La Fiesta: ¡Felicidades!

The conclusion to the story of throwing a milestone party in Oaxaca.

We threw the birthday party for my mom on a Friday, only two days after the rest of my family arrived in Oaxaca.

The weeks leading up to my parents’ arrival had been both incredibly busy and emotionally fraught. While my sister and her husband had visited us a few weeks prior nobody else from the family had yet come to see us and with a significant number of people (10!) converging for a significant, milestone birthday we felt it was particularly important everything go more-or-less perfectly. As a result we buried ourselves in planning.

By that point we had ordered a custom piñata and purchased the candy we would fill it with. We filled our fridge with beer and popsicles, and we made sure we had enough snacks for an army. We’d finally settled on the dinner we’d be serving to the family, the “chef en casa” option from our favorite ceviche restaurant, La Cevicheria and had spent dozens of hours preparing for that week. Beyond the extensive sightseeing and additional meals we’d planned all that was left was to actually throw the party.

On the day of the party we asked both Edgar and his wife Adi to help us prepare the palapa for our guests and Andrea and I laid out all of the decorations we had purchased. The wood table in the palapa was covered with banners and paper flowers, all of which were flat and packed in plastic. In that moment we were momentarily stumped…how do we actually set any of this stuff up?

Life in a new country is humbling in part because sometimes you don’t understand how even basic things work. Setting up the banners requires no special skill, you just unfold them and make sure they’re hung at the desired height and level. But the large, hanging paper flowers we’d purchased puzzled us. While they were packed completely flat we knew they were supposed to be three-dimensional. We did feel slightly better when it became apparent Edgar also had no idea how to unfold them. Soon he and I were looking at YouTube videos to discover how to manage their intricacies until his wife Adi arrived, rolled her eyes, and set about showing us how to unfold them.

I’ve written before, on many occasions in fact, about how Mexico fully and emphatically embraces the opportunity for celebrations. That phenomenon seems to be particularly true in Oaxaca. We live in a place just looking for an excuse to crack open a beer (or a bottle of mezcal) and set off some blackmarket fireworks.

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My mom’s party wasn’t simply an opportunity to have fun or to show off Mexico to my family, though. It was a chance for us to further assimilate into the culture of our new home. When I consider the future and what it may look like, those dreams are grounded in Mexico. When we moved to Mexico it was with the tacit understanding that as we lived here we would, in some ways, become more Mexican. Throwing a party here with Mexican trappings wasn’t cultural appropriation for us, it was a way for us to further adapt to a new way of life.

That’s not to say the average Oaxacan throws a party quite like we did. We went big with the food and opted for a fancier meal, while most people would likely spend their money on hosting a much larger number of people who would be entertained with live music, fireworks or firecrackers (they’re very common!), and huge quantities of alcohol.

For us, though, the meal we picked was perfect. When the chefs from La Cevicheria brought out a dessert topped by a crunchy, edible feuille everyone ooh-ed and ahh-ed. When we were presented with small shots of a mezcal cocktail the family was thrilled (and those not drinking were able to have a non-alcoholic version). When our server was able to answer questions in English and describe each dish it made the experience all the more special.

What was most important for us, though, was the opportunity to finally host family in a home large enough to contain all of them. We really hadn’t known what life would be like here when we moved to have a new adventure. Deprived of the frame of our old lives, the only thing left to do is to forge forward. On this day, perhaps more than any other so far, it felt like we were really, truly making it work.

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