Looking Out My Back Door: Bubbles from my fish bowl

I’m the fish, pacing my casita. I feel like I live in an aquarium. Bubbles rise from my mind. Occasionally I gasp for oxygen.

Three weeks, every day but Sunday, blessed reprieve of Sunday, workmen swarm my yard. The projects creep forward. Abel and his nephew, also Abel, called Pelon, which is a nickname that translates “bald,” along with Josue show up at eight in the morning and work until four or five in the afternoon. Pelon, a teen, has beautiful dark hair. I wonder if he acquired his name when a baby, born without a hair on his head. Sometimes it works that way.

Together the...