I’m obsessed with my mother. Last night, I wore her pajamas and sampled the generous supply of facial anti-aging elixirs she brought along from Moscow (six kilos out of the 23 allowed by Turkish Airlines for checked baggage). I smoothed the night cream onto the furrow between my eyebrows, massaging the deeply etched line, evidence of my inherent skepticism, according to my ex. Eres bien pinche escéptica — his words echoed in my mind. I might buy into this theory if my mother didn’t have the same wrinkle in the exact same place. I was raised with all sorts of fictions presented as facts because my mom believes everything.
My mother is an artificial redhead with swollen, neatly manicured fingers. Her skin smells of Tahitian monoi oil — an indulgent blend of tropical blooms with creamy coconut whispers. She's always had a somewhat exotic air, as if she were a fruit tree growing on a sun-drenched island. Born in the South of Russia near the Caspian Sea, she'd always complain about missing the sun in Moscow, where my father transplanted her at the age of 24 — dangerously close to becoming an "old maid," as my Cossack grandmother would have put it.
My mother loves soft, plush textures, wearing white, good hygiene, sugar-free yogurt, and saying “us” instead of “me”.
“We don’t want raw mushrooms in our salad,” she says in Russian to a Mexican waitress. I'm not sure whether to tell her that I actually like raw mushrooms —for their oddly satisfying muted crunchiness — but I don’t want to upset her. I attribute her manipulative socialism to her being a water sign (and maybe to the decades of her codependent relationship with my father, which wiped out any notion of individual desire).
I haven’t seen my mother for five years. Now, she sits at an awkward closeness to me, almost like a hallucination or a hologram, on the bus ride to Angangueo, watching a romcom featuring aged Julia Roberts and George Clooney dubbed in Spanish from Spain. The orange dawn is casting itself through the window.
"The clouds look like firebirds flying over the open fields," my mother comments, briefly tearing herself away from the movie. She hasn't changed at all since the last time I saw her: her face, her body, the way she describes things with a flowery verbosity that's often nonsensical, yet somehow precise. The clouds are firebirds.
Like many old mining settlements in Mexico, Angangueo exudes a slightly haunted colonial feel that sets it apart from the contemporary timeline. There are several statues of miners cast in bronze, bare-chested and dehydrated, their muscles shining painfully through metallic skin. Locals never got access to the gold they mined. The guide, who initially appears overly eager to assist with everything — a red flag for tourist traps — turns out to be knowledgeable, helpful, and passionate about Mexican heritage, although he will occasionally slip into nationalistic remarks like "Spaniards spoiled our DNA," which I secretly enjoy.
Since the mid-70s when the Monarch butterfly sanctuary was created, mining is no longer the primary source of income for Angangeo. The guide tells us about el magnetismo de monarcas: how these butterflies, with brains the size of a pinhead, travel thousands of kilometers to Mexico, a place they've never visited before, without getting lost. Before their migration route was discovered by the biologists Fred and Norah Urquhart tracking them from Canada, it was believed that the butterflies flew from a different dimension, carrying the souls of ancestors on their wings for Day of the Dead. The celebration's traditional colors — orange, yellow, and black — draw inspiration from the Monarch palette. They arrive in Mexico in November and stay here through winter until mid-March. The butterflies are horny and time-constrained, especially the males whose shorter life cycles mean that they will not be coming back.
I figured that botanical voyeurism might make for a decent mother-daughter activity.
We are slowly entering the area of the sacred fir forest tinted orange by dense pollinia. Monarch butterflies whirl about like torn paper tossed from above. They swiftly flap their wings, tumbling from branches to the ground, darting into the air, accidentally brushing against tourists' faces and getting caught in hair.
"These butterflies are really brave. They fight until one dies." a chubby Chicano boy tells his sister. The ground is scattered with dead butterflies. Their fragile wings rustle like dry leaves underfoot.
My mother stands with her eyes closed, illuminated by the sunlight that cuts through the branches. The butterfly dust shines golden on her skin. She traveled thousands of kilometers to get here. And now she is here. She is here.