Fireworks in the morning

I start noticing the planes overhead when it’s nearing the time to go. 

Planes don’t fly low over this small Mexican city. San Miguel de Allende doesn’t have its own airport, so the few planes flying overhead are high in the sky, headed off to somewhere else. I rarely notice them at all – until it’s time to leave. 

Now I’m watching them leave a trail in the sky and wondering about the people inside. Are they happy to be going wherever they’re going? Are they sad to be leaving wherever they were? 

After almost three months here in our little apartment in Mexico, everything we do in the last week takes on a new significance. 

Will these flowers last until we leave? How many potatoes should I cook? Should we buy one more small jar of honey? 

We wonder where we should go out to eat, and we keep using the expression “one last time,” as if we will never return. We plan to return. We even have tickets. But life is uncertain and leaving, even for a few months, feels momentous. 

At 6 o’clock this morning, we heard fireworks. “Pop! Pop! Pop!” 

My husband, Peter, mumbled something in his sleep. 

“Fireworks,” I told him. 

He went back to sleep. He doesn’t mind. Peter is used to them now. Fireworks in the morning are not unusual. There are reasons for them, we are told, but they are complicated. They have to do with births and deaths and things we will never fully understand. This morning, I was wide awake at 6 o’clock, listening to the fireworks and wondering how they ever could have bothered me in the past. 

I’m having a hard time remembering our home in the U.S.

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