Looking Out My Back Door: True confessions amid a fiesta of my friends

When I was 11, 12, 13 and 14 I wanted to join a cloistered order of nuns. It was either a good thing or too bad that any order where I could have boarded for school and preparation was out of my reach. By 15, latent puberty had taken over my mind and emotions. I was rather backward. In those days it meant something special if I said, “He looked at me.”

In a modified way I got my wish when I moved to Mexico. I live in a small casita by myself. In the months when the snowbirds from the states have flown back home, I go days without speaking a word of English. Or at least any word that is underst...