The unwinding of a weekend

I kept a journal last year. It was neither philosophical nor full of emotion. I merely recounted each day the events that had transpired. I was curious to look back through it at the end of the year and see how I had gotten from one place to another. Not so much how I got from November to April, but how the details from a number of days within those months led me from teaching in a school where I adore the students and staff to a whole new country, for example. I find the unpredictability of life the most fascinating.

I am at once a planner and an anti-planner. I will elaborate further. Generally speaking, I am not just a dreamer or big-talker. I like to take action and bring my desires and my dreams to fruition when possible. Por eso there are times I really need to plan and concern myself with fine details. Plans can also offer excitement and fun anticipation as I look forward to, say, the beach excursion Michelle and I embark on this coming weekend, or my trip to Argentina with NieNie in August. On the other hand, filling my day with plans can turn even events I enjoy into obligations. I find too quickly that the day becomes one big checklist. Luckily my life affords me the privilege of leaving some days and weekends unplanned, allowing my whims and needs to guide the moment. This weekend offered just such luxury.

The following are a number of (mostly) lovely events that ensued between Friday and Sunday afternoon.

Walking out of school on Friday, I crossed paths with Little Bro Pete who invited me to hit up a shawarma joint with him, Tom and company. Shawarma is the closest one will get to Happy Hour in Quito. A mango flavored hookah, cheap beer and Middle Eastern cuisine, as I shall call it, was a delightful way to end the week. The rain that poured down outside the restaurant inspired me to head home afterwards to drink hot chocolate and travel to the town of Macondo to see what the Buendia family was getting up to in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Rising at the reasonable hour of 8 am on Saturday, I ventured to the gym. Upon arrival I found that the gymnasio was closed because of a feriado. (As it turned out, this weekend commemorated The Battle of Pichincha.) And so it goes. On my way home I stopped at Iñaquito for my weekly produce and the ingredients to make brunch for a few friends, which was the one part of the weekend that was planned in advance. Before Alli, Charles and Justin arrived, I utilized my new yoga room and got my Vinyasa flow on. By 11:45 am these three amigos  were at my door, bearing gifts of flowers, coffee and Bailey's Irish Cream. I will happily host The Brunch Club (much superior to The Breakfast Club) any weekend so long as these delightful offerings are presented.   ;-) As the four of us were chatting over Southwestern egg scramble and fruit salad, sipping our Bailey's and coffee, it struck me again how much my life has changed in the past year. I don't remember what I wrote in that journal for May 24th, 2013, but the events of that day were vastly different than May 24th, 2014. One day in May our lives were completely separate, and now another we are all joined.

Brunching with these beautiful friends is a delightful way to begin a Saturday.

After our bellies were sufficiently filled, I suggested we take a fieldtrip to La Thé, my favorite teashop in Quito. To our shock and dismay, La Thé was closed as well. So, what did we do with our disappointed selves? Hopped on the Ecovía to be dropped off just short of the G-Spot's doorstep. Nachos, cerveza and a big soccer match did verily improve our moods. As we were walking back towards my casa, we stumbled across a quaint little establishment that promised good microbrews, so naturally we sauntered in to seat ourselves at the bar and chat with the proprietario for un ratito. Finally making our way back to La Carolina, we tried our luck once more with another tea shop. Tippytea was indeed open as it is located inside of Mall El Jardin and the caramel rooibos that I am currently sipping is a pretty good consolation for the former tea shop being closed.

Having chatted with Tom at G-Spot, we had planned to try a new restaurant called Ajì, though my improving South American sense told me to call ahead. We will call it a milagrito that Ají 1. has a website, 2. lists a phone number, and 3. someone answered the phone when I called...and told me that the restaurant was indeed closed for the night. Whelp, no problem, we are learning to always have a Plan B, Plan C and D. At 8 pm, I was sitting with Tom at a Japanese restaurant I had been curious to explore. We were soon joined by Peter and Toby, which meant rather than going home afterwards, Toby entreated us to travel a short distance to Old Town's most delightful little calle se llama La Ronda. While Toby had friends already in the area who we were to meet up with, the night really turned into canelazoing our way up this street filled with tourists and tiendas.

Canelazo Stop #1

This morning I indulged myself and slept until 10 am. After serving myself breakfast in bed, a routine I frequently engage in on weekends, I got myself dressed and walked over to Quicentro in search of a tailor I had been told about, as I was in need of someone to hem my jeans. This is the weekend's milagrito numero dos. After losing myself in Quicentro's subsuelo underworld, I finally located the sastería and effectively communicated my desires. It is yet to be seen if I will find my way back on Wednesday to pick up my pants, but I've always been told events, both good and bad, happen in trios.

The most essential part of the weekend came in the form of a date with Parque Metropolitano. These past weeks I have been sitting with an unsettled, somewhat restless feeling. I surmise that it is due in part to the approaching summer. While I am full of excitement and anticipation at the reality of being in the flesh with my friends and family back home, it includes more shifts and changes from the routines and people that I have become so accustomed to here in Quito. Nonetheless, as an emotionally charged woman, I have concluded, and continue to daily learn, that whatever feeling I am experiencing, it is often wisest to just observe the emotion. It is often not an indication that I need to take action, fix anything or even make any changes, at least not right away. While I love embracing many of the strong emotions I feel, it proves fruitless to try to push away sentiments that bring discomfort; in time, these feelings subside. Observing families passing time together, breathing in the fresh air and bringing awareness to the organic stimuli of nature was not cause enough to dissipate the feeling of unsettledness, but it did provide some quietude.

I know not the purpose of this structure near my favorite lookout in the park, but it matters not--I love tortugas.

This early evening finds me back in my pjs, doing chores and considering what to whip up for dinner, pondering where life may be on May 25th, 2015.

I miss all of you back home dearly. And I miss the spring that seems to have finally arrived. I hope you are finding delight in the freshness of all that blooms this month.

Jame

Musings on Impermanence

"Everything flows and nothing abides,

 everything gives way and nothing stays fixed."

~Heraclitus

I used to define myself as an anxious person with a strong aversion to change. Definitions, it seems, are subject to revisions. And identity is not static. My reflections over the past few years have led me to this surprising discovery. There have been dark times, when I have looked in the mirror and not known who was looking back. How can I still be struggling with who I am, I miserably wonder. I'm 25, or 27, or 30 and shouldn't this age warrant a clear and definite sense of self? Filled with panic or dread, disappointment or simply exhaustion, I would try to determine how I would find myself...again.

My most recent identity crisis arose out of my decision to move abroad. I just don't feel like myself were words that reverberated in my mind for months. They begged the question What is my self? In times of confusion and certain loss, it is often our close friends and family who reflect back to us who we are. And now, as I write this, Linds texts me as she has just left Grandpa who is in his new home, Edgewood care facility. As she was leaving he told her he didn't know who he was anymore (because the dementia has been slowly stealing his identity for years now). Speaking of Natalie and Giatta, he added, "I love you. That helps clear it up for me. Those little girls help clear it up for me."  But when our loved ones are thousands of miles away, we are challenged to mire through our mind's own muck in solitude. 

There have been nights these past 9 months where I have laid awake scrolling through photos and videos, squinting into the eyes of the Jamie that smiled at me from the screen on my phone. Who did she know herself to be at that moment? Is that still me? These questions have caused a great deal of discomfort. It has been time and the formation of new, authentic friendships that have led me back to feel like myself once more. So then, how do I define myself now? I have shed like an unnecessary cloak the above description, and, it seems, that definitions are best left in dictionaries. 

Our selves are impermanent. Life is impermanence. And while I haven't found complete peace with these notions, I have chosen a life that breeds even more change than before. 

In relationships, I seek soulful connections. Whether the relationship is platonic, romantic, or familial, I will petition for your authenticity. I will yearn to know your truth. I will entreat you to muse with me. life. love. faith. purpose. mystery.

I am guilty of trying to hold on to experiences...people...moments that I find delightful and pleasing. To close my fist around divine hours and press them to my heart, hoping that if I squeeze tight enough I will be able to manipulate Time and Space and reside forever with what is bringing me joy. And then time and again the Universe is here to teach me that I am not meant to grasp and own Life in this manner. 

To define certain experiences, moments and people as wholly good and beautiful and others as entirely bad and frightening is to add to my own suffering. I know this, and I keep hoping that a few more hours of meditation, or of practicing yoga, and I will reach some higher state of being, some intense moment of enlightenment where letting go and accepting each moment for what it is and what it brings will become so much more a part of my nature. 

Buddhist monk, and author of When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron reflects "That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything—every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment."

So we must learn to shift with life, breathing into the deep, sometimes dark, sometimes dualistic emotions days inspire within us. 

While it is futile to try to place an unrelenting grasp on moments, relationships, experiences these all do indeed stay with us in a sense, as they become woven into the very tapestry of our evolving beings. 

I conclude here that, as all in life is, my self is also impermanent. I will continue to evolve through the days and years. Through hours of reflection. Though of two things I am certain: my love for dark chocolate is unconditional and eternal. And I will feel everything. deeply. 

Photo credit. 

For my mother

I have this image of my mom at 21-years-old, sitting on the front steps of the house in Naperville, Illinois, listening to a college football game being played nearby. I am growing in her womb. While she already has a hard-working, dedicated husband at this point, she is a bit nostalgic now for the life that I will change so vastly, as babies do. Not so many months ago she was in Superior, Wisconsin, attending the college football games herself. Having met my dad, and in a whirlwind romance, married him eight months later and moved first to Forsyth, Montana, and then shortly afterwards to Naperville, as Dad's job with Burlington Northern transferred them, life has already been transformed quite completely for the both of them.

I am now 31-years-old, and by this point in her life my mom already had three young girls (9, 7 and 5 respectively). She and Dad had also moved the growing family three more times. First to Alliance, Nebraska, where Linds was born, then to St. Louis, Missouri, where Cass was born, and finally to Blaine, Minnesota (no more babies at this point, but they did ponder a 4th to see if they might make Dad a little boy). We are certainly a family of the Midwest, all five of us born in different cities. This was a lot of change to weather for the woman who had lived in the same home her whole life until meeting my dad. But perhaps "weather" isn't the right word for how my mom approaches such challenges. I have no memories of her trudging through these days. I remember only stability and love.

My mom is incredible.

I extend such gratitude towards her for dozens of reasons. One of these is her unending support of me and the life decisions I make. 12 years ago I called home from college, during my sophomore year, saying that I wanted to study abroad the following fall. I planned for and anticipated this first extended trip abroad, and then once the summer before my departure arrived, so too did intense anxiety. Just weeks before I was to fly to Barcelona for four months, I was begging Mom to call Gustavus and see if I could still register for fall classes. I know it took incredible strength for Mom to deny this request and remind me that I had really wanted this experience. She would rather have her eldest stay close to home, yes, but her grit here pushed me to own the decision I had made, leading me to face and conquer my anxiety.

11 years later I call to say that I am considering going abroad again, and not for a mere four months this time. What does Mom do? Makes reservations at the hotel in Waterloo, Iowa for the two of us so that I will not mire through a dozen interviews and a life-changing decision alone.

My mom and I are different women, deeply so, but her love is woven into my very being.

Even though I am 31-years-old and over 3,000 miles away, Mom, it is still you I want when I am sick. It is still you I want to rub my back when a big decision looms on the horizon. It is still you I love to laugh with to the point of tears in airport parking garages as the four Baci women wonder aimlessly looking for the car.

Time and distance will never touch the love I have for you.

She is beautiful always.