A jetliner crashing into the Pentagon.
One divorce.
3. LIGHT
Thy gift sets a spark within us and we are raised up.
Our souls ablaze, we walk forward on the path.
It was the end of August. I had developed the annoying habit of brooding over the storms of volcanic ash that covered Mexico City with thick gray dust during the last spring that I lived there. In those days, when we were preparing to move from D.F. to D.C. — that is, from the Distrito Federal to the District of Columbia — I thought that the ashes were some kind of message from on high, urging me to get out. Now I understand that they were rather more admonitory in nature, but this realization only comes now, as I sit here writing, sketching out such a pleasant yet constricted scene, which has nothing to do with the disjointed flow of reality. Telling a story means tracing your finger through the ashes left by the fires of experience: the touchstone of all tragedy is our inability to remember the future.
Midsummer in the District of Columbia brings some of the most intense, sweltering weather in the northern hemisphere. Between July and August there are days when you can’t even wear rubber-soled shoes because they start to melt the moment you set foot on the pavement. Unlike in other latitudes, the first whisper of autumn comes not with the crisp northerly breezes of October but instead with the heavy rain clouds left by hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of August and beginning of September.
That morning we decided to take a bicycle ride down to the airport. It makes for a quiet family outing. It’s been years since weekends have felt the least bit restfuclass="underline" running the gauntlet of all the arbitrary, obligatory leisure activities here is even more exhausting than the hardest days at work. However, the ride out to the National Airport has its rewards. Cyclists are treated to a lengthy stretch along the banks of the Potomac. There is also the intensely strange experience of picnicking in the park that the airplanes fly over just before they land. The park’s meadow is so close to the landing field that the planes fill the sky as they descend, drowning out all other sound as they pass within a stone’s throw.
The clouds looked like solid steel, but as the seasons change they frequently remain that way for days on end without raining a drop. We set out around ten in the morning and followed our normal route: from the house to the playground around the corner, and from there along the path to Rock Creek Park, the spine of the city. There we stopped so that the kids could climb and swing and bounce.
It hadn’t rained for several weeks, so the benches where my wife and I sat were covered with a fine layer of grit, an automatic reminder of the ashes from Popocatépetl in Mexico City seven years earlier. I mentioned this to Cathy but she told me that those ashes had a different consistency, with larger granules. She remembered when they first covered the windows of our apartment in Coyoacán; she had tried to brush them off with her hand but they stuck to her fingers. Everything’s like that in Mexico, she said: tougher, harder to shake off.
Although it was hot and the humidity was outrageous — as always, in the summer — a southerly breeze made the second leg of the trip pleasant as we cycled to the zoo. We rode along in quasi-military formation: Cathy in the lead keeping an eye out for any obstacles, then our two kids on their mountain bikes, and me covering the rear of the pack to make sure no one got left behind.
We ate lunch at an open-air restaurant. Before continuing our ride, Cathy and the children visited the primate exhibit. As usual, I stayed outside to have a smoke: the chimpanzees and gorillas in their glass boxes reminded me too much of myself: despite being in exile, they lived a better life, now safer and better fed than in the miserable forests where they’d been captured. When we got back on the bike paths, the sky was already painted like an ominous stage scrim. The breeze was picking up, turning into wind. We considered the situation while we struggled to help the kids strap on their bike helmets. Since we were already closer to the river than home, we figured it was better to keep going. If necessary, we could always take the Metro back from downtown.
The truth is that we continued our outing only at my insistence: Cathy’s memory of how the ashes from Popoca-tépetl clung to our hands when we tried to clean them off made me think of my grandmother — her ashes were the stickiest I’ve ever encountered. I felt for some reason that riding into the wind would cleanse my conscience of them.
My father’s family, from whom I surely inherited my habit of constantly moving around — from one house, country, or spouse to another — has deep roots in the teaching profession: to this day, many of my relatives live likewise peripatetic lives, off in countries where producing or reproducing knowledge is actually a well-respected job. Several years ago, my paternal grandmother made the stupid mistake of dying suddenly, and on Holy Thursday eve, in the rather remote village of Autlán. Because one of her sons, and several grandchildren, were unable to make travel arrangements in time to attend the funeral Mass, it was decided to postpone the interment of her ashes in our family crypt until the following Monday. I managed to arrive on Saturday afternoon, just in time for the cremation. I also got to witness the very strange moment when my father and my uncles, after arguing about whether it was better to leave the ashes in the car until the ceremony began, or else bring them inside the house, finally decided on the latter. With a discomfort bordering on the ridiculous, they placed the urn on the sideboard by the table as if it were going to preside one last time over a family meal. It was decided by everyone that the youngest of us cousins would sleep in the house. Not having grown up there, we wouldn’t find it so depressing to spend the night and stand the final watch.
It’s not often that my family has so many relatives gathered under one roof, as we were that night under our grandmother’s. The mournful atmosphere in the room, still so heavy when we sat down at the table, receded after the first couple of whiskeys, especially because more relatives kept knocking on the door, sometimes simply to pay their respects and sometimes because they were just arriving from the bus station. Our vigil didn’t exactly turn into a party, not quite, but considering both the occasion and the fact that the ashes of its guest of honor were in attendance, the night was surprisingly relaxed.
Around midnight, or maybe one in the morning, my father and his brothers said goodnight, and headed over to our relatives’ houses to sleep. It was then that my sister, Nena, raised her eyebrows at me with a conspiratorial look. She glanced toward the sideboard where my grandmother’s ashes had stood watch over the excessive number of cocktails drunk in her honor.
The door had barely closed behind the older mourners when all of us cousins who had stayed behind made an urgent — and frankly ridiculous — dash for the urn. We all held back a moment until Nena herself, the devious ringleader of our riskiest childhood expeditions, stepped forward. She placed the urn on the table and removed the lid, revealing the deep, terrible void within. Suspended in a hallowed silence, we reverently gathered our heads around the receptacle as Nena reached her hand inside. She withdrew a fistful of our grandmother’s remains and held them on her outstretched palm. They were not, as we had imagined, like the fine dust left behind after burning wood or paper; they were shiny little black stones, like pellets of obsidian, and we all crowded together to touch them. It was then that we discovered just how sticky they were: once you had some of Grandma’s ashes on your fingertips there was no way to remove them. We ended up shaking and brushing off our hands over the urn — with pretty lousy aim — and at last had to remove the tablecloth and toss it into the garbage with my poor grandmother stuck all over it. Upon returning to D.C. I told Cathy all about it. In a rather serious voice, she told me that when she died I’d better not invite Nena to her funeral.