Mexico Wedding Quotes

I think of me and Melanie when we were younger, on the high dive at the pool in Mexico. We would always hold hands as we jumped, but by the time we swam back up to the surface, we'd have let go. No matter how we tried, once we started swimming, we always let go. But after we bobbed to the surface, we'd climb out of the pool, clamber up the high-dive ladder, clasp hands, and do it again. We're swimming separately now. I get that. Maybe it's just what you have to do to keep above water. But who knows? Maybe one day, we'll climb out, grab hands, and jumo again.

The graveyard was at the top of the hill. It looked over all of the town. The town was hills - hills that issued down in trickles and then creeks and then rivers of cobblestone into the town, to flood the town with rough and beautiful stone that had been polished into smooth flatness over the centuries. It was a pointed irony that the very best view of the town could be had from the cemetery hill, where high, thick walls surrounded a collection of tombstones like wedding cakes, frosted with white angels and iced with ribbons and scrolls, one against another, toppling, shining cold. It was like a cake confectioner's yard. Some tombs were big as beds. From here, on freezing evenings, you could look down at the candle-lit valley, hear dogs bark, sharp as tuning forks banged on a flat stone, see all the funeral processions coming up the hill in the dark, coffins balanced on shoulders. ("The Candy Skull")

We’d arrived on the outskirts of a little ski town nestled in the mountains. The sign said WELCOME TO CLOUDCROFT, NEW MEXICO. The air was cold and thin. The roofs of the cabins were heaped with snow, and dirty mounds of it were piled up on the sides of the streets. Tall pine trees loomed over the valley, casting pitch-black shadows, though the morning was sunny.

A war always comes to someone else. In Salinas we were aware that the United States was the greatest and most powerful nation in the world. Every American was a rifleman by birth, and one American was worth ten or twenty foreigners in a fight. Pershing’s expedition into Mexico after Villa had exploded one of our myths for a little while. We had truly believed that Mexicans can’t shoot straight and besides were lazy and stupid. When our own Troop C came wearily back from the border they said that none of this was true […] Somehow we didn’t connect Germans with Mexicans. We went right back to our own myths. One American was as good as twenty Germans. This being true, we had only to act in a stern manner to bring the Kaiser to heel. He wouldn’t dare interfere with our trade--but he did. He wouldn’t stick out his neck and and sink our ships--and he did. It was stupid, but he did, and so there was nothing for it but to fight him. The war, at first anyway, was for other people. We, I, my family and friends, had kind of bleacher seats, and it was pretty exciting. And just as war is always for somebody else, so it is also that somebody else always gets killed. And Mother of God! that wasn’t true either. The dreadful telegrams began to sneak sorrowfully in, and it was everybody’s brother. Here we were, over six thousand miles from the anger and the noise, and that didn’t save us […] The draftees wouldn’t look at their mothers. They didn’t dare. We’d never thought the war could happen to us. There were some in Salinas who began to talk softly in the poolrooms and the bars. These had private information from a soldier--we weren’t getting the truth. Our men were being sent in without guns. Troopships were sunk and the government wouldn’t tell us. The German army was so far superior to ours that we didn’t have a chance. That Kaiser was a smart fellow. He was getting ready to invade America. But would Wilson tell us this? He would not. And usually these carrion talkers were the same ones who had said one American was worth twenty Germans in a scrap--the same ones.

Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says “We’re the same.” A language barrier says “We’re different.” The architects of apartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu schools, children were only taught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we’d fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were different. The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite: convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked. If you’re racist and you meet someone who doesn’t look like you, the fact that he can’t speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions: He’s different, less intelligent. A brilliant scientist can come over the border from Mexico to live in America, but if he speaks in broken English, people say, “Eh, I don’t trust this guy.” “But he’s a scientist.” “In Mexican science, maybe. I don’t trust him.” However, if the person who doesn’t look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code. “Wait, wait,” your mind says, “the racism code says if he doesn’t look like me he isn’t like me, but the language code says if he speaks like me he… is like me? Something is off here. I can’t figure this out.

Okay, it was agreed, Stan was coming with me. He was a rangy, bashful, shock-haired Denver boy with a big con-man smile . and slow, easy-going Gary Cooper movements. “Hot damn!” he said and stuck his thumbs on his belt and ambled down the street, swaying from side to side but slowly. His grandfather was having it out with him. He had been opposed to France and now he was opposed to the idea of going to Mexico. Stan was wandering around Denver like a bum because of his fight with his grandfather. That night after we’d done all our drinking and restrained Henry from getting his nose opened up in the Hot Shoppe on Colfax, Stan scraggled off to sleep in Henry’s hotel room on Glenarm. “I can’t even come home late—my grandfather starts fighting with me, then he turns on my mother. I tell you, Sal, I got to get out of Denver quick or I’ll go crazy.

I now pronounce you husband and wife. I hadn’t considered the kiss. Not once. I suppose I’d assumed it would be the way a wedding kiss should be. Restrained. Appropriate. Mild. A nice peck. Save the real kisses for later, when you’re deliciously alone. Country club girls don’t make out in front of others. Like gum chewing, it should always be done in private, where no one else can see. But Marlboro Man wasn’t a country club boy. He’d missed the memo outlining the rules and regulations of proper ways to kiss in public. I found this out when the kiss began--when he wrapped his loving, protective arms around me and kissed me like he meant it right there in my Episcopal church. Right there in front of my family, and his, in front of Father Johnson and Ms. Altar Guild and our wedding party and the entire congregation, half of whom were meeting me for the first time that night. But Marlboro Man didn’t seem to care. He kissed me exactly the way he’d kissed me the night of our first date--the night my high-heeled boot had gotten wedged in a crack in my parents’ sidewalk and had caused me to stumble. The night he’d caught me with his lips. We were making out in church--there was no way around it. And I felt every bit as swept away as I had that first night. The kiss lasted hours, days, weeks…probably ten to twelve seconds in real time, which, in a wedding ceremony setting, is a pretty long kiss. And it might have been longer had the passionate moment not been interrupted by the sudden sound of a person clapping his hands. “Woohoo! All right!” the person shouted. “Yes!” It was Mike. The congregation broke out in laughter as Marlboro Man and I touched our foreheads together, cementing the moment forever in our memory. We were one; this was tangible to me now. It wasn’t just an empty word, a theological concept, wishful thinking. It was an official, you-and-me-against-the-world designation. We’d both left our separateness behind. From that moment forward, nothing either of us did or said or planned would be in a vacuum apart from the other. No holiday would involve our celebrating separately at our respective family homes. No last-minute trips to Mexico with friends, not that either of us was prone to last-minute trips to Mexico with friends. But still. The kiss had sealed the deal in so many ways. I walked proudly out of the church, the new wife of Marlboro Man. When we exited the same doors through which my dad and I had walked thirty minutes earlier, Marlboro Man’s arm wriggled loose from my grasp and instinctively wrapped around my waist, where it belonged. The other arm followed, and before I knew it we were locked in a sweet, solidifying embrace, relishing the instant of solitude before our wedding party--sisters, cousins, brothers, friends--followed closely behind. We were married. I drew a deep, life-giving breath and exhaled. The sweating had finally stopped. And the robust air-conditioning of the church had almost completely dried my lily-white Vera.

Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally. It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves. There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera": 'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.

And then England—southern England, probably the sleekest landscape in the world. It is difficult when you pass that way, especially when you are peacefully recovering from seasickness with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage underneath you, to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don’t worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday. The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth’s surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.

Carl walked around the room studying the art hanging on the walls. Seriously, the elephant in Mexico had more talent.

I now pronounce you husband and wife. I hadn’t considered the kiss. Not once. I suppose I’d assumed it would be the way a wedding kiss should be. Restrained. Appropriate. Mild. A nice peck. Save the real kisses for later, when you’re deliciously alone. Country club girls don’t make out in front of others. Like gum chewing, it should always be done in private, where no one else can see. But Marlboro Man wasn’t a country club boy. He’d missed the memo outlining the rules and regulations of proper ways to kiss in public. I found this out when the kiss began--when he wrapped his loving, protective arms around me and kissed me like he meant it right there in my Episcopal church. Right there in front of my family, and his, in front of Father Johnson and Ms. Altar Guild and our wedding party and the entire congregation, half of whom were meeting me for the first time that night. But Marlboro Man didn’t seem to care. He kissed me exactly the way he’d kissed me the night of our first date--the night my high-heeled boot had gotten wedged in a crack in my parents’ sidewalk and had caused me to stumble. The night he’d caught me with his lips. We were making out in church--there was no way around it. And I felt every bit as swept away as I had that first night. The kiss lasted hours, days, weeks…probably ten to twelve seconds in real time, which, in a wedding ceremony setting, is a pretty long kiss. And it might have been longer had the passionate moment not been interrupted by the sudden sound of a person clapping his hands. “Woohoo! All right!” the person shouted. “Yes!” It was Mike. The congregation broke out in laughter as Marlboro Man and I touched our foreheads together, cementing the moment forever in our memory. We were one; this was tangible to me now. It wasn’t just an empty word, a theological concept, wishful thinking. It was an official, you-and-me-against-the-world designation. We’d both left our separateness behind. From that moment forward, nothing either of us did or said or planned would be in a vacuum apart from the other. No holiday would involve our celebrating separately at our respective family homes. No last-minute trips to Mexico with friends, not that either of us was prone to last-minute trips to Mexico with friends. But still. The kiss had sealed the deal in so many ways.

I don't want to impose a retrospective clarity of will on what had certainly been months immersed in a flailing muddle, but if there isn't some truth to the narratives of progress with which we sometimes try to frame our lives, however rooted in desperate delusion, we'd never be able to speak them, certainly not silently to ourselves, with any conviction.

I saw this movie once, when I was a kid, it was set in a prison about these two guys and they were friends for years. One of them finally escaped and later the other got paroled and went looking for him. He found him on a beach in Mexico, working on a boat. They got back together. I saw that when I was, like, ten or something and that was my dream for a long time. I’d get out of school, find my brother and get him and we’d both live together, near a beach, like the end of that movie. That was my fantasy, that’s what kept me going, right up until my old man told me my brother was … dead.

The day after our wedding, we flew off on honeymoon. I had recklessly waited until two days before our wedding to book the holiday, in the hope that I would get some great last-minute deal somewhere. Always a dangerous tactic. I pretended to Shara that it was a surprise. But, predictably, those “great deals” were a bit thin on the ground that week. The best I could find was a one-star package holiday, at a resort near Cancun in Mexico. It was bliss being together, but there was no hiding the fact that the hotel sucked. We got put in a room right next to the sewer outlet--which gave us a cracking smell to enjoy every evening as we sat looking out at the…maintenance shed opposite. As lunch wasn’t included in the one-star package, we started stockpiling the breakfasts. A couple of rolls down the jersey sleeve, and a yogurt and banana in Shara’s handbag. Then back to the hammock for books, kissing, and another whiff of sewage. When we returned to the UK it was a freezing cold January day. Shara was tired, but we were both excited to get onto our nice, warm, centrally heated barge. It was to be our first night in our own home. I had asked Annabel, Shara’s sister, to put the heating on before we arrived, and some food in the fridge. She had done so perfectly. What she didn’t know, though, was that the boiler packed in soon after she left. By the time Shara and I made it to the quayside on the Thames, it was dark. Our breath was coming out as clouds of vapor in the freezing air. I picked Shara up and carried her up the steps onto the boat. We opened the door and looked at each other. Surprised. It was literally like stepping into a deep freeze. Old iron boats are like that in winter. The cold water around them means that, without heating, they are Baltically cold. We fumbled our way, still all wrapped up, into the bowels of the boat and the boiler room. Shara looked at me, then at the silent, cold boiler. No doubt she questioned how smart both choices had really been. So there we were. No money, and freezing cold--but happy and together. That night, all wrapped up in blankets, I made a simple promise to Shara: I would love her and look after her, every day of our life together--and along the way we would have one hell of an adventure. Little did either of us realize, but this was really just the beginning.

The “Sons of the Pioneers” are amongst America’s earliest Country/Western singing groups. One weekend we’d drive south of the border to Tijuana, Mexico and the next weekend it would be to Knott’s Berry Farm, where I heard the “Sons of the Pioneers” singing Tumbling Tumble Weeds, Cool Clear Water and other Western songs that made the group famous. On many occasions, they performed with Roy Rogers, who was a movie cowboy and Dale Evans his cowgirl wife, from Victorville, California. The “Sons of the Pioneers” were popular at that time and were inaugurated into the Country Music Hall of Fame later in 1976. It was a summer that I will never forget! Knott’s Berry Farm is a 160-acre amusement park in Buena Park, California and the singing group has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Blvd.

SWEET POTATO BISQUE WITH CRABMEAT GRAPEFRUIT ICE IN A SWEET TORTILLA CRISP LAMB SEARED IN ANCHO CHILI PASTE ON POLENTA TWO CHUTNEYS: PEAR & MINT ASPARAGUS FLAN AMERICAN GOAT CHEESE, EAST & WEST, WITH RED-WINE BISCUITS AVOCADO KEY LIME PIE PINON TORTA DE CIELO & CHOCOLATE MOCHA SHERBET She'd invented the cake just for tonight; the sherbet came from Julia Child, a remarkably simple confection made with sour cream. Torta de cielo was a traditional wedding cake from the Yucatan, slim and sublime, light but chewy, where pulverized almonds stood in for flour. This time, instead of almonds, Greenie used the fat, velvety pignoli she ordered from an importer on Grand Street, mincing them by hand to keep them from turning to paste. She did not know whether you could tell the best Italian pine nuts from those grown in New Mexico, but, she caught herself thinking, and not without a touch of spite, she might soon find out.

Come here,” he says, pulling me against him. “I don’t want to go to the wedding anymore. I’d rather have you all to myself.” “No way,” I say, running a slow finger along the side of his jaw. “You’re a tease.” I love this playful side of Alex. It makes me forget all about those demons. “I came to see a Latino wedding, and I expect to see one,” I tell him. “And here I thought you were comin’ to be with me.” “You’ve got a big ego, Fuentes.” “That’s not all I’ve got.” He backs me against my car, his breath warming my neck more than the midday sun. I close my eyes and expect his lips on mine, but instead I hear his voice. “Give me your keys,” he says, reaching around and taking them from my hand. “You’re not going to throw them into the bushes, are you?” “Don’t tempt me.” Alex opens my car door and slides into the driver’s seat. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” I ask, confused. “No. I’m parkin’ your car in the shop so it doesn’t get jacked. This is an official date. I’m drivin’.” I point to his motorcycle. “Don’t think I’m getting on that thing.” His left eyebrow raises a fraction. “Why not? Julio’s not good enough for you?” “Julio? You named your motorcycle Julio?” “After my great uncle who helped my parents move here from Mexico.” “I like Julio just fine. I just don’t want to ride on him wearing this short dress. Unless you want everyone riding behind us to see my undies.” He rubs his chin, thinking about it. “Now that would be a sight for sore eyes.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m jokin’. We’re takin’ my cousin’s car.

With Uschi Obermaier, especially at that time, it was lust, pure and simple. And then she grew on me and entered my heart. We’d draw pictures or use sign language. But even if we couldn’t talk to each other, I’d found a friend. As simple as that, really. And I loved her dearly. We dabbled around off and on with each other in the ’70s, and then she took off with her new love, boyfriend Dieter Bockhorn, to Afghanistan, and she slipped from my mind and my heart. And then I heard that she’d died, of a miscarriage somewhere in Turkey. Which was almost true, but it turned out she was smarter than that. I found out the real story many years later on a beach in Mexico, on the most important day of my life.

I desire to write, be wildly in love, support my son to be who he is, keep my hair thick and shiny, get more tattoos, recite mantras, speak onstage, sleep in linen sheets, drive alone in the wide open spaces of New Mexico for hours, be flexible and productive, be alone at parties, be alone at home, be alone, be liked-loved-respected, keep a temple-tidy house, drive a reliable car, make millions of dollars and give lots away, meditate, get caught in thunderstorms, dance long and hard, wear cashmere, make things that make people want to make things of their own, sleep in, recycle, be One, seek approval, go to weddings (and funerals), order in, worship Rothko paintings, call my grandmother, free spiders, go back to India, stay up too late, get just the right font spacing, listen to Tibetan singing bowls on repeat for hours, watch three documentaries in a row, give all I have to give at any given moment to pretty much anybody, wear perfume every day of the week, shave my head, burn everything I’ve ever written, give insight, give money, give time, find my True Nature, and touch the face of God … Why do I desire what I desire? The answer is fast, clear, and simple: to feel good, of course.

[Mexicali is] a town like an American town, like the American town just across the river, in fact, if you drained half the money out and let it sit awhile. See it in fast motion: Stores close, streets go dirty, entropy increases, dark moneymaking schemes multiply, people's dreams begin to be of leaving. This may be the one clear truth of the so-called border issue: Put a poor country next to a rich one and watch which way the traffic flows. Add impediments, the traffic endeavors to flow around them. Eliminate disparity, the traffic stops. If Mexico were as rich as we are, we'd only be getting their tourists.

Please, stop saying that you had “trouble getting pregnant with your third child” or that you “miscarried in between kids three and four.” It’s not the same, and it’s a dagger in the heart when you try to sell it like it is. I had to suffer through child-bearing advice from a GOMO who had the luxury of planning when she was going to have her next baby. After vacation? After Brian’s wedding in Mexico? I always wanted a summer baby, so maybe I will wait until the fall. They just didn’t get it. It’s the emptiness that hurts. The thought that you may never be able to look down at a baby who is your own. That’s the hard part.

Whenever you see a commercial for Mexico, they never show this part,” Mike groused. “They always show these beautiful white-sand beaches, and quaint little towns, and fiestas full of happy people. They never show jungles and crocodiles and”—he paused to smack an insect on his arm—“clouds of mosquitoes. I want to be in the Mexico in the commercials. Not this one.” “There are much worse parts of Mexico than this,” Erica pointed out. “If we’d gone down in one of the southern deserts, we probably would have fried to death by now. At least here, there’s shade and water.” “I suppose,” Mike said, then added under his breath, “though this still stinks.” I didn’t argue with him, as I was in complete agreement.

When we met, I never imagined we’d be here, like this, tangled in bed, unable and unwilling to set each other free. In just one week, he’s unlocked a broader spectrum of pleasure and potential than I thought was possible. I want to capture this fluttering fireworks feeling that just looking at him brings me. I want to draw his magic out entirely so I can savor it fully, then bottle it up and keep it after he’s gone. As much as he doesn’t talk about his feelings, his eyes express them a thousand times more. I don’t think he knows it. The soft glow behind his inner pupil invites me into something transcendental, the gentle soul of this generous man I’m learning. Those beautiful gold-rimmed eyes absorb me. I lose myself and stare at them while trying to explain him and this awe. I’m surprised when I realize that he’s awake and staring back at me. He hasn’t moved as he holds my gaze, golden and dark. Something soft is happening, like he’s feeling the same wonder in me. It fills me with hunger. I push my hand through his hair and press into him. Our lips find each other. My nipples graze his chest. He sighs into my mouth, and I inhale all of him into me. We don’t bother with words as I crawl on top of him. He reaches for a condom. We begin our day.