MARY ANN BRAZIL

Soon I'll be 50, which is not what I really want anyone to know, but there it is. It seems like some marker for maturity or authority, but I have none. I have been in Tucson 23 years now, which I do want everyone to know. It's not the border but it's pretty close. I had an instant affinity for the Southwest when I first hitch-hiked through it, more than 30 years ago, seeing alot of southern Arizona from the back of pick up truck, which still seems like a privileged cinematic treat. Some part of me was instantly more at home here than in my native midwest. I like the Mexican culture that surrounds me, and I don't just mean the restaurants. When I made my first trip to Mexico I traveled for 2 months with my friend John and we went to every capital city of every state (except Chiapas) and when we wound our way back up to the border to pick up his truck in El Paso, I cried and cried about going north again, again in the back of a pickup, (we had a third friend with us by then), watching the landscape I loved receed through my tears. I had to come back.

Now I am very rooted in Tucson, lucky enough to have an old adobe in the barrio and a family. Recently I was looking at the photos my husband and I took on our first trip to Mexico, when we'd known each other only two weeks, travelling by train from Nogales to Hermosillo and then bus to the beach town where we stayed in an uncomplicated bliss in cinder block barely furnished cabin on the beach. We had no money then, we shopped for our groceries at the local abborotes and cooked our meals in one pan. Many times we would return, several times a year, with our baby daughter and dogs in tow until now in the teenage years the daughter doesn't want to go there with us (she prefers New York), and somehow we got too busy with our various businesses and commitments that the trip seems harder to actually take...

I don't identify myself as a writer; I know that requires the diligence and regularity of habit and the love of quiet that I never really mastered. But certain subjects compel me, the border being one of them. I may live on this side, but I live in acute awareness of the suffering that line inflicts, and the life changing power it exudes, going north or south. And I am willing to examine it further, with the help of others.