A few more memories of Jack in Mexico

We went to Mexico when Jack was five, touring (mostly) by bus. In the Yucatan, I rented a car for a week. Amongst other places, we spent several days at Chichen Itzá, including one night staying for the Light and Sound Show. They set up benches in the plaza and use colored lights and lasers to highlight the features of some buildings while an amplified voice-over tells different stories. Jack was horrified to hear that the ancient Maya had sacrificed small children by dropping them into the Sacred Cenote, a sink-hole that was sixty-five meters in diameter, about fifty feet deep, with a drop of about sixty feet and very steep sides. As the booming voice-over announced this, he turned to me in surprise. He hadn’t batted an eye at the pronouncements of various other human sacrifices, including the lighting and description of the skull-rack next to our bench. The show used colored its lights to illustrate the path of sacrificial victims down the pyramid, across the plaza, and down the sacbe (road) that led to the cenote. When he could be heard this story, he looked up at me and asked, “They sacrificed KIDS?” I nodded. He responded with outrage, “That’s pretty poor, Mom. That’s… pretty…. POOR!”  He didn’t have the words to adequately express his outrage. I nodded in agreement but could not verbally respond as the voice-over continued with its factoids about the Maya.Up until the announcement he had been entirely at ease with all of the descriptions of bloody sacrifice of adults but apparently, he empathized with the kids being marched down to the cenote!

After the show ended and we walked to our car in the parking lot, he continued to expostulate about his horror at the sacrifice of children. We had been in Mexico for almost a month and, at long last, he was confronting his own culture shock. Coming from a country and culture that treasured (and spoiled) its children, he could not conceive of one that, while it equally treasured its children, they were so treasured that they were sometimes considered the perfect gift to the gods. He was only slightly mollified at the knowledge that, if they could survive while treading water for a whole day, they would be pulled out and feted as the bearers of vital messages from the gods. Although he could not swim, he believed that he would learn, some day (and he did).

                The next day, we went back to Chichen and walked down the sacbe to the cenote. There was a little booth nearby, selling film, batteries, and cold soda. We walked to the edge of the cenote – there were no fences to keep tourists back so we stopped about five feet away. I asked Jack how he thought it would feel to be dropped in. He grabbed my leg and said, “Pretty poor!” I was startled and even knocked a little off balance; the ground was uneven so this was not good. I stepped back from the edge, pulling Jack with me. We walked over to the shack and had cold sodas in the shade.

                A few weeks later, once we got home, Jack lectured his visiting cousins about child sacrifice among the Maya. I guess it made a big impression on him!

                We went back to Chichen Itzá in 2004, with Skia (this was the year Jack bleached his hair. I didn’t object as it wasn’t permanent the way tattoos and piercings are and he really wanted to pierce his ear, like his friend Alex). We rented a car in Merida and I drove. Along the way, my eye started itching. Without thinking, I rubbed it. By the time we got to Pisté, the nearest town to Chichen, my eye really hurt. We ate lunch and checked into our hotel, the Delores Alba, then jumped into the swimming pool. They had a terrific swimming pool, with underwater features that were like the local caves. My eye was starting to ooze so I wadded up a tissue and stuffed it under my glasses. The water in the pool felt good. We met an American doctor in the pool; she recommended that we pick up an antibiotic ointment at a local farmacía and that my eye should heal uneventfully. 

                I woke up the next day with my eye swollen shut and the other eye itching badly. The white of the first eye was a deep, bloody purple color. Jack called it “Demon Eye.”

Skia drove us to a farmacía, then to Chichen. We wandered around the ruins. Periodically, I smeared ointment in my eyes. It stung. By now, I could barely see out of the second eye. I held onto Jack’s shoulder, to be able to walk without stumbling. We went to the cenote, and again, had cold sodas in the shack. The main difference was that this time, a thunderstorm came up as we arrived; it was pouring outside the shack. We sat inside and chatted with an American and his two kids; I played tour guide and explained what the cenote meant. We later encountered them again at the Ball Court and I told them all about the Maya Ball Game. The man was pleasant and appreciative of all of the information; the kids were disbelieving until they saw the carved skulls on the neighboring skull-rack.

Skia and Jack climbed the Pyramid of Kukulkan. I started up, too, then thought the better of it and managed to get back down without injury. I sat on a bench; the pyramid is pretty steep and even though there is a chain to hold, I was afraid of falling since I could no longer see. We went back to the hotel, where I spent a totally panicked night. The ointment didn’t work. My eyes were glued shut by pus and were both so swollen that I couldn’t open them without prying with my fingers. Skia agreed to return to Merida and find me an opthomologist. And we did, with the help of the hotel in Merida – the Delores Alba in Piste called its sister hotel in Merida and they were expecting us. Despite the fact it was a Sunday afternoon, they found me an eye doctor who spoke English. He examined my eyes and prescribed an antibiotic/steroid eyedrop. We bought a bottle at Walmart and I dripped it into my eyes. It felt good. Within a few days, the swelling went down, I could open my eyes again without using fingers, and I could see normally. The whites of my eyes were badly bruised from the pressure of the swollen tissue; they continued to be dark red for weeks, finally healing enough to look mostly white for our return home.
It was a good thing that Skia was on this trip with Jack and me. If she hadn't been, Jack would have had to drive us back from Chichen to Merida, and then around Merida to find the clinic because both of my eyes had swelled shut and I was blind. At fourteen, Jack had been driving the Rover with his father in the woods for years; this would have been his first long-distance trip on roads, however! I'm sure that plenty of Mexican boys his age drive all of the time. We Americans tend to protect our children. Still, I'm sure he could have done it without any difficulty.