Wasp stings and Seguro Popular | Mexico vs. U.S. 1-0

Some family of mine visited for the first time this past week. As is apt to happen, when comparing the U.S. and Mexico, we got off on a spirited detour about the direction in which the U.S. government is headed.
I had remarked how ironic it was that the direction of the effect of current U.S. policies (slashing essential public programs, failing to support universal education, lining the pockets of the wealthy, etc.) are sending our country down a similar path as Mexico, where growth is occurring in some sectors, but because of the monopolies and corrupt bureacracies, a lot of the "progress" truly benefits only the rich, leaving the majority of the country stuck about 40 years in the past, maybe more.
My motivation in saying something like that was probably stemming from a sense of helplessness at only being able to watch what goes down in the U.S. from afar, also a fear that things I most cherished about my home country, like great free education, are at risk. 

But then something hit me—part of my imaginary equation was off, and not in the direction I'd anticipated. Just the day prior, I'd visited the Queretaro General Hospital ER for a large wasp sting that had gotten worse and infected. I was seen immediately, administered a shot to reduce the reaction, and sent home with medicine—all in under 1 hour's time, and all free, under the Seguro Popular federal medical care program.

I first enrolled in 2010, before my daughter was born. I'd been able to pay for private doctor's office visits out of pocket up until then, but was worried about potential accidents, my inability to afford private medical insurance, and wanted a sort of catastrophic family medical insurance. So far we've only used it for severe insect bites—Margo also got treated for one, last year, when he was stung by a scorpion. But it's a relief to think it's there when we need it.
Suddenly, on my imaginary scoreboard between the U.S. and Mexico federal benefits to my family, I was left staring at a big fat 1-0, with Mexico on the unexpected left hand side.
Inside, I felt outraged, shocked, even a little dismayed. How could it be that the glorious U.S. of A could be down on the count, and of all rivals, with Mexico? There had to be something I was missing.
I racked my brains for things the U.S. federal government had done for me (a direct benefit, not some sort of trickle-down benefit) and my inner conscience immediately felt lame doing so, especially after hearing the words of JFK, "ask not what your country can do for you," first inside my own head, and then from my uncle sitting next to me as he invoked the time of the Kennedys.
It was as if I had an inner anti-governmental critic meter and some alarm was getting sounded. Over the years my morality meter had driven me to do well in school, honor my family, work, pay taxes, volunteer, sit on boards of directors. It had allowed me to practice freedom of speech by being critical of government policies, an environmental activist, and even challenge the morality of current U.S. immigration policies. But somehow wondering what direct personal benefit I'd gotten with my U.S. membership card felt sacrilegious. What felt especially weird was having spent the last 7 years up in arms about not being able to go back home to the U.S. with my husband and daughter, as a complete family unit. It was a very weird feeling indeed.
But what was worse was not finding any answer to counter my suspicion, that the score was still 1-0. All I could think of was having to pay taxes since I started getting W-2s when I was 16 years old. The next thing I thought of was my $20,000 college scholarship through the National Science Scholars Program that had gotten revoked as a result of Newt Gingrich's contract with America the summer of 1995, leaving me with just under that amount of debt 3.5 years later after graduating.
The response to my question I posed to my family was disturbingly spare. After asking in earnest for the third time if I was being rash, if I was missing something, my uncle said, "Let it go already...you may just have to accept that things aren't really what you thought."
That seems to go without saying—this isn't the first time that the dual allegiance I've been obliged to forge in the throes of forced expatriation has caused me to question everything I've known to be true.
That part of me that still wants to see that scoreboard blowing up on the right hand side is not just juvenile fantasy, but self-preservation, in that restoring something from ruins is usually a lot harder than preventing something from falling apart in the first place. On the other hand, maybe a middle ground would be to allow something to grow and evolve. That's been my wish ever since it became clear to me at 12 years old that our country's oil-dependent economy would need to sprout new wings and let the dinosaurs go the way of oblivion. What saddens me as an adult is that the country I thought the most innovative and capable of progress—my own—still really has so far to go.

Bonfire Anxiety

We have this family tradition of having bonfires on the solstices and equinoxes, and with the spring equinox coming up you'd think I'd already be inviting friends and family over to toast marshmallows this week. But we're just getting over being sick (the baby still is, technically), and I'm more overworked than usual. Normally even those factors wouldn't make us shy away from a shindig—sometimes celebration's the best medicine—except that we experienced an unusually traumatic fire just over a week ago—one that puts all previous bonfires to shame for its scale, timing, and impact.

Almost everyone's lives have been touched by fire, if not literally then remotely. The mass media has brought the regular forest fire seasons that have threatened arid landscapes in the Western U.S. into people's living rooms, and many know someone who's been personally affected. But fewer have actually experienced a unplanned, urgent, uncontrollable fire for themselves. Lightning strikes are the sort of thing that causes life-threatening damage so infrequently that mention of them goes the way of the mythical. You see trees on the trail that have been hit by strikes, you hear of far-removed stories but they hardly ever touch our lives.

But both finally hit home (literally) for me last week when, after having been struck by lightning at approximately 11:30 pm last Saturday, 1500 of my suegro's (father-in-law's) hay bales burned down to the ground in one night. With my baby daughter and I and several family members looking on (ironically, at first, in the rain), my husband and his brothers attempted, in vain, alongside the city fire department and several good Samaritan neighbors, to put out an enormous fire that started with too much force to ever really have a chance to be stopped.  Luckily, the fire was totally contained—the only other damage was an underground electrical register box that got crushed by the trucks that approached the fire, and they did manage to save some alfalfa and sorghum. But the once imposing mountain of baled corn stalks was brought down—a year's worth of work and harvest reduced to a paltry pile of sodden and ash stained compost. I've been recalling the incident ever since, and I don't think I'll ever see a weenie roast again in the same light.

As traumatic events always do, the event and its aftermath resulted in drawing people closer together. Memories are made. Others are recalled by the elders. My suegro's stories of people he'd known who were actually killed by lightning in the cornfields they worked decades ago. My grandmother told me more of her own personal tragedy of her family losing their barn when their house and barn were struck by lightning when she was eight years old...a story I had an inkling of, from a poem she'd written, but never heard many details about. In a chilling twist to the pre-lightning strike part of the story, my two brothers-in-law (cuñados) told us that they were atop the pile of bales only minutes before lightning struck, on a ladder and crawling around up top struggling to cover the bales with a tarp to protect them from the rain. It was perhaps the only silver lining to this particular incident that they themselves were not the victims.

Outside my house this moment, nine days later, a water truck is pumping 5,000 liters of water into the water tanks that our families share that are housed in our shed. The tank was drawn down from my husband's valiant but pathetic efforts to counter the fire with garden hoses before the fire department arrived, and the city's supply hasn't been enough to top it back up. My cuñado, a man who I once got along with famously in the States, but since moving to Mexico has been a tougher pill to swallow, is also there, recounting the story of last week to the water truck man. Even though we've had our differences, they're transcended by the sadness of tragedy, and one memory from that night rises above the rest for me. The four brothers had finally given up trying to fight the fire and were standing shoulder to shoulder facing the fire, watching helplessly as the fire trucks dumped countless liters of water on the fuming bales. Everyone present had been drawn together by forces of nature, and were completely forced to relinquish all control, as part of us all went up in those flames.