Our Two Year Anniversary

The end of August marks the two year anniversary for the Cloyd-Annarino´s in Mexico. I remember telling friends and family we were moving here for one year, usually people asked "why?". (But not in a hey, how great, why? More like why on earth would you want to do that? why.) So I crafted a two part answer; a.) to become bi-lingual, especially the kids b.) why not? Life is a short adventure in itself, why not stretch the boundaries of where you think you belong?

And then we drove down to Mexico. I have to fess up to shopping at Wal-Mart in the next town over our first weekend here. I was aghast $65 pesos (about 5.50 USD at the time) for a 2-pack of Bounty paper towels, no quinoa, no yummy Trader Joe´s sauces, ice cream made with vegetable oil (gross!). Culture shock set in, how to make my family comfortable without what I deemed creature comforts. Well, of course that is part of the experience, I knew it would be coming, but in the midst of culture shock there can be a feeling of extreme immobility. The ability to make simple choices seemed an enormous undertaking, simple tasks were daunting. Just turning on my stove to cook was a chore, because the stove didn´t just turn on, you had to light it. Now this is no big deal to me, it was a dumb thing to even get my panties in a bunch over, but I did, that is how freaked out I was.

The hardest part of all was leaving friends and family behind, but i thought optimistically "family will want to visit" and as far as friends...Nimrods had been in Lincoln for one year at that point and Duffýs were moving to Shelbyville. Our luxurious days of laughing kids, messy homes, coffee, yummy baked goods and hours of intelligent, quality conversation were dear memories. There were many more friends left behind but My Shannon Ave was a wave that had reached it´s shore, time to find a new wave. About 2 months after living here the illnesses set in: typhoid, samonella, parasites galore...ugh, the bodily fluids we experienced during our first six months, I don´t wish it upon anyone in this world, except G.W. Bush, so he may know how the majority of the world population lives. The constant train of illness at our door made me thankful we had money to pay for healthcare, people die from the things we had, especially children. Thankfully ours did not.

In the first six months in Mexico I did whine so much "I just want to go home". So when did the shift occur for me? I can´t remember when it was, it was a gradual shift in my heart, a subtle taking over. Maybe it was six months free of any illnesses, maybe moving to the counrty where the patio walls were gone and so were the million curious Mexican kids peeping in our kitchen window, all day, every day. Perhaps it was the day Bash used the verb "tomar" perfectly when speaking with Martha and suddenly he knew more Spanish than me. The million little pieces filled into my heart, filled it up and made me love the place where I was, for the second time in my life.

I don´t whine, as much anyway, about the "limitations" I used to experience. Now they aren´t limitations, just the way things are. There is no Target, no Value Village, no Trader Joe´s...I can live through my longing to visit those places regularly. My friendship support network is expanding, I´ll never be able to duplicate the simple beauties of Shannon Ave., that was a rare intersection of wonderfulness. Mexico offers a different intersection if wonderfulness and I am wrapping myself in the sweetness of this experience.

Many times people have called me "brave" but I wanted you to all know, I don´t have any special brand of bravery, indeed I´m a bit of a chicken heart. What I have is an urge to be in the world, to understand a day in the life of someone else, a desire for adventure that changes your heart and your view of the world. Call me naïve but I still give merit to the impact one person can have on the whole world, for the better. A person doesn´t need to leave their town, their country, to do all these things but I had to, I had to prove to myself that maybe there really is a layer of bravery in my bones. I think I finally approve of me, on my merits, my actions and I´m looking foward to our changes during this next year.