I’ve always been an early riser. When the sun starts coming up, my eyes start opening on their own while the thoughts in my brain start darting around. Though I can occasionally stay in bed later, I’m usually up by 8 a.m.
Oh, but I do love naps. I would say that I especially like them when I didn’t sleep well the night before, but the truth is, I think I’m one of those people who just need 10 hours of sleep out of every 24 to feel well-rested. Getting those hours all in at the same time is not reasonable under the circumstances of my life, and so I usually tap out on my night’s sleep somewhere between six and eight hours.
So my ideal sleep schedule involves a one or two-hour afternoon nap, which is just not reasonable in my part of Mexico, and probably not in most.
Napping issues in Mexico
Why, you may ask? In part, it’s because I have a child, and school is indefinitely not in session. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been almost entirely asleep and she’s woken me up to watch whatever movie I’ve put on for her in order to get my nap in the first place. I’ve also been woken to look for missing toys that are suddenly an emergency and, of course, for snacks.
She’s actually not my primary source of nap interruption, though: It’s people coming to the door.
Easily five people a day ring my doorbell. Though it makes me grouchy when it happens during my nap, I can hardly be mad at them: It’s a common occurrence.
Sometimes it’s the guys who carry off trash in their truck, an appreciated service in a city with rather unreliable and unpredictable trash collection (plus, I have to carry it a few blocks away because the truck apparently can’t make it up to where I live).
Other times, it’s the man and his cute son who sell fruits and vegetables door-to-door. There’s an Indigenous woman and a young child who speak very little Spanish who sell flowers as well, and the Yakult (those tiny probiotic yogurt drinks) lady comes by every Wednesday.
I can also expect at least once a week that the guy decked out in military gear who “protects” the neighborhood by walking around during the night blowing a whistle will arrive to collect his 10-peso “voluntary” donation.
Unfortunately, the people who came around selling ice cream haven’t been back in a while. But I have been able to buy pens that double as smartphone cleaners, made-in-China 3D puzzles of houses that my daughter adores — even though they’re even less-than-dollar-store quality — and the occasional lollipop in exchange for a donation to some good cause. Or the idea of a good cause.
Delivery drivers bring convenience but also ruin naps
And since this is modern Mexico, we’re having quite a few things delivered: everything from groceries to packages to medical devices for my houseguest with mold allergies.
When people seem curious about moving to Mexico, one of my first warnings is this: If you value silence, quiet neighborhoods and generally being left alone, this is not the place for you.
If my daughter or the doorbell ringing doesn’t wake me up, the neighbor’s dog does. It’s situated on the side of the house, on a little strip of a patio that seems designed specifically to make lonely animals neurotic. We don’t live on a busy street, but anything that passes in front of the house — human, animal, something on wheels, a piece of plastic being carried by the wind — will usually set this dog off.
The acoustics are such that when it starts barking, the noise goes right into the rooms at the front of my house. Turning up the TV volume isn’t enough; it must be paused until the dog quiets down again. The neighbors are well-meaning and have tried to keep it quiet, but in the end, it’s a “guard dog” for all of us, and the unfortunate acoustics of our two places are not their fault.
The cowbell ringer doesn’t help either
What other sounds might you hear? Well, there’s the person who runs up and down the streets with a cowbell to let you know that you’ve got perhaps a 15-minute window of opportunity to take out the trash.
There’s the “gas” song that blares from the truck to let you know they’re around. If you need a new tank of fuel for cooking and heating your shower, that’s your cue to run out the front door and flag them down.
There’s the high-pitched whistle of the guy who will sharpen your knives for you. Then there are the people selling elotes or tamales — the latter of which doesn’t happen nearly enough on my street, if you ask me; I should have proposed to the guy selling those delicious mole tamales when I had the chance. Or there are the people offering to buy your large domestic appliances, which they let you know about via a megaphone stuck to the roof of their car.
‘Quiet down’ doesn’t work
The notion of telling children to quiet down seems about as logical to most people here as getting mad at the wind for blowing, and if a neighbor, or five, is having a party nearby, you’ll get to hear all of their music and probably some loud drunken conversations as well. Most Mexicans, including my daughter, don’t seem to be bothered in the least by all of these noises. I, as a grouchy, bougie gringa, seem to be the only one having to stop herself from jumping up and down like Rumplestiltskin throwing a tantrum whenever the doorbell’s just been rung for the sixth time in as many hours.
My saving grace? I have a bad ear. While I can’t ignore my child or the doorbell, if I’m expecting a delivery, I can lie on my “good” ear and be at least a little deaf to the world. So, if you live in Mexico and value silence, I recommend that you learn to accept any one-sided hearing loss as a blessing in disguise.
This article was first published in 2020.
Sarah DeVries writes from her home in Xalapa, Veracruz.
