La UVA: The Union of Gossipy Women by Xochitl Alvizo

My mom and I this last Christmas

My mom lives in Mexico part of the year. She lives in a beach town that we first visited as a family back in 1979 when I was about five or six years old. It was a random pit stop during a road trip from Los Angeles to Guadalajara as we drove south to visit our relatives. My siblings and I loved it so much that we begged our parents to bring us back the following year. They did, year after year, as it became our family vacation spot—spending almost every summer there as I was growing up.

As my parents planned for their future, they ended up buying a house there and deciding to make it their part-time home during their retirement years. My dad didn’t get to enjoy that kind of retirement for very long, barely six months, before a heart attack ended his life. Still, because of their return to Mexico year after year, my parents developed a strong and connected community of friends with whom my mom still gets to share daily life. And when I say daily, I really do mean daily.

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