On Valentine’s Day I bought myself a walking stick – in anticipation of my upcoming eightieth birthday in mid-May. I tell myself I don’t really NEED a walking stick right now. But I couldn’t resist this one. I saw it at the open-air market at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference that day. It called to me.

As most of my WOW readers know by now, 2025 marks the tenth year I’ve lived in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, after having attended my first Writers’ Conference in 2015 and deciding to retire here at the age of seventy. In these ten years, I and my SMA friends have been watching each other grow older and older at close range.

The response to “How are you doing?” over lunch can fill the allotted hour – not with complaints so much; it’s more like reportage. But even these “organ recitals,” as we joshingly call them, recitations of our diminishments, make a pleasant change from discussing the horrifying world news these days. 

We commiserate over each others’ reports of failing eyesight, failing hearing, failing stamina and vitality, and more. We all have aging issues, but some of my friends choose to merrily toss theirs off as “better than the alternative.” 

My issue is mainly digestive: the less I eat, the better I feel. So I’ve become a stick figure in my old age. I’m a modern-day Twiggy.

I’m reminded of the passage in Atul Gawande’s best-selling book BEING MORTAL — a meditation on how people can better live with age-related frailty — that has stuck fast with me since I first read it some years ago: “Some people shrink to twigs as they age. Others become trunks.” I’ve become a twig.  As such, I think I’ll soon need the help of a stick to prop me up.

Gracias a dios, as Mexicans always say, I can still SEE and HEAR and THINK and WALK. I don’t own a car, so I walk a lot. I walk an average of three miles a day – down into el centro, all around town, and part-way home (I usually take a bus back up the hill) to my sweet apartment in Colonia Independencia. I love to walk in this exquisite, color-filled city, under the normally clear, cobalt-blue skies, in the almost-always temperate climate, away from the demanding, unremitting grip of screens. Walking stretches my soul.

But it’s also true that some of the things that make this charming old colonial city in the central mountains of Mexico so charming are the same things that make it somewhat treacherous for getting around on foot: the hilly terrain; the narrow, cobblestone streets; and the uneven, slender, and oftentimes slippery old stone sidewalks in el centro.

(Calle Aldama, with SMA’s iconic Parroquia church in the background)

Most visitors and all residents are aware of these pitfalls and dress their feet accordingly. Sturdy walking shoes are de rigueur. But spills still happen, especially to older women who’ve grown a bit wobbly. There’s even a jokey name for a so-called exclusive club — “The Fallen Women of San Miguel” – a club I hope never to join.

“Each year,” says Gawande in BEING MORTAL (this book came out in 2014, but I’ve recently reread it), “about 350,000 Americans fall and break a hip. Of these, 40 percent end up in a nursing home, and 20 percent are never able to walk again.” Oh, boy! I think. Oh, no! Not me! The day I can no longer walk again is the day I’ll opt for the alternative.

So this Valentine’s Day I overcame my reticence, my fear of looking like a proverbial “old lady,” my, yes, let’s face it, pride, and I bought myself a walking stick. But this is no ordinary walking stick. This walking stick is a one-of-a-kind work of art. This walking stick, I like to think, has magical powers. Already, even before using it much, it’s made me less anxious about turning eighty. It’s given me something solid to hold on to.

 (With my new walking stick and my friend Sher Davidson at the Writers’ Conference — photo by Patrice Wynne)

(“Twiggy” strutting with her new walking stick — photo by Sher Davidson)

This week I visited the man who made my “magical” walking stick, Ernesto Perez, at his studio here in SMA to learn more about him and his art. A retired attorney originally from Santa Barbara, California, Ernesto has been painting primarily on wood surfaces – chairs, tables, cabinets, and such — for only five years. The newest addition to his oeuvre, only in the last couple of months, is walking sticks made of super-sturdy mescite wood.

 (Ernesto in his studio working on a walking stick)

Some have described Ernesto’s style — painting with small, distinct dots — to 19th century European Pointillism. But, as he explained to me, what he does is actually an homage to Mexico, a fusion of two ancient Mexican styles: alebrijes from Oaxaca (the dots) and huichol from Jalisco (the surrounding line designs). He paints with acrylics in four-to-six layers, choosing from 52 colors, then varnishes the stick with boat varnish in three layers. Each walking stick takes about five days in all to paint. Each is unique.

“Yes, it takes patience and time,” he told me. “But now that I’m older, I have the time.”

Again, I turn to Atul Gawande’s BEING MORTAL for inspiration: “The battle of being mortal is the battle of one’s life,” he writes, “ – to avoid becoming so diminished or dissipated or subjugated that who you are becomes disconnected from who you were or who you want to be.”

Personally, I want to be a stubbornly independent eighty-year-old woman who walks fearlessly into the future. And I trust that this beautiful, colorful, sturdy, “magical” walking stick made by Ernesto Perez with love and patience and care will help me to do just that.

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For more information about Ernesto’s hand-painted walking sticks and other art objects, please contact his wife Patrice Wynne at sanmiguelpatrice@mac.com – or, if and when you’re in San Miguel, you can find them at Patrice’s charming store, Abrazos, on Zacateros 24. Ernesto’s work is also available in Mexico City at the Museo Franz Meyer, and at the Hotel La Fonda, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

(Some of Ernesto’s walking sticks at Abrazos)

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Atul Gawande, author of BEING MORTAL and other best-sellers, is a renowned American surgeon, writer, and public health researcher. He ran USAID’s Bureau for Global Health during the Biden Administration. Here is his latest article for The New Yorker: 

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/behind-the-chaotic-attempt-to-freeze-federal-assistance