It isn’t fair to imagine the future in details, instead just in rough
outlines of countries and ages and years in numbers. It is easy for us to segment our lives like oranges in this foreign service lifestyle: Two
years in Brazil. One year in DC. Two years in India. Just like oranges though,
the years contain so much more than the fine membranes that define them. There are too many details to imagine
when looking forward, too many details to believe looking back.
Along with our moves from Florida to DC to Brazil, I
certainly imagined a lot of changes: I imagined new houses, new foods, new cars
and new languages, I imagined the kids would grow, I also always imagined I’d
be excited to return home…and I am, in a bittersweet way.
I never imagined we’d leave as five. I expected, but
could have never imagined bringing two boys home, two really big boys, that were
just babies in diapers when we arrived, big brothers. I never imagined that I’d be carrying a sweet baby girl home in my arms to experience
the USA for her very first time. I didn’t expect to feel like I was leaving
home for home.
You know that old parental worry, the one you hear every new
parent utter, “How will I ever find room in my heart to love another baby”?
Then you do, and you wonder how you never loved that baby before. That is how I
feel about world travel. Each country, a new baby. My heart has swelled and my
mind has opened to reveal how much more space there really is in both than I’d
ever thought. Of course the USA
will always be home, but how can you not call a place "home" that you’ve called "home"? A place that you watched your babies grow, a place that breathed new life
into your marriage as new and exhausted parents, that loved your children as their own and offered your
daughter her very first breath of life. This home, both Brasilia and our casa is a place that I’ve cried and
laughed and will have made 750 days of memories that will always bathe the
walls and ride on the echoes here, even after we’re gone.
Almost two years ago we stepped off the plane and we let Brazil entwine us. We
never skimmed along the top like many do and for that we have more to untangle
and unknot before we leave. When in reality, I fear my avoidance of the pain
will feel more like a single chop to the roots we’ve laid. Through blurry
airplane windows and eyes I’ll watch the beautiful details of Brazil slip back
into the lush green landscape that it was when it originally presented itself
to me in December of 2010.
But we will always have Brazil, in Looly, in the kindness that has enlaid itself in our boys and in the gentle, tolerant, carefree people that have cared for us while we were here.
In a desperate attempt to remain grounded (and distracted)
with our departure date looming just four months away, I’ve taken on a few projects:
household space makeovers, painting projects, Pilates class and boot camp. We've been eating at all the restaurants we've always passed by and thought we'd have
plenty of time to check out. I’ve been buying, testing and comparing acai and
pao de queijo with the fervor of a mad scientist. I spend extra time admiring
the big sky, the short and impossibly red sunsets and cataloging both mental and physical images in
the rolodex of my mind and in the tiny file named “Brazil” on my desktop. A file that has grown ripe with thousands of delicately nestled memories within carpels I've named for months.
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