Merry Christmas

On Christmas Eve after Mass at the Bishopric we walked through the Plaza Colon and watched a variety of Navidad-related activities, such as posing for photos beside nativity scenes, riding horses, riding in kid-sized battery powered cars, jumping on trampolines, sliding on slides, dancing, watching street performers, just looking at the lights and feeling good. We saw many happy families there.

After making the circuit around the Plaza, we walked north on the Prado, past the booths for silpancho, pasteles, and jugos and other refrescos (yes, lots of Coca Cola, and on one of the taller buildings on Avenida Heroinas there is a US-style Coca Cola billboard of that iconic jolly figure in red rather than a Father Christmas/Santa Claus or elf. Whatever opinions there may be about this secularized Santa icon--and there is a great history of these images at the following address:  http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html --it seemed a better billboard subject for mixed audiences than a previous one in the area depicting a man and a debriefed woman glaring at passers by as though they ought to mind their own business.) We passed more people riding horses at a walk--up one side of the block and down the other--and I noticed that the children riding seemed especially absorbed in the activity, maybe transported into dreams of galloping on the open range, and one horse making a turn on a tiled area lost its balance for a moment, the steel shoe of one rear hoof skating suddenly out wider than expected, but a quick sidestep and recovery, and the young rider never seemed to notice.


Despite being summer here, the wind was chilly and damp. This promised to be a colder Christmas than two Lynn and I spent years ago in Beaumont, Texas.  (Those years taught me that I really am better acclimated to an environment with four distinct seasons despite my love of puttering along on a motorcycle in the warm sunshine, remembering when it felt just as good to run.) By the time we were approaching the restaurant Brazilian Cafe, I was already thinking expresso. We sat at one of the tables on the deck close to the street.  The double lanes were bumper-to-bumper with vehicles, but the wind must have been blowing away any exhaust fumes, and the sidewalks both in front of the restaurant and on the avenue's inner esplanade remained full but not jammed with pedestrians strolling or hustling and lots of colored lights.  We talked for about an hour about our past semester's activities--what things worked and what needed to change--and what we might be doing in the coming one.


When we left, we decided to walk back across the Plaza and up the three or four blocks to Heroinas where it seemed we might catch a cab more easily for home.  On our way to Heroinas it began to sprinkle, then drizzle and finally to settle into a steady but not heavy rain.  When we reached Heroinas, we saw that the usually busy avenue was virtually deserted, to the point that we felt a little vulnerable waiting there for a cab.  We wanted a radio mobile, a driver actually working for an established company, because it would be more secure.  None came after a ten minute wait so we decided to return to the Plaza and the Prado.  With all the activity there--even if we had to wait to clear the traffic jam--we would catch a cab and be home in no time.


When we reached the Plaza, the rain had already worked its magic.  As if everyone had been made of sugar or salt and had been melted by the rain, the people in the plaza and most of the colored lights were gone.  The restaurant was still open, so we took our place in front of it and soon were on our way back south to our house below Laguna Alalay. The cab was warm, and the red, yellow and green of the street lights we passed spread a reminder on the wet pavement of the happy crowd we had seen in the Plaza.  We looked forward to returning to our place and checking on Blondie the dog and Kitty the cat who was just beginning her recovery from the sterilization operation.