Sunday

Happy Gothic Romance Day! The day when, with no other holidays in sight, we must dwell upon the bleak shadow of tragic love. The nearest midpoint between Halloween and St. Valentine's Day. From here on out, I hear, the nights are growing shorter. A reminiscence is in order: I fondly recall December eighteenth, when I totally forgot an anniversary. That was the first birthday of the new tires we got our car after crossing the US border coming home last year. It also marked our second month in Vietnam. I didn't realize what day it was until the nineteenth, the thirteenth month of our marriage, over a nice dinner at the Cantina Central. "Yesterday was an anniversary," I said to Sunshine over oddly Hawaiian food, "a year ago yesterday we'd just left Mexico the day before." Cantina Central is a funny stab at Mexican food one block south of the Saigon Center Mall. Honestly, their food is alright but they drown everything in pineapple. Their windows look out over the colorful spire of a Hindu temple. The waiters are all Vietnamese.* Still, it managed to recall México enough to remind me of this anniversary--maybe it was the "Gringo Ribeye"--and Sunshine and I had a nice talk about real Mexican restaurants we'd patronized, some of which we miss and some we do not. What I thought was funny was that we already couldn't remember the names of some of the streets those places were on; hell, we couldn't even remember the names of some of the places. For nineteen months, I clung to Monterrey as a home away from home, a surrogate that coalesced into something fond after so many returns. But it was really only nineteen months, after all. Goodnight Calzada Del Valle, wherever you are. [Cavin]