I am besotted with Mexican tile. It is my crush, my secret love. On the outside I look like a woman shopping, but inside I am aflame.

This is the third house in which I’ve done my own tile work. I choose. I install, cut, and grout. It is the perfect task for me, as tile work is very forgiving. When grout joints are uneven and tiles swerve, I simply murmur my new mantra, “Adobe charm.”

Back in the day when my husband and I built our own house—hammer, nail, and two towheaded kids in tow—I was the Tile Madonna. Now, finishing up our second rental, I am the Tile Queen. Michael and I went pretty quickly from youth to planning for our old age, and the kids morphed into adults. But one classic element in life that

remained was Talavera tile. Heidi, my local tile peddler, says, “We all need more zip in our lives, and Talavera is all about zip.” The Loyal Crew who did the actual building converged to make this experience the Tile Nirvana I’d been seeking all along. As with any spiritual path, enlightenment by tiling has its dangers.

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