It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.
But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.
There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Alan Cohen
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx
The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Things Are Changing

Five years ago, we arrived in Buenos Aires.
We = Husband , Me , Tate the dog.

We did not speak Spanish, we had no home, our belongings were on a ship somewhere, hopefully headed in the right direction .. South .. to the Bottom of the World.

Our first 3 months in Buenos Aires, we lived in a rental apartment and learned our way around ... a tiny bit.
We learned how to order coffee, where  to find  the coffee less likely to make me grimace and grab a glass of water, how to order dinner to go and who delivered pizza.
We found that there was one place in the city that made coffee that we loved.
We have remained faithful to them for 5 years.

We had to move to a new apartment while still Home hunting.
In the meantime, we had to go to the Police to get some papers stamped, proving we were honest and really did plan on living in Argentina.

We had to go to the Immigrations place ( aka Hell) and sit for hours and try to understand what they were telling us .. it always was the same, your papers aren't here yet, Stamp! Stamp! , come back in 3 months.
This continued off and on for 4 years.
By the time we got the final stamps and were considered Permanent Residents, we mostly understood what everyone was saying, we knew some of them well enough to say hello, get a kiss  and joke a bit and when we got that final stamp, we were hugged, kissed  and sent off like children who had finally passed an exam.

Tate remained our Good Will Ambassador .
Wherever we went with him, people smiled.
Old ladies stopped and had serious whispered conversations with him, ending with kisses .
He knew what they said, he stood still as stone, gentle and quiet and then allowed the kiss with a gentle nuzzle of his own.
Babies got the same treatment .. he allowed the pulling , pinching, squealing, giggling babies to come close, touch and sometimes, he even lay down so they could get closer easier.
If a toddler came running, he would just  lie down, so as not to knock over any unsteady little ones.

He was appreciated by all.
Not long ago, a Porter told us how he missed the sight of him.
His jaunty walk down the street, he was such a "persona" ... yes, my Pup was a person.
The best sort of person.
Now the two of us are thinking of children who are missed, children who are probably thinking of having their own children .. and we are here at the Bottom of the World.

Times have changed while we have been here.

The old Argentine  Presidents Wife has become President.
The old president died.
The presidents wife was re-elected.
Things are changing ..  .

We are starting to admire homes in magazines that are located in woodsy settings.
We talk about a house with no neighbors.
We walk about another dog, a home with trees and room for visitors.
We talk about  Home.

Things are changing.

2 comments:

  1. I think it was an admirable adventure to travel to the bottom of the world leaving the known for the unknown. And new and interesting adventures seem to be on the horizon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You have lived through an adventure I would have given anything for. My only foray to that part of the world ended at the Falkland Islands back in 1982.

    Good luck and best wishes for when the talking is done and decisions have been reached.

    ReplyDelete

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