The tell-tale sign was what, just this morning, looked like a paint splash on one of my socks. On investigation, it turned out to be a large hole above the ankle, making me wonder how I’d caused it.
Buying clothes in Mexico can be hit-or-miss, and the sizing system is different to the US or Canada. I’ve therefore always made it a habit to stock up on replacement clothing during visits back to Toronto, looking for familiar outlets and familiar brands. But, not having been back for 15 months, I’m starting to notice extra wear and tear. A couple of other socks have passed the state of easy repair, one or two shirts are fraying at the cuffs, and a few stains on paler items of clothing won’t wash out.
Such are the horrors of international quarantine.
A further problem with replacing stuff locally is that our town of Tepoztlan has very limited shopping options for clothes. I’ll need to go to the nearby cities of Cuautla or Cuernavaca, which entails being on buses for up to an hour each way, then being in a place with a large number of people. Some major stores are partly closed, and a friend told me the Cuernavaca Walmart was recently not letting people wander the clothing aisles, where many potentially infected fingers might touch the same item.
Ordering clothes online makes me nervous, since I’ve never found collar or shoe sizes (for example) are precisely the same, brand to brand. Getting delivery here would require prolonged waiting for a driver to find my house in a village without street signs. And I need to try an item before I feel okay buying it. I don’t want to have to send stuff back, and re-order it.
After a year of the pandemic, I’m starting to find many things are getting on my nerves that formerly, I’d have let go by me, at least for a time. Having fresh clothing is a sign things are still basically in order: having frayed or stained khakis indicates they aren’t.
Forget, then, the statistics about virus caseloads, or stories about delays in delivering vaccines. I’m not even that concerned that Mexico’s President has Covid-19 himself. I’m facing a sartorial crisis.
I’ve occasionally been teased about wearing long-sleeves as opposed to tee-shirts, which are the local expat uniform. But I burn in the sun if I wear short sleeves, and a year or two back I needed a suspicious grey blotch taken off by a dermatologist that was, she assured me, a result of sun-damage. I end up looking oddly like many local older men, who still wear long-sleeved shirts, and this doesn’t hurt my acceptability in this rather closed community.
So, soon, I imagine, I’ll have to smother myself in my best KN-95 mask, board one of those buses, and go hose-hunting in one of those other cities. I’ll daringly risk acquiring a shirt bearing a hitherto unknown Asian label, or perhaps a pair of jeans. And back home, I’ll congratulate myself on my daring and practicality.
And if the socks and pants don’t last very long, I’ll have to console myself that it’s like my parents’ long-ago life in wartime. Sometimes, in times of prolonged crisis, you just have to settle for sub-standard threads.
Mexed Messages 