Hard To Be an Expat, So Far Away at Christmas

Gracie -- my five-year-old smiling granddaughter

Excuse me, but I’m a little down. I miss my son and granddaughter.  And my mother.

Spending Christmas far away wasn’t easy, even if we did have a lovely dinner with new friends.

The good part was seeing my little Gracie’s three-story dollhouse via Skype. She showed us every floor at various angles before we said goodbye to her upside down smiling face. I could see inside her nostrils, I told her. She giggled and the conversation ended.

Then I spoke to my 96-year-old mother on the phone as a friend was helping her install a new computer.

“I’ll message you on facebook,” she promised before our talk was over.

I grew up with my mother’s stories of our pioneer relatives who moved from the Carolinas to Oregon in the U.S.

“Think of how strong they were to start a new life,” she would tell me.

Now I see what she meant.
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P.S. I miss my sisters, too!

Never Too Late To Learn a Lesson or Two

I met a French couple who’d been camping in southern Chile.

“Español?”

“Si,” he smiled.

We talked as my new friends shared their Patagonian photos of diving whales and ice-blue glaciers.

My high school Spanish teacher would be proud. I was USING what he had taught. I can close my eyes and see him. Moderate height, slim with coal black hair and a warm face.

“Speak from the front of your mouth. Blow air across your lips. Make a sound like this,” he’d demonstrate. He’d fold a sheet of paper into a fan, then jot down verb endings on each pleat. “Here’s a quick way to memorize conjugations.”

Mr. Mariani’s encouragement and patience worked well with high school students, but I remember it even now, as I use the language he taught me to love.

It’s never too late to practice what we began learning long ago.

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Are you struggling to learn something new? Your thoughts?