Wham!

I headed down to Bahia Kino on November second, Día de los Muertos in Mexico. Day of the Dead.

I went that day because my dear friend Roberto’s daughter, Lupita, had recently died, and I wanted to be there to go to the cemetery with him and his family.

I made it, settled in quickly, and barely noticed the kiss. The kiss of a mosquito.

I’d planned to spend a few relaxing weeks because October had been rough. While walking my dog, she lunged and managed to launch me right off my feet. I’d landed face down in the middle of the street. Bruised and sore, I’d limped home with her and eventually discovered nerve damage in my knee. Unfortunately it still remains.

She looks guilty, doesn’t she?

The following week my partner of two-and-a-half years and I split up (we remain friends). It was time.

So it was I went to Kino to walk, to reflect. To attempt to strengthen my knee and stimulate the nerve so it would relax and quit bothering me. To consider what my life was going to be now that I was single.

I spent the first week settling in, cleaning, repairing electrical problems and dealing with a few other issues. This, after my evening in the cemetery with Roberto and family.

The following Monday I felt a bit off. Within a few hours I feared I had the flu. But I never get the flu, at least not since about 1977 or 1978. That night I knew it was worse than flu, and blood tests eventually proved me right: dengue fever. That mosquito kiss the afternoon I’d arrived.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito – unfortunately it’s in the States, too.

I have never been so sick, so sick I briefly thought I was going to die. Fever, and I have no idea how high, but sweat ran off my body as though I were in the shower. Headache and pain behind my eyes that was unimaginable. Dizziness. Unable to do a thing.

I eventually left Kino when the fever broke and I could once again stand without fear of falling over. I took the longer, flatter way home. That route has a wide lane I could pull off on should the dizziness return. Better and safer than the twisty, narrow mountain road I usually take.

When I spoke to my trailer partners after I got home, both indicated they would like to sell the trailer and I agreed. It wasn’t so much due to the dengue, though of course that factored in. There were many reasons. Again, it was time.

So. Wham! Falling on my face, leaving me with nerve damage. Wham! My partner and I breaking up. Wham! Dengue. And then wham! Deciding to sell the trailer, the place that has been a second home for me for several years, in Kino, which was my second home for years before that.

Then wham-wham! Someone bought the trailer almost immediately!

I feel not like doors are opening and closing but as though I am in a revolving door that keeps revolving into new and different places, different challenges. A continual door, but each time I go around, everything changes.

So I returned to Kino. The cold weather had killed the mosquitos, though I am now immune to dengue. That kind, anyway (there are three other kinds). Note: I recently found out the immunity is only for about four months.

I was packing up. Settling up. Moving out.

But I took the opportunity to walk the beach many times, attempting to slowly build up some of the energy and endurance and muscle tone I had lost in the last two months. I only hope I can manage to do so. I took my walking stick for the beach. For walking in town, the cane I had to buy when the dizziness was so awful I feared falling without it.

Yep. My cane’s purple.

It is incredibly hard to leave this place, to leave this trailer, to leave Roberto and his family who have thoroughly adopted me. To leave Virginia and Bucho, another Mexican family that adopted me. To leave my friends here in the park. Leave the sea.

And the estuary.

And the turtle tagging expeditions.

But again, it is time.

Now that we will no longer have the trailer, I am more free to do other things. For years I have always gone to Kino (five or six times each winter for up to three weeks at a time) because I figure I’m paying for it so ought to use it. Now I can go elsewhere. Where? I don’t know yet. But go I will.

Dawn, from inside the trailer.

It was countdown to departure. I hopped in my car to drive over and visit with Roberto, and wham! A physical wham. Someone backed into my car, destroying the front left side, destroying the headlighs, ripping out the tank for window washer fluid.

In short, my car was not drivable.

Thankfully, the man immediately acknowledged his culpability and he even knew the man who had the body shop – he’d just had the back end of his car pained two days previously.

He held the loose parts of my car so I could get it out of the park driveway (yep, hadn’t made it more than 100 feet from my trailer). Then he and a friend went to get Denver, the auto body man.

Denver shook his head when he saw the mess. But the perp, as I’ll call him, had plenty of cash, thankfully, and Denver has repaired the car. The good news, I guess, is I was stuck in Kino for a few extra days. I am leaving in a beautiful car.

But now it’s time for goodbyes.

Goodbye good knee, I will miss you. Goodbye partner, I will miss you too. Goodbye Kino. I will miss so very much. Dengue aftermath? Good riddance!