I think I just bought a weed.

For a lot.

I was in the WalMart parking lot, loading up my weekly shop (old habits die hard… I live close to so many malls (too many really!) and I still only shop once per week – like I did at home, living in the sticks 🙂 and I’d make a weekly trip to “town” to run errands) when a man balancing a tray of plants approached me and offered me plants for sale. My instinct has been to refuse the myriad numbers of people who approach us daily with something to sell. If there is an opportunity, someone will seize it. My defences were down as this was our second stop of the afternoon, kids in tow. Kids who no longer wanted to be “in tow”. We have come to celebrate any demonstration of “errand-stamina” and to marvel at making more than one stop in a day – parking, then unparking and making our way from one store/mall to another requires a great deal of concentration (to stay alive while driving), patience (to deal with the throngs of people) and time. Everything takes longer to accomplish than I ever imagined. A friend recently visited and he could not believe that we have to pay for parking everywhere. Gone are the days of deciding to scoot out to the grocery store to buy milk (or chicken  🙂  ) and simply pulling into a parking lot, free of a security gate with a ticket you have to take so you can get through the next security gate to “unpark” later… (starting to sense how much this process still seems to stress us out?)   🙂

So, back to my story… It is the end of the day, at the end of a long week, and I am wrestling with an unwieldy cart filled with groceries across a bumpy, pock-ridden parking lot, herding and commanding grumpy kids to “Stay with me!” and this man approaches. The first thing I notice, as he smiles hopefully, is his considerable lack of teeth. He is very earnestly selling his wares, en Espanol, and I’m looking to Mansell, who has the best grasp of Spanish of all us at this point, to help me understand him. Again, I start to refuse him – I don’t really need any plants and I just spent quite a bit on our weekly stock up, but something tells me I should buy some plants. Honestly, with a cart full of food, how can I in good conscience say no? I say, yes, I’d like one plant, “Cuanto questo?” (How much?).  He tells us 70 pesos for 2 plants. I agree and he helps me pick out two plants. I try to ask him how to care for them as they are handed to me in a small plastic disposable cup full of water… I wonder if they require soil, if they will root, or if they are like a cut flower? We look blankly at each other and play yet another game of charades and I think I get that I can put them in water or soil. Regardless, he is waiting expectantly for his money, so I hand him the 70 pesos I owe. He shakes his head “No, 140 pesos for 2”… I look to Mansell who insists the guy said 70 for 2, but the man continues to ask for another 70… I say, okay, I only want one plant, but then he says “no, no, no… okay, 120 pesos for 2”. I look at him and in that moment I cannot imagine having to make my living in this way, and I give him another 50 pesos and he seems happy as he pockets it and we are on our way. I get home and unpack the grocery and the kids carefully carry in our new mystery plants. Aaron is now home and teases me that I just bought some weeds likely pulled out of a ditch somewhere… As I take them out of the cup of water it is impossible to ignore that the stems are pretty stinky with rotting ends. Trying to save face, I’m determined to give these things a chance so I rinse them off, trim up the slimy bits and transplant them into some dirt. They struggle for a couple of days, but on day three in the soil, they spring back and start to grow… In his sales pitch the man in the parking lot told me they would flower yellow and pink, but so far, just lots of green. They require an incredible amount of water and are growing like… um, weeds…

But he had no teeth… what was I supposed to do?

After witnessing some uncomfortable moments last weekend during our trip to “The Castle” at Chapultapec (an historic building on top of a hill that houses the Mexican National History Museum) Caleigh was very thoughtful on our way back, and I wondered how she was doing. We had to park in a very busy area near an open air market, and after paying for parking, we were approached by a woman who was visibly distraught and very nearly crying, pointing to our kids and miming that she too has three kids to feed, could we give her some money so she could buy them some food. We gave her some pesos and she was on her way. We have been given a lot of advice about this sort of thing, and usually it is recommended that you just keep going, or you would be handing out coins all day long… it’s heartbreaking. And there is a real skepticism about this behaviour here, as it is often viewed as a scam. After watching this woman work her way down the street, telling her story to each person whose eye she caught, Caleigh wondered if she could be believed and if she was really going to use the money we and others were giving her to feed her children. Did she even have any children? She was carrying shopping bags that had obviously just been purchased from the market (which isn’t necessarily a good indicator of resources, as most things at the local markets are very cheaply priced) and in every other material way she appeared to be okay. Caleigh observed that she had shoes and clothes in good condition and her hair seemed clean and cared for and she wondered how you can believe that she is telling the truth? A fairly “deep” conversation ensued… Of course, you can’t be sure, and we don’t really know someone’s true back story or motivations. But I always think that if you are in such a situation that you feel the only way to get what you need is to beg, then there are much bigger things going on in your life. And I always wonder about the systems available to help (assuming they exist) and how accessible they really are. Sometimes, you just give because you feel in your heart it’s the right thing to do, and once you give a gift, it’s no longer your choice how it is used or received. You’ve given it in good faith and it’s up to the recipient to determine how to use it. It’s not up to us to pass judgement.  I do wonder about the health of the “system” because this behaviour is symptomatic of other larger social and systemic concerns… and certainly, unfortunately, not isolated to this big city.

This is all so new for our little rural kids, who never really even experienced it in big city Toronto – it’s a tough lesson when you first realize how devastating poverty can be. And the realities of a developing nation are very different from those of a “developed” nation. When walking our Rosie the other day, I did acknowledge with the kids that they may see things here that they never thought they would ever see – and that they can always talk it out with us, to get it off their chest so it doesn’t sit and fester as worry or confusion.

The infamous “They” also told us that our kids would grow up pretty fast and become more “worldly” living in a different culture … it is happening before our very eyes, and sometimes hard to see them change and feel disappointed and confused by some of the harsh, unfortunate realities of life, and learn to cope.

ADDENDUM:

Mystery of the mystery plants solved!!

Mansell is doing this super neat experiment in Biology class.  He used a large plastic bottle, cut the top off, inverted the top and placed it back on the bottle.  Into the bottom half went water and a beta fish; into the top went soil, a “wick” of string and chive seeds.  The string extends down through the upside down bottle opening into the water, drawing water from the fish to wet the soil for the plant to grow.   What I love about this is all the problem-solving they are doing based on the results they are getting.  So over the course of two weeks the chives sprouted, grew and then turned yellow, as they had actually developed root-rot, and the group determined that they needed a shorter wick, and more soil (and new seeds!!  It’s hilarious – I bought seeds to start a little herb garden in my windowsill, and so far Mansell has used a couple seed packets and two of my four bags of soil for this project!!).  Then it was suggested by “Miss Biology” (this is an endearing thing Mansell does – he refers to his teachers by the subject they teach) that the beta fish needs a plant to try to maintain a clean aquatic environment.  Sunday night, after we’ve been out all day running our weekly errands, 6:00 pm, he says, “Mom, we need to buy a plant that you can put in a fish tank.”  Ummm, no “we” don’t – and where was this information earlier in the day when we were at the mall??  Nope, you’re going to have to wait until we are out again… Then I thought of our “weeds” and offered some to him for his project.  Couldn’t hurt to try and maybe “Miss Biology” could identify the plant for us!  Sure enough, she ID’d it as “Coon Tail”, an aquatic plant (Mansell told me I never should have planted them in dirt…) and they can be found in ditches  in the interior of MX, but are considered an invasive species…

The four shoots Mansell took are thriving, fully submerged, a new playground for his little fish!!