Jenn & Ruth Kayaking

One week from today we’ll be waking up in Chicago.

It’s always a weird feeling, to get to the point in a journey where it’s time for a major transition. I won’t say it’s “over,” because we aren’t going back to a home, we’re just trading one temporary existence for another and in a few short months we’ll be undergoing another big transition as we move on.

We’ve come to refer to this stage of our adventures as “Continental Shift,” and it has some distinct features, regardless of whether we’re experiencing it in Africa, or Europe, or Central America… or even “home” in the states.

The first thing we notice, about three weeks before it happens is that everyone gets restless:

• The children are jittery. I start looking around at our possessions wondering what I can off load and what I should get serious about packing.
• We begin looking at something we haven’t paid a bit of attention to in months: the calendar.
• I stop buying certain things that we can do without and won’t use up before we go.
• It gets harder to live in the moment.

One of the concepts we’re quite committed to as a family is living each day fully. We work to let go of yesterday and not worry too much about what’s “next” in favour of savouring now, this day, this breath, this person we find ourselves with. This becomes harder during Continental Shift. Suddenly we feel the need to see everyone, revisit our favourite places and experiences, and suck the marrow out of what we’re leaving, “one last time.” Conversations naturally drift toward our departure, how fast the time has gone, what we’re going to miss, and when or if we’ll ever be back.

This morning I woke dreading the realities of “re-entry” into our home culture.

We sat on the patio late into the night last night chatting with our night guardian, Marcario, about our impending departure, how sad he and his family are to see us go, the Spanish and Ka’chikel names for “fireflies” (“lanternas de noche” in Spanish, I couldn’t possibly transliterate the Ka’chikel, sorry) the value of women in the Maya culture, his faith in God and the earth as a Guatemalan, and how much we appreciated the good work he’s done for us this year. He’s a good man. I’ll miss his toothless smile and nightly visits for water, or Ix (Ka’chickel for hot sauce) for his tortillas, and inviting him to join whatever party is going on in the house for the evening.

He took his flashlight and his machete and waddled off to make his nightly rounds of the property perimeter and Tony and I remained in the velvety dark watching the lanternas de noche sparkle high into the vine covered tree in the absence of even a breath of wind to blow them around.

At night our garden is transformed from a visual feast of colours and exotic plants, orchids dripping from almost every tree trunk, pale apricot Bella Donna bells swinging gently in the breeze and every shade of green you can imagine, into something entirely different. During the day, you can’t escape the visual. At night, shadows and shapes replace trees and bushes, sounds replace sights, smells replace colours. The Jasmine vine smells deep cerulean blue, in spite of the fact that it has a white flower. The orchids, to me, smell lilly white, even though most of them are spotted like tigers, or hot pink, or electric yellow. The air smells like rain, proof that the seasons here are changing. Insects of every variety pick up their quieter verse of the chorus where the chickens and mules and daytime singers have left off. There’s almost always a djembe drumbeat beneath it all, raising from somewhere in the pueblo as someone plays to the moon.

We talked about a lot of things:

• How much we don’t want to leave here and how much we hope to return one day.
• The logistics of our arrival home, my long lost cousin picking us up at the airport and how pleased I am to have the chance to get to know her, the very long and detailed list of who we’ll see when, and where over the two weeks we travel from the mid-west to the east coast.
• The things we’re looking forward to, centered largely on people and memory making.
• The things we always dread: shopping centers, that first, overwhelming visit to a super store, industrial food, everyone hurrying….
• Summer plans for two countries.

Inevitably, the conversation morphed to “what’s next.” We aren’t done traveling by any stretch of the imagination and our months “home” are more to regroup and stage for the next adventure than anything else. Our dreams just keep getting bigger and this next challenge will be the biggest stretch yet, but let’s finish one adventure before diving into the next.

This morning we’re off to the Piscina in San Pedro, “one last time,” with a bunch of our friends. It’s hot today, the kids will swim, we’ll play pool, Hannah will climb up into the tree house to eat (but she’ll miss Ruth being here to split a plate with!) I’ll sit and visit with people who’ve become chosen family this winter, hold a couple of babies, joke with the Frenchman who runs the place and try not to dwell on the fact that, even if we come back, we’re leaving this forever.

There are new adventures to be had this week: learning to make chocolate on Monday with Keri at Ganesh, a trip to Panajachel on Tuesday, two evenings out with music for Hannah and new friends to be had in for dinner in between sorting and packing and at least one more weaving lesson with Imelda.

We have one eye on the airplane, to be sure: bags don’t pack themselves, but we’re determined to savour our last week on the lago for a while, to refuse to look at our watches, to walk slowly, take our time, and live here for a little bit longer.