Dinner with a Doc

The doctor I am following around (Dr. Pacheko) invited me to dinner at his house (of course I said yes, what was I going to say. . I have other plans. .like what Jessie, well, like hitting my head against a wall).

This might classify as the most surreal thing I have done here so far.
Going to anyone's house anywhere is always a fascinating experience because you see this very personal side of them that they may or may not mean to show you. It's even more revealing when you see the rest of their family. I think this is amplified when you go to someone's house in another country.

So he and his wife Nancy (who is a pediatrician) and their adorable 6 year old son Eric all live in this strange, strange gated community composed of pre-fab condos painted white, tan, and a muted yellow. It's suburbia in Mexico. . except it feels like Little America. Little postage stamp sized back yards, well trimmed front yards, children roller skating down the street, incomplete fences dividing property lines. The inside of their house is pristine. White furniture covered in plastic, lots of ceramic and crystal statuetes of deer, elk, angels, and ballerinas (for those of you who know, think Grandma Betty), a painting of Davinci's The Last Supper on the wall, the t.v on in the kitchen.


Nancy cooks (of course), although Dr. Pacheko does set the table and futz with the salt shakers. The food is delicious (chicken with a picante sauce, rice, beans, desert is blackberry and cheese icecream). We talked about medicine and families. . we take small talk to a new level. We talked briefly about why I wanted to go into medicine (especially after studying history and literature. . I am not very good at explaining our system of education in the states. . the system here is so very different). I talked about change and wanting to change things, and he gave me a look of, oh you silly naive thing, saying that trying to change anything is frustrating, especially when your superiors are so stupid. We then talked about Bush and the wall on the border. Every once in a while their son would come downstairs and come over to me and say (in English), 'I am ice cream' (he is in a bilingual school) or 'I am cookie'. . (translation. . I want some ice cream, I want a cookie). So awesome.

After dinner he brought down photos of his family vacations (at this point I really do feel like I am in Middle America, except everyone is speaking Spanish - again, a B line surreal movie). And then he proceeds to ask me about the cost of everything in America. How much does a car cost? How much does a taxi cost? Does everyone in New York take taxis? Is it cheaper to live in New Jersey? How much does it cost to fly from San Francisco to Washington DC? What about to London? How long of a drive is it from Seattle to San Francisco? How much does it cost for kids to go to the camp that you will work at? How much does it cost to go to medical school?

And on, and on, and on. What is so heartbreaking is that they both work a lot (he works M-F, she works three nights a week in Guanajuato at night) and yet, they both clearly feel like they are not doing all of the things they want to do, that they are not making enough money to be living this new Mexican (American) Dream. The American Dream of Suburbia has filtered down across the border into Mexico, but in a rather distorted way (it reminds me of those wavy mirrors at the carnival). It's the classic case of Keeping up with the Jones's (although it's not clear if the Jones's are actually still Jones's or if they are Rivera's or Munoz's). Why is it always the shit of our country that gets exported? Coke, processed food, fast food, suburbia, plastic, pollution, bad tv shows, etc (the list is long). We do have wonderful things in the USA, but we don't do a very good job of sharing them with the rest of the world.