Why I Let My 15-Year Old Out Until 3 A.M.

So Saturday night I woke up at 3 am and realized my girls, aged 15 and 17, were not home.

Carlos - "Are they supposed to be?"

"Carla, yes. Sean is spending the night at Michelle's."

"Think she's at Michelle's yet?"

"Quien sabe."

First, I said a Hail Mary and then a prayer to the angels, to my dude, Michael especially. "Archangel, protector, please make sure my girls and their friends are safe."

Behind my closed eyes, I saw two large white wings folding around the girl group. The picture of the girls was peaceful, tranquil. I knew they were fine.

I got out of bed and made a phone call to Sean, age 15. They were just leaving the Mint, a downtown dance club. Yes, a bar. They were all going, Carla included, to Michelle's to spend the night.

"Stay in a group!" I said.
"Yes," Sean said. "Mom, (exasperated) we're fine!"

I know. If you are a parent in the United State of American reading this you are horrified, scandalized and doubt my parenting skills. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In San Miguel de Allende, teens go to bars. There is probably some law on the books saying they can't, but that law is waived every weekend if the teen at the door is good-looking and well-dressed enough. My kids, ages 15 and 17 love to go to upscale clubs with major sound systems.  It's about being with their friends and dancing, they insist. Plus, I know they don't drink, and the kids in their crowd who drink do so with restraint. In other words, getting falling down drunk is exceedingly uncool.  "Mom," says Sean. "You can always tell the Americans in the bars. First, the girls wear clothes that show their bras!  Second, by 11 o'clock. they can't even stand up!" She curled her lip in disdain.

In 2012, we gave permission. You might have to be on overtime with us for awhile, I advised my angels. That would cut down on the sneaking out and allow us to set curfews. Which has worked pretty well, except for one staying-out-all-night incident, so far.

The girls came in on Sunday morning around 10 a.m., glowing. They'd had a good night. Now, with permission, they don't hide. They tell us things! Alan! Max! Abbie! Their friends doing the craziest things! Dancing and taking photos! An image came into my head. It was very clear. It was me, standing in front of a host of angels. (no, wait, that sounds biblical). A crowd of foot-tapping angels. They were looking up, as if waiting for Jimi Hendrix to appear on stage. But I appeared in front of them instead. I bowed, arms out. Thank you, homies. Thank you, gracias, thank you.

No Money No Worries

Friday May 18th, we came home to a dark house. The CFE bill was due on the 17th. Almost 900 pesos. Almost 900 pesos that we didn't have because it's May and because weird things are happening in the universe. I don't know if it's a pre-election void or depression but there's no movement in anyone's business - waiters and hotel clerks sit around forlornly - and everyone, all citizens and regular clients, that is - except for the lonely circling cab drivers are gone.

So, a Friday night with no electricity. Carlos and I sat on our porch. He went into meditation and I thought, great. No light, no company. Then he opened his eyes. "Mi maestro told me to take the clamp off the meter," he said. So he did.

We had luz.

The next night, the gas ran out. Still no clients, no work for us - San Miguel remained in a strange vacuum. So we couldn't order up another tank of gas, but no fear...we had electricity! We cooked in the electric frying pan! We heated water for bathing in the coffee maker!  Life was ...tolerable. We got by.

Then the cable company was about to cut off our cable television AND internet. Now things were grave.

By the end of the day, two clients had used Jasmine Spa services. We had cash. We bought tortillas and beer and paid....what do you think?

Television and internet of course!! Forget the homework...imagine telling the kids they couldn't chat with their friends at night. Now you know we have our priorities in order.

What My Fist-Pumping Angel Pals Say Today

So I did this processing thing with my bud Fay again where she gets you to clear out old emotional stuff that might not be useful any more to make yourself nice and open to receive messages from your guides.

Everyone - Carlos, my 17-year old, Carla, Fay - receives spirit guide messages but me. I feel like the girl who didn't get asked to prom, like the last person to be picked for the basketball scrimmage. When's it my turn? So, right, this clearing thing with Fay. That will open me up and let my guides start telling me things like where to find the bundles of gold hidden on our property.

Up in Colonia Independencia, I'm sitting on a chair across from Fay. We are both in meditation positions and she says, "Oh, Michael and Rafael are here."
I thought, "Hey, guys."
Fay said, "Michael is Protection and Rafael is Healing."
Me: in my head, "Cool."
Fay: "Ah, the Divine Mother is here."
Me: "Girl power. Yeah."

The week before I had really felt presence of the Divine Mother, and needed it. Who, after all, nurtures moms? But this week, I was all about the men. Michael and Rafael. I felt a big white Michael wing behind my back. I felt sheets of sparkly emerald green healing from Rafa. Soothing me from distress over conflicts with Carla.

"Wow," Fay said, "It's standing room only here. There are a lot of angels here. Do you feel all the support?"

I did. I felt comforted, then energized. "I get it," I said. "To be supported, all I have to do is ask."
"That's it!" Fay said. "That's what they want you to know!"
I could see green and gold around me. I felt it.
"Michael is very pleased that you understand. He is patting himself on the back, winking at Rafael, like, Job well done."
"High-fiving and fist-pumping?"
"You could say that."

Later, I walked into town and ran into a gal I knew named Kerry.
"I need baskets!" Kerry fretted. "I've searched the artisan's market. Cruised the streets looking for those people who walk around selling baskets."
"Did you try the basket shop?" I asked.
"There's a basket shop?"
"Over on that street that runs into the Oratorio. Across from the shop that sells blankets and school uniforms."
"Oh!" Kerry exclaimed, shifting toward town. She hurried off in the direction I'd indicated. Over her shoulder, she called, "You're an angel."

Angels on My Side

..It happened again. Something pressed on my instep at around 4 a.m., waking me up. I laid real still. "Open for messages," I mentally assured the spirit visitor. Wait, I'll cleanse my chakra path, really send a signal I'm ready for what I'm supposed to be learning. With my mind, I sent a bolt of light down my trunk, clearing out shrubbery, trash, things to worry about. "No blockages!" I encouraged. "Ready for guidance!"

I lay still some more. "Antenas are up! Alert and open for wisdom!"

I wonder if the spirits have a sense of humor. Maybe they're having a good chuckle. Hey, let's wake this one up and make her think we have something important to say! That would be just like my friend, Mary, who died in October, if the spirit is indeed her.

...Had a "processing" session with Fay Hart, a Self Awareness Coach who has this heading on her website: Smoke Pot or Not. Fay guides one to feel messages of pain in the body, and then heal them. Fay is also a kickass performance poet. We are trading sessions for massage. During the session, Fay invoked the Divine Mother and the Angels Gabriel and Rafael to join us, and I actually saw them, not with faces but as beings of light. This might be sounding way out there. Bear with me. Fay does guided meditation and she was talking about nurturing and I welled up because who nurtures mothers/heads of households/decision makers/writers? I felt myself enveloped in a big, well, abrazo de luz. A brilliant light hug. Whew!
I used to do some big time eyerolling at people who talked like this, by the way.  So later, Fay says, "Gabriel is always there when I do sessions. He's the messenger. The Patron Saint of Communication Workers. He heralds the revealing of answers."

Answers? Yes, please! Communication Workers - that's me! Sue McKinney, News 3 - I said that on a daily basis for about ten years! I wrote a book already! Gabriel is my dude!  C'mon Gabe.  So where is the pinche message??

...Meantime, on the highway between San Miguel de Allende and beautiful Silao, Guanajuato, April 28, to be precise, the sun was a new red ball at 6:30 a.m. and our car was packed with swimsuits and sunscreen and aimed toward La Manzanilla in Jalisco. Suddenly a huge tractor-trailer bore down on us in the other side of the narrow and curvy two lane highway. It occurred to me it might cross the center line and put us in danger. Without thought, I pushed a wall of energy toward the truck and it stayed in its lane and passed without crushing us. A thought formed clearly in my head - "I have a lot of power."

I DID, two days before we left for the beach, take my first Tae Kwon Do test and not only passed but was bumped from Advanced White right up to Yellow. (yeah!!) But maybe it's not that kind of power. What is my power??

Healing Through Massage? I know sometimes I really help people who can barely move.

Words? I can write about waking up to awareness, and about my expanding ability to give and receive love, and maybe it will resonate with one person. Or more.

Is this the message? Do I REALLY need confirmation? Yes! Are the angels and spirits losing patience with me and my needing to know?

Maybe. Meantime, I'm thick and dense, spirit guides, OK? Open for message. You can say clearly, You are on the right track, or Look over there, mensa. Whatever works. Lines are open.

That's me on the La Manzanilla beach, trying to find my power.

What the Iguana Wants Me To Know

          Every year we go to the beach and everybody sees iguanas but me. Our beach is the most beautiful place on earth, La Manzanilla, Jalisco. Iguanas used to be plentiful in this region, known to tourists as Costalegre (The Happy Coast), but locals have had a taste for iguana meat and the reptile is now more scarce than it used to be. Still, a two foot long iguana sat in the middle of the entrance road last year, staring down our car. Carla, who loves reptiles so much she was sure she had a relationship with a small green snake won at a fair when she was about ten, jumped out of the car and approached it. It jumped into combat stance and hissed at Carla until she stopped. Then it ran off. Of course I was not in the car.
          This year, however, I am an iguana magnet. Covering our last 10 kilometers to reach La Manz, a taxi driver stood on the side of the road next to his ride, holding an iguana upside down by the tail. I stared at its white belly and realized it was probably dead and the driver was doubtless thinking soup. Did you see that? I said to the car. I got blank stares.
          Sunday, we walked to the end of our street to visit the dozens of crocodriles who inhabit the mangrove there. Something flashed in the tree ahead. A fat green iguana. "Look!" I said, but nobody in my family saw anything.
          Monday, Carlos and I strolled down main street, Maria Asuncion, back from buying fish and mangoes. I glanced into a real estate office and on the entrance rug sat a blue iguana.  "Como se llama?" I asked the young gal in the office. She looked around from her computer. "Aaayyyyy!"
          "It´s not your pet?" I asked.
          "Estas cosas me dan miedo!" she shrieked.
          I ran to our rental, found Carla sunning and panted, "Need Reptile Rescue."
          Within minutes, she had Iguana Blue trapped, calmed (with her t-shirt over his head) and released into vegetation.
           Seeing iguanas 3 days in a row? It had to be a sign.
           On Tuesday, we went to Melaque and ate breakfast facing the sea. After I snuck into an internet cafe. "Iguanas come into our awareness when we need a reminder to just BE," informed the first site I looked at. "Iguanas bring the message that we have impressive gifts we can use for our well-being," said the next.
          Yesterday I was on the lookout for iguanas, aware at the same time, that if I was looking, they probably wouldn´t appear.
          Sure enough, nada. 
          During dinner, though, the gecko who has lived in the apartment ever since we began renting it for a week in May eight years ago, ran across the south wall. It ran into the house and reappeared on the porch. It scurried back and forth. "What an attention seeker," I muttered. Normally, the gecko just sat up near the roof and watched us.
          This morning, I snuck back to the internet (this is our unplugged week) while Carlos made chilaquiles.
          - Gecko females can reproduce without males.
          - Geckos don´t have eyelids. all-seeing?
          Geckos don´t show up much in discussions of spirit animals, so I looked at lizards.
          - Lizard teaches us the importance of respecting and remembering our dreams.
            In my dreams recently, there has been a man in a hat who could have entered our house but didn´t. There was a tower that I climbed.
             As I looked further, there was this: Those who feel the spirit of the lizard can learn ways to use their enhanced sensory perceptions to connect with their deeper psychic and spiritual awareness. 
           

          Which is the path I´m on presently. More tomorrow about what I´m learning about my power.

Spirit Visits

Um. I blog. I remember that. I used to with frequency. O well. Here I am again, sifting through my memory. Things are quiet on the spirit visitation front. Or are they? Now my memory is coming up with a pressure on my calf while I slept a couple of weeks ago. It lasted a full 30 seconds or so. A slight shove during a different night. I look over and Carlos is dead asleep facing away from me. A cell phone ring the night after the shove. Just once. The tone was not that of my cell phone nor of Carlos'.

Remembering eating breakfast at Cafe de La Parroquia one morning with Carlos and Carla.
Carla says, I feel thoughtful today.
Me - How?
Carla - I feel like I'm in another dimension, like I'm over there watching all of us, but I'm not here. Know what I mean?
Me - No. I experience you right there across from me, eating enchiladas.
Carla - Really?

I have a friend in Wisconsin who believes in science and not in God. I tell him about my experiences, about Carla. He is skeptical but open. He owns two campus bars. He told two of his bartenders one night about the things I tell him - Carla's clairvoyance, spirits nudging me. The bartenders are gals in their twenties. They tell him I need to have my head examined.

I'm sure my stories sound nutty to a good number of people. I challenge anyone to live a week with Carla and see if they reconsider their outlook.

Carla says her maestros wake her up and remind her of her tarea – to be a living example of not wearing a thought.  "Like, Mom," she says. "Yesterday when you were fretting about getting to the dermatologist on time and I was still laying on the massage table.  I knew it would be OK to get there late."  Sure enough, we got to the dermatoligist's office after 2 pm, but the previous client didn’t come out until about 2:20.  “So I look like I’m a slug and I don’t care, but really I know it’s going to be alright.”

It's going to be alright. 

Will She Stay or Will She Go?

Judy and Dan from Vermont came to the opening of Carlos' abstract art show at Galeria One on Saturday.
"I'm almost to the end of your book!" Judy said.  She turned and punched Carlos on the arm.  "You didn't go to your rehearsal dinner!"

The pair had visited San Miguel some eight years before, and during their stay, Judy booked several massages with Carlos in our spa, Jasmine. They swapped stories.  Judy - world traveler with her husband.  Carlos - married to an American gal who was writing the story of meeting him.

Last week, Judy had a massage with Carlos and was delighted to find I had completed my book.  She bought Flirting in Spanish.  Early Saturday, I taught creative writing to 25 kids in Palo Colorado, then spent the rest of the day hanging paintings with Carlos.  Judy and Dan happened by.  "I can't put your book down!" she said.  "You just went to that dance and you're deciding whether to stay in Mexico!"  A few hours later, they came to the gallery opening.  "Nice paintings, Carlos. But I can't stay.  I have to go home and read to the end and see if you guys stay together!"

Above is one of the paintings from the show.  MOMA - leave a comment here and we can talk!

Big Energies

When we first got our Zoey, she was so small she fit inside one of Carlos' socks. As a short-haired dog in winter, that's where she spent a lot of her first few weeks with us.  Then she grew into a sweet bull terrier who leapt over the grass when it was high and ran around like crazy when we took her to the Presa. She was BFF to Max, our German Shepherd who passed a few months ago.  He'd open his mouth and she'd lick his teeth.

Alas, Zoey, as an albino female, had a skin disease that worsened until she was living with large bleeding tumors on her stomach that robbed her energy and then her life. In her last days, a curious thing happened. The washing machine, right next to her box, stopped working. Then the coffee maker. Then the microwave oven. Then my computer. Then Zoey died. Now the clothes washer, coffee machine, microwave and computer work perfectly. My only conclusion would be that we all have powerful energies, I believe.  RIP, sweet Zoey!

A Salty New Novel

Here's a review for Key West Story: A Novel by Rick Skwiot.  Look for this new novel on Amazon and other e-book sites.

Having a protagonist who is a writer is not easy to pull off - writers are not known to be action figures after all, but Rick Skwiot does it beautifully in Key West Story: A Novel. It helps that his writer, Constantine not only drinks rum but dodges bullets and domesticating-minded women. 
To save him from being a cliché, Con does NOT live on a houseboat - he lives in a rental, trying to stay ahead of the utility bills - and is befriended by an Ernest Hemingway look-alike, who claims to be the real thing, and who helps Con chew over a life and a writing career gone off-course. 
"It's all that matters," say Papa Hemingway, who in 2012 is called Nick. "Without it, it's like a bad novel. No matter how fine the writing or how beautiful its moments, it never works if the core isn't solid, if it has no heart." 
To stave off writer's block induced panic, and possibly solve the paying-the-rent-problem, Con agrees to go to Cuba with "Nick" on a dubious and ill-explained mission. "A voyage of faith, Conman," his new pal tells Con about traveling and possible sunken treasure, but also about finding his best-selling writer self again. 
High seas and low surf adventures lie ahead for the writerly pair. In the end, the appreciative reader will have gotten to know several unique Key West characters, many of whom have lost some rudder power in their own lives, and all of whom find their core, their heart and their destiny, some in unexpected ways, with a salty Atlantic breeze at their backs. 

What the Angels Want Me to Know

I told Carla about the angels I heard singing. (See previous post.)  

“Mom, they are definitely trying to reach you. What do you think they are trying to tell you?” 

“I don’t know,” I said. 

“Just be aware.  Don’t try too hard.  Let it come.  You’ll find out,” my 17-year old said.

So I have some maestros, or teachers, and they are trying to tell me something with supernantural signs.  Why me, and what could it be?  I am not gifted with extra abilities like my daughter.  What am I supposed to be doing with the regular abilities I have?  Or learning? Or understanding?

Maybe the answer is in my dreams.  They’ve been vivid lately, and full of detail.  Like the lady riding a white horse around and around in a circular arena. She had very long hair and was very competent on the horse.  She was standing on its back with her arms spread as the horse galloped.  She was naked but there was no shame to it.  My girls did this – volting - years ago when they were learning to ride.  The gal in the dream was very confident and I had the feeling of wanting my kids to see her.  Here’s what one dream interpretation site said:

To dream of a white horse signifies purity and good fortune. It indicates the image of a prince charming and his white horse coming to save the princess.

Horses symbolize strength, speed, and endurance. It also indicates having control over things and directing them towards your aim. 

To dream of a woman symbolizes love, nurture, caring, and passivity. It may represent your female side or your own mother.

I told my poet friend Fay about the angelic singing I’d heard the day before. 

“Angels are all around us,” Fay said. “I spoke to angels once through a medium.  They’re very bossy! My angel told me to get a pen and paper and write things down.  She said I would work in a store.  I thought,’ Me in a store?  I don’t think so.’”   We spoke in Garrison and Garrison book store in San Miguel.  She knew I saw the irony.  “And here I am, perfectly at home, surrounded by books.”

“Angels and spirits are trying to reach you because you are open.  And because you put a beautiful and honest work into the world,” Fay said. She gestured to my memoir, displayed on a Garrison and Garrison table.  Tears formed in my eyes.

Earlier that day a friend who’d lived in San Miguel when our kids were little, came into the spa to buy a second copy of my book for a friend.  “Almost finished your book. Wow.” my friend, Carmen, said drolly. “You really put yourself out there.”  Her tone was part respect, part repulsion. 

I focus on a text I picked up on Facebook earlier in the week that I keep going back to.  It was written by a Mayan leader who wants the world to know that 2012 is not the end of the world at all, but a time of great change as our planet moves into the World of the Fifth Sun. 

At sunrise on December 21, 2012 for the first time in 26,000 years the Sun rises to conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. This cosmic cross is considered to be an embodiment of the Sacred Tree, The Tree of Life, a tree remembered in all the world's spiritual traditions. 

I love thinking that a giant cross will be formed across the galaxy on my youngest daughter’s 16^th birthday.  I go back and read a favorite line from the Mayan leader. 

The element of the Fifth Sun is celestial.

Angels Singing

When I first had my ankle pinched, Carlos said maybe it was Mary, since she died of cancer, telling me to get checked for cancer.  Getting a cancer check I could do!  It would be an hour or two, and then done.  OK, I’ll get more than one!  I’ll check my breasts, my uterus.  Or maybe I’m supposed to be getting to those nine Masses.  I’ll pay for 9 Masses!  Any task that has a time limit, that doesn’t mean a lifestyle change.  Meditation, sheesh.  Here I am writing instead. Yes, Resistance is my middle name. 

Meantime, a couple of mornings ago, over coffee, I was telling Carlos about a dream I’d had in which a dog, probably our dog, vomited and in the huge mess, several sizes bigger than the dog itself, that came out I realized there were mesh bags containing animals without hair and two kittens who desperately needed to be released from the bags, or born.

I began to hear a sound, and I interrupted the part of my story where I do manage to free the kitties and hairless animals. It was singing.  The voices were high and clear and pure like voices from a boys’ choir.  All I could think was celestial song.  I stood by my kitchen counter, thinking, I am listening to angels.  I held my hand in the air for minutes, listening.  

“Hear that?” I asked my husband.

“Yeah,” he said, with furrowed brow. 

And then the sound changed.  Its high pitch lowered, and I realized I was listening to a pack of dogs barking. 

Perhaps weirder things have happened in my life but I sure don’t know when.  Was I suggestible because I had just read the article about the lady who speaks to angels, and written about her?  Do I need my ears cleaned, my head screwed on straight?  Or was I hearing a message of love? 

Witches, Numbers and Angels

Is it sychronicity that I pass by an open door on Calle Reloj the day before Christmas and enter a Christmas knick knack and garage sale, and leave with four magazines in Spanish, which made only an 8-peso dent I my Christmas shopping money?  And that, on the day after Christmas, after several days of fiestas, I allowed myself to lay down on the couch in the reception area of my spa, and read a magazine.  I picked up a December 2010 Marie Claire and it flipped open to the article, Mujeres Encantadores.

It’s about women with dones or gifts, women with powers and perceptions beyond what most of us experience. 

Some call themselves brujas, which means witches.  Brujas in Latin countries doesn’t mean mean old ugly black magic person. Brujas y brujos are people who have some contact with the supernatural world and who most likely use their gifts for altruistic purposes. 

There’s the Wiccan priestess who began following her calling when she noticed in a bookstore one day that she was drawn to the books on the Wicca religion. She cleanses people of bad vibes and to bring out the best in them using a dagger, fire, herbs, egg, a pendulum, or whatever is indicated.  To get the year off to a good start and insure that your house is protected and prosperous, she advises to place a broom behind the entrance door and repeat, “I put you here so you can cleanse those who arrive with bad energy, and allow abundance to enter.”

Gabriela, an astrologer, believes your birthday is your new year.  During the days leading up to your birthday, you should close cycles, get rid of old resentments, ask for forgiveness.  This way, you’ll start your year with new energy, things will flow in your favor and you’ll have the force of the planets on your side. 

Maria Esther is a tarot reader who predicted the swine flu and the death of Michael Jackson.  She makes yearly predictions on a popular Mexican radio program.  To insure a prosperous new year, she advises one to pass a purple candle over the body, imagining a cleansing of whatever bad has accumulated in 2011.  Then burn it.  Immediately after, write your name on a pink candle and ask that only love and other good things will come your way in 2012. 

According to Claudia, a numerologist, we live through nine year cycles, and each one is dominated by a tendency.  Adding my numbers, I found that I am presently in level Nine.  Nine assures that this is the opportunity to finish things that are pending and consolidate plans. It’s also a very spiritual period, and I am supposed to take advantage of that.

 Finally, I read the story of Pilar, a food and beverages manager with a corporate event planning company. She speaks to angels. 

It happened for the first time during meditation, Pilar explained.  She suddenly felt an immense happiness, as if her heart was expanding.  She felt filled with love.  She began to speak in an unknown language and blow kisses all around.  Her maestro explained that she had finally made contact with her superior self, the one that we all have that is pure light.   Her higher self, or her angel of the light had a message of love for mankind.   And something else.

“The beings of the light are on Earth so that you can experience the marvelous opportunity to make contact with your internal self, to open your hearts and eliminate judgements and egos. Go inside yourselves to find the divine source.  Pay attention to your heart.  It will point you to the correct path, and will give you all the answers you seek.”

I closed the magazine and sat staring at the wall for several minutes.  According to the article, we are all born with gifts, and if we don’t develop them, they get stuck.  I have known my daughter Carla is gifted ever since she pointed with her six year old finger to the pink energy balls that floated above my washing machine that she saw and I didn’t.  Shortly after, she held her hand close to my face when I writhed in pain from a deteriorating tooth.  Her little hand seemed to have magnets in it, drawing the pain from my cheek to her palm.  When we go into the Parroquia, the spirits who are buried in the vaults below the church floor rise to visit with her, sometimes telling more of their stories than she needs to hear, like the lady who was trampled by horses.  Carla feels the pain in the back of her knees. 

Carla’s extra perceptions are clear. But the idea that I might have gifts is a bit stunning. Am I supposed to wake up to my own gifts?  How do I do that?

Here in front of my eyes, right there on the page I so randomly opened to, was the message I have suspected the spirit who pinched my ankle wanted me to understand, the message I’ve been avoiding.  The people who work with energy say that to feel the power of our gifts we must cultivate our spirituality. 

I think there’s no getting around it any more. It’s time for me to meditate. 

Spirits, Elves and Buried Treasure

New Year’s Day asada in our house yesterday. I told of hearing celestial singing as I drank coffee with my husband early on New Years Eve day.(story to follow in next blog post!)  Immediately my mother-in-law had a story. 

“I woke up at 3 AM one night, hearing children playing outside the window.  I couldn’t make out what they were saying.  I just heard children’t voices and laughter.  I went outside to tell them it was time to go home and there wasn’t a soul in sight.”  

Carmen looked around the table where Carlos’ father Silvano, Carlos, the girls and I sat expectantly with our beef tacos. 

“Duendes,” she said.

Elves! I was not surprised.  Carla sees or feels them in the trees along the river to the left of the highway to Dolores Hidalgo.  During the basketball season, we drive over to Dolores every Saturday for Carlos’ games and Carla scans the treeline for duendes.

I tell my mother- and father-in-law about having my ankle grabbed by an unknown entity at 5:15 a.m.the other morning.

“You know what that means,” Carmen says knowingly. 

No, I don’t!  Enlighten me!

Carmen held up her hand, her thumb and forefinger separated by several inches, gripping an imaginary stack of bills.  

“I’m supposed to find the treasure?” I asked.

Carmen nodded her head.  She is not the first to have mentioned this theory.  After my first post about being woken by the spirit ankle-squeezer, I got this reply from Mexican blogger Leslie Limon, who is also married to a Mexican man. (http://www.motherhoodinmexico.com/)

If you don't mind me adding my two centavos, Hubby's family believes that if you are visited by a spirit/ghost, it's because there is money or treasure buried somewhere near you and they want you to find it. Next time your visitor is around, ask where the treasure is? :)

OK, Spirit, I’m ready! I'm leaving my ankles at the bottom of the bed for more messages.  It would be lovely if you could pinchingly point out where the bag of gold is hidden.  It occurs to me though, that there is no bag of money on our land or hidden in our walls because we built our house (it’s half built anyway) from scratch.  Shrubs were removed, land was turned over, walls were constructed.  Nothing was turned up unless it was and some albanil made off with our rightful treasure!  Then it occurs to me too that the treasure is us, the Ortega family, sitting around a table full of food, swapping stories. 

Can’t a little elf just show up, whisper in my ear and tell me if I’m right?  Or pinch my ankle.