Reflections on a year abroad

As of this writing, it will be nearly one year since Steve, Coco and I pulled up stakes and headed overseas. It’s hard to believe this much time has passed. We certainly have a lot of photos to show for it and, of course, this blog (mostly by Steve) which has faithfully tracked our whereabouts over the past 11+ months. So, with that, I thought I’d take a beat and tell you what living in Europe is really like… just kidding!  Steve has been telling it like it is just wonderfully but it occurred to me that sometimes, some things are less than ideal. Can I fill in the blanks now? I’ll try.

Keeping a schedule of sorts is important and thanks to Coco we have that covered. Days pretty much revolve around getting her walks in and of course that means getting us out the door, too. And we have gone on some stellar walks; hikes that I try hard to make sure are not too strenuous for any of us but do provide a certain amount of a challenge. Sometimes, the walks can be utterly mundane — just boring around-the-block stuff — but even then it’s an opportunity to see the neighbors every day and the best result of that are hand signals and knowing glances that come from people who recognize us from the neighborhood.I really like that a lot. 

The best days for me are when we get out into natural surroundings and some stays have delivered better than others. The grind of traffic noise or the clamor of noisy neighbors in apartments can be a real drag.  The motorcycles in Corsica were terribly annoying; the lady in the apartment above us here in Cordoba wears clickety-clackety heels at all hours.  Walking Coco around Novi Ligure meant braving the seriously scary barking guard dogs behind almost every fence.  But then you can balance that with gazing at the moonlit Pyrenees from our bedroom window in France, strolling merely five minutes to blissfully beautiful vineyards in Provence, or bundling up against a brisk wind on our local Morriscastle beach in Ireland.  Of course I thrive in the latter of those experiences and have learned to make do with the former, 

Friends have gingerly asked me if I miss home and of course I do!  But then again, I don’t. I mean, I miss my boys immensely. Crazily. I miss the regular rhythm of my neighborhood and the few dear friends I managed to make in Portland.  I miss the family that newly arrived in Portland just as we were leaving and I miss all my friends.  On the other hand, I probably talk to everyone — family and close friends alike — nearly the same amount as I did when we were living in Portland, thanks to WhatsApp. It’s not a huge change – but yet it IS. It’s awkward and weird to have an eight or nine hour time difference on every call. People are on different cycles of their day and it shows up in conversations when I’d rather it didn’t.  Plus, it usually requires making arrangements to connect with people which I really dislike.  Spontaneous chats are not the easiest things to pull off from Europe. 

I skimmed over Finn and Reilly and that won’t do: it occurred to me that they occupy a tremendous amount of my brain time right now, probably unnaturally so. I mean yes, they should be in my thoughts but this is a lot.  And I’m just sharing this because I think it’s entirely natural to have this yearning for them given the distance and their ages and their places in life.  Of course we all speak frequently and shoot texts. but there is still a distance that drives me a bit crazy. Will this change? Probably. Time goes by and you get used to things. But therein lies the rub…time going by. I can’t ever get that back. 

During this stay in Cordoba I have become acquainted with Seneca and his stoic philosophy. (He was born here and is beloved by the Spaniards but really he was a Roman philosopher who tutored a young Nero.)  I guess I feel like I’m leaning into his teachings a bit. Some of his writings make sense:  essentially they boil down to being happy with what you have, and not pining for what’s not possible. Take what you have been given and live a life with that. I mean it sounds a bit bleak on the surface (stoic?) but it’s also sort of zen and about respecting the moment, so I’m thinking about that nowadays.  I’m trying to balance those thoughts with what I actually physically have — between us we have four suitcases — and what I think I want (a big house with lots of comfort and family close by?). 

If you can spot a thread in this wandering post it’s probably the but-then-againisms. That’s how it goes: I don’t have the responsibility of looking after a household — I have not touched a vacuum cleaner in a year! — and I’m not doing onerous loads of laundry.  But then again, I don’t get the satisfaction of putting up a new piece of art or fixing an annoying hinge. It’s a million but-then-againisms. I don’t make a Sunday dinner for my boys but then again I can talk to them for a bit once a week. It’s good. No, really-I’m not talking myself into it. I’m just sharing the reality. 

Finally, I thought I would make an exercise to find one pic from each month that speaks to some point of inspiration for me… not travel-wise but just something that hit a nerve for me personally.  The pics won’t do it justice — we definitely need to get a real camera— but hopefully you can find a bit of what I try to discover during this journey: random beauty; humor; a little chaos. 

Love. D