My great fear about this visit to Mexico City was that I would feel the loss of Maya even stronger, knowing that she was planning to join us on this trip.  It is a low-key trip, mostly just teaching my class each afternoon  and hanging out at the pool during the day.  But we have gone on some little day trips, and of course, I find myself thinking that “Maya would love this” again and again.

Nowhere was this more so than at the Frida Kahlo house.  In the past, I was always looking for opportunities for strong female role models, and pointed them out to Maya, and we talked about them, sometimes a little too much for her liking.  As I learned more about Kahlo, I knew this would have been one of those times.  Her commitment to communism, her art, and her heritage were so strong, and she moved forward despite huge physical obstacles; her inability to conceive, multiple amputations, polio.  She was indeed such a strong female role model.

One painting and one quote were particularly meaningful to me.  Viva la Vida is a still life of sorts, of a cut-open watermelon, with the not very subtle statement written across the canvas. Live Life. Kahlo was many things, but subtle was not one of them.  I saw a corset she had painted with a hammer and sickle!  On the wall was this quote about her life with Diego:

“Perhaps they expect me to wail and moan about ‘how much I suffer”, living with a man like Diego.  But I don’t think that the banks of a river suffer by letting it flow…”

I was left thinking about the last sentence for a while, trying to make sense of it.  Am I the “banks of a river”?  Was Maya? Or was she the river? Is her death the river? I am not certain yet, but the sentiment is profound.  I cannot stop the flow of the river, and to try to do so only brings more suffering to me. And there is the challenge for me, the struggle, to accept that which I cannot change…

Maya, you would have loved this trip.

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