow and a stained plaid apron that smelled of garlic, brought my meal, course after course, each better than the last for no reason other than I was hungry. There was nothing neither fancy nor different about the taste, only that it was simply seasoned and pure comfort food; just the right amount of garlic, tomatillos and chopped tomatoes, the chicken, tender, the sopa savory and soothing, and just what I needed at that moment.

The chilled papaya water washed down each course and prepared my mouth for the next. When dessert came and the bowl of gelatin set before me, I smiled. I looked over at the old man and his empty bowl. The cubes of multi colored gelatin exploded in my mouth like fireworks of my childhood memories. The taste was bittersweet.

I always believed that with time I would grow a thicker skin. That, with age and experience and all the trials inevitable with life, I would hold steady against the smallest of tragedies. But instead, my skin had become thinner. Experience does not necessarily bestow a stiff upper lip. But rather, it can make one open to everything, like wind through bare limbs. I am nearly diaphanous. I wondered if life would be far easier if the old man had known nothing other than his chair; if the caged birds had gone straight from the nest to the confines of a wooden box. What we know is what we know. It is how we gauge joy, love, loss, and indifference.

If they had known nothing but confinement, how then, could they know of or miss their freedom? But I wondered too, if late at night, early morning when all sounds fell silent on ancient cobbled streets and along the shores of the milky lake, when even the spirits slept who guarded the thin barrier between life and death, if the old man and the caged birds didn't dream, still, of running along the fecund banks, and taking flight at daybreak across a sweep of treetops and volcanoes.

I finished my Jell-O and glanced over at the old man. His gaze had not shifted. Silent, the birds hung on the wall. One particular songbird, a soft pale green, who had called out only to affirm that he was not alone, seemed to be looking in my direction. Like Jack, I wanted to open their cage doors and set them free. I thought of offering to buy the songbirds from the proprietress, but I knew that just as soon as the cages were emptied, they'd be filled again. Here, there was no magic.

When I left, I was full and heavy hearted. I inhaled deeply the white tangerine blossoms and walked into the bright light of the plaza. I didn't know whether to head back to my room and weep for all those in captivity, forever fated to lives of confinement, or hike the long road out of town that wrapped around the lake and surrounding islands, cradled by dense stands of oak, cedar and pine, and farther up still, the embrace of volcanic mountains that kept watch over the lake.

I decided to walk.

A native Californian, Jan Baumgartner is a full-time expat living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her background includes scriptwriting, comedy writing for the No. California Emmy Awards, and travel writing for The New York Times. She has worked as a grant writer for the non-profit sector in the fields of academia, AIDS, and wildlife conservation for NGO's in the U.S. and Africa. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous online and print publications including the NYT, Bangor Daily News, SCOOP New Zealand, Wolf Moon Journal, Media for Freedom Nepal, and BanderasNews in Mexico.

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