Dreaming of Mexico

When I was a half year old, my parent upped their roots and moved to Mexico. Five years later we moved again, this time to Ireland and with a little brother in tow. We've been there ever since. It wasn't really until two or three years ago that I ever began identifying with my Mexican roots again, sparse as they are. I think of the things I remember, although it isn't a whole lot, but it is fantastic.

I remember my best friend Sebastian, who was a neighbour and that we used to have sleepovers; I remember saving a cat in our garden during a summer storm; I remember the climbing into our blowup swimming pool one morning, not realising it was too hot to stand in until it was too late and the postman lifting me out. Most of all, I remember those lollipops that you wrapped around the stick and how they tasted sweet and the market stalls and how there was always the smell of spices in the air and sometimes I can smell that spicy scent.

Thinking back on it, I miss the heat, dry and dusty, and the explosions of colour in the arid, yellow heat. How wonderful would it be to go back there, to see the Blue House of Frida Kahlo, the mummy's of Guanajuato, Mexico city, the Mayan and Aztec temples, the sugarskulls for the Day of the Dead and all the colours, that are manifested in everything, from clothes, to furniture, to gardens and the marvellous flowers.

My mam laughs at me when I mention going back to visit, because being a vegetarian would involve me surviving on beans, rice and guacamole (but hey, as long as it's good guacamole, who's complaining) and also because all the places I want to go visit are about as spread out as you can get.

For now all I can do is dig out all the pictures my dad took while we were there and reread Frida Kahlo's biography and google her paintings for the umpteenth time. I can dream.