Santa Fe

On Wednesday night, the Professor and I enjoy tacos and margaritas at a cantina in a back alley of Montgomery.  Heading back to the room, we pass a half dozen people I recognize from the exam – there are at least twenty empties on their table, and they are chatting and laughing on the patio of a neighboring bar.  Montgomery enjoys an influx of drunk lawyers twice a year and that is all, I’d imagine.

Once back in our hotel, we enjoy a couple of mini bottles of wine that I’ve been keeping for that occasion, and spend an inordinate amount of time watching Property Brothers on HGTV, before settling in to a restless sleep.  A 5am wakeup call the next morning sees us up, showered, packing, and out before 5:30, on the road to Atlanta and our midmorning flight to Albuquerque.  On the plane, I listen to angsty female folk singers strumming their guitars and crying about love, while my husband cranes his neck to see over the wing of the plane and watch the landscape roll by a mile below.  Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and then at last New Mexico.

Our landing over the mountains is turbulent, difficult.  I sweat, pale and nauseous, as the plane lurches, banks sharply, loses altitude in leaps and jerks.  The landing gear come down, and we flutter the last few feet to a solid landing, and for the first time in my life I contemplate the paper airsickness bag.  It remained in the pocket of the seat in front of me, but it was a near thing.

Upon collecting our baggage and our rental car (and having fended off the extremely persistent salesman, desperate to sell us extremely expensive additional insurance), we drive down out of Albuquerque and along the scrubby desert flats toward Santa Fe.  We stop for lunch – another cantina, which serves us a sweet, nutmeg-flavored salsa, sopapillas and honey for dessert.  I choose handmade tamales covered in green chile for my lunch.  Chile at every meal is a concept I can get behind.

We point our dark grey Chrysler north towards the Sangre de Cristos, following the thin ribbon of the Rio Grande.  The sky is blue, the clouds painted on, whiter than white.  We see a distant rainstorm.  From miles away the rain looks static – long straight lines of iron grey stretching from land to sky, the clouds in that direction not cottony white, but gunmetal grey.  In the west, I am forever gasping, thinking the word “vista.”

It is pattering rain when we arrive at the Inn on the Alameda, downtown, lovely stucco, riotous blooms of saturated color climbing out of terra cotta, in every direction.  The juxtaposition of wooden shutter, smooth stucco, and radiant flowers is a confection for the eye, and I love every window-box, every tumbling pot.  We check into a room with two private balconies, unpack, relax.  After partaking of the complimentary wine and cheese hour in the hotel bar – which I liked to call geriatric wine and cheese, since not a single other guest is under the age of 75, and oxygen tanks and walkers abounded – we walk downtown to enjoy a beer on a rooftop bar, listening to the cover band play in the plaza.  The Professor has an IPA, and I a wheat beer.  We talk about our children.

The plaza in Santa Fe is a delight.  Families gather there and mill about as evening falls – it is much like I’ve always imagined life would be like in an Italian piazza.  Buskers play.  Twinkle lights have been strung in the trees.  The square is small, and at its center is large monument dedicated to rebel and union fighters who lost their lives fighting indians.  A number of words have been chopped out of the marble.  We think one of the censored words might be “savages.”

Later that evening, we wander down to the Cathedral Basilica and listen to the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, a stunning group of singers, not a one of them possessing less than a masters degree in vocal performance.  They sing Finnish tunes, Orthodox Russian Jewish pieces, and our favorite – a section of a Gabrieli motet.  When we arrive we discover that the tickets are expensive, and as we begin to walk away disappointed, one of the docents looks around shifty eyed, presses programs into our hands and ushers us in.  I am grateful.  It is this culture, this adult activity, that I have most missed since having my sons.  One day, soon, we will be patrons of the arts, we will repay this generosity.

The cathedral is brightly decorated inside, full of color and light, the occasional familiar fleur de lis.  Before the concert we listen to a man give a lecture, and I look behind him at a cluster of six paintings about “Jose” – Joseph.  Joseph praying, marrying Mary, with her on the donkey on their way to the manger, supping with the purple-robed boy Jesus, and then with an adult Jesus, and then weeping while an angelic purple-robed Jesus ushers him heavenward.  The hymnals in the cathedral are in Spanish, “Flor y Canto” – Flowers and Songs?  Perhaps it is the Catholic influence around me, but I suddenly decide that if I have a baby daughter one day, I would like to name her Maria.

After the singing is done, we walk home from the Cathedral, past a dry river bed, and up the stairs into our room.  The elevation makes me gasp for air even after one flight of stairs.  I fall asleep reading my mother’s battered old copy of Harry Potter, and wake the next morning ready for coffee on the balcony, more chile, and a hunt for a turquoise treasure to take home.