2017 - Good Riddance!

We rang in 2017 in Herastrau Park, Bucharest. 
My husband, step-daughter and I trundled across the street to the park from our apartment, bundled in our cold weather gear. Me in an odd but practical assortment of clothes from the bottom dresser drawer: fleece-lined riding breeches, a heavy wool Aran Islands sweater, down jacket, ski gloves and a Soviet rabbit-fur hat from the 1980s.  We stopped along the edge of the large frozen lake that is the park's centerpiece, alone save for a park guard posted in his phone booth nearby, and toasted the arrival of the new year with champagne from plastic cups. Fireworks lit up the horizon from all sides of the park. Imagining party-goers beneath the colorful bursts - the women in their cocktail dresses, strappy heels and kitschy "Happy New Year!" tiaras and the men with too much cologne and slicked back hair - made me feel very frumpy in comparison, but also exactly where I wanted to be instead.  

With the new year only a few minutes underway, we continued through the park's snowy lanes towards a thumping bass line coming from a bar hopping with activity. My step-daughter and I tried to cajole my husband into coming inside the bar for a few songs, but he refused and plunked down on a bench with his brandy flask instead. Despite being dressed like a winter road crew, my step-daughter and I couldn't resist going into the bar for a glimpse of the revelry. It was just one week earlier, days before Christmas, that we'd lost our Dodger cat and I needed of a dose of positive energy. Unfortunately, it was too hot inside the packed bar to dance wearing all that gear, so instead we let ourselves go and danced like mad women to OneRepublic's "Counting Stars"  in the lane outside the bar.  It was just the release I needed.  Maybe 2017 would be okay after all. 

I was wrong.  

Before I sound like too sad of a sack, let me explain that I generally consider myself a bright spark.  I prefer to be lighthearted, don't take myself too seriously and believe that what I put out will come back - so why be a grump? But let me tell you that 2017 stepped on my daisy and then twisted its boot toe for good measure.

Re-reading the posts from February this year, I see the signs that the dark cloud had already blown in. At that time, I hoped the "general malaise" I was feeling was temporary. Perhaps it was just a reaction to the political divisiveness assaulting us from the headlines. There were plenty of reasons not to be cheery.

Then in April my father-in-law passed away and we returned to Virginia for his memorial and to spread his ashes in the woods behind their home.

In July we left the country we'd grown quite attached to and moved into our temporary Virginia apartment in time for Toby's health to start to seriously deteriorate. 

By late summer, to quote Julia Sweeney, God said Ha! and the cloud overhead continued to darken. 

In September, we lost the smart, sweet and lovely 21 year old son of my husband's cousin in a drowning accident.  Their only child gone - I can't even begin to imagine their grief. 

October 7th Toby died and for the first time in 19 years, our lives felt empty without the loving, funny presence of our fur family.  

October 9th I received an early morning text from my sister-in-law telling us not to worry, my elderly father and step-mother had evacuated from the wildfires and were okay.  
Umm... what?
Evacuated? 
Wildfires? 
We'd been out of communication after heading to the mountains for some post-Toby solace. Days later, one of my sisters and her husband also evacuated their house threatened from a different branch of the same fire complex. The following days found my father, step-mother and his dedicated caregiver moving further and further south to escape the smoke from the Sonoma and Napa Valley wildfires. We stayed glued to any source of news that could tell us the fate of their house high in the hills above the town of Sonoma.  Mid-way through the week, my siblings and I resigned ourselves to the fact that the house was gone as the official fire maps showed big red swaths over their property.  At least they had the two rental properties in town to return to when it was all over.  Amazingly, my sister and brother-in-law were able to return to their house, their town spared the fire's devastation.  

Then one Saturday morning, while watching the Weather Channel reporter standing in front of a house engulfed in flames, I heard him say he was at the intersection exactly in front of my father and step-mother's two rental homes.  The reporter said it was an ember, blown down from the distant hills, that had picked off two houses in the middle of the block.  And with that - we figured it was all lost. But two weeks later, with the fires becoming contained and evacuation orders being lifted, updates started running through social media from neighbors, that in fact the two rental houses were still standing. It seems the reporter had "estimated" his location during his on-air reporting. Even more incredible, just days after that, we learned that despite being surrounded 360 degrees by fire, and 100% due to the incredible efforts of the fire crews - their hill top home was also intact.  The scorched ground and trees were only 10-15 feet from the wooden house where they'd lived over 35 years. Miraculously, my father and step-mother were able to return home. 

Signs of gratitude hanging everywhere. 

The approach to my dad's house. 

View of the fire line from their deck. That line exists because fire crews from across the county, state and country worked 24/7  for weeks with shovels and chain saws to create fire breaks to save strangers' homes. 

Airborne embers burned holes in their deck umbrella, but somehow didn't ignite the deck. 

My father's iron sculpture rises unscathed from the ashes.

A few of Sonoma's seven flags still flying over a vineyard and charred hillside.

But they didn't stay home long as my dad was admitted to the hospital just a week or so later.  He had some kind of infection from an unknown source. At one point the doctors told us he had only days to live and I immediately flew across the country to be with him.  His ship righted itself somewhat, but seven weeks later - he's still in the hospital. I'm thankful that I was able to tell him everything I wanted him to hear.  I choose to believe he understood me.  

By Thanksgiving we'd lost my brother-in-law to a sudden aneurysm and one of my sisters was left a widow after over 20 years of marriage.  

We're now nearing Christmas.  Despite this litany of horrible events (are you even still reading?) - we still have a lot to be thankful for. My husband found a job teaching English that he finds interesting and occasionally amusing.  My position within Consular Affairs is challenging in a good way and I'm energized being able to teach again.  But other than that, we're holding out hope that the new year will bring a change in the metaphoric weather, a universal shaking off of the dark cloud perhaps.  I have to have faith that the simple act of turning the calendar page and dancing to a favorite song at midnight - in a cocktail dress or in snow boots - will bring about this transformation. 

To 2017:  Uncle. You win. Now good riddance. 

Winter Coats and Sunglasses: It's Christmastime in Juarez!

Now that the excitement of getting our new assignment has quieted down, it's back to focusing on life in the present instead of the future. 

Speaking of presents: it's Christmastime in the borderlands! 
While Juarez can't compete with Bogota's lighted wonderland of city parks with their fake snow machines and nightime bike riding on the cyclovia, Mexico does have some awesome traditions that we've been learning about.

Two weeks ago it started with our first posada, which is like the Colombian novena where people gather with friends and family in the evenings during the weeks leading up to Christmas.  Two weeks ago we went to our first posada, invited by a neat guy who works in the Consulate's warehouse.  He gave us rather vague directions involving going to a particular landmark bar where nearby we'd see a road and a private house. After a half-dozen u-turns on a busy avenue, looking for the nondescript road and private house, we finally called him and were directed down a scary, dark, narrow dirt lane that dead-ended in a dirt parking area in front of a cluster of tiny houses and the posada well underway.  It was a terribly cold night, so there were bonfires going from trash barrels and people warming up in the small three-room house in front of huge pots of pozole.  Pozole is a spicy soup made of broth with hunks of pork and/or chicken stewing away with hominy and then garnished to taste with fresh lime juice, sliced radishes and chopped onion. It was delicious!  After having our fill of pozole, we went outside into the dirt lane to see our host's family perform as dancing matachines.  You can take a quick look at this link, or just picture what looks like a Native American dance, complete with dancers of all ages and both genders in headdresses, beaded and fringed pants and skirts and a nearly trance-like devotion by the dancers to keep up with the rhythm of the heavy drum section.  The Mexican twist is that it's done in devotion to the Virgin de Guadalupe in a representation of paganism vs. Christianity.  El mal (evil) was represented by what looked like a guy dressed in a Halloween hobo costume who is apparently defeated by good in the end - no big surprise there.  Three families of matachines came in one after another, and after watching for nearly an hour, the drumming and dancing still hadn't missed a beat. The cold finally got to us and we left with the festivities still in full swing.

The next night, our neighborhood had its third and final party of the year in the park in front of our house.  Besides pozole, tamales are also Mexican Christmas traditions and there was a huge table full of trays of red, green and sweet tamales.  It seems that many Latin American countries claim to have the first, the best, or the only kind of tamales and we certainly saw the Colombian version wrapped in banana leaves with whole hunks (sometimes with bones) of chicken.  But here we have a version that is more familiar to me, wrapped in corn husks and full of shredded beef. There are red and green ones depending on the chiles used, and the sweet ones were stuffed with raisins and some kind of sweet-tart filling.  After the eating came the music until the early hours of the morning. We were warm in bed by that time and only catching strains of karaoke drifting from across the street.  

Finally we had our own Second Annual "Why did I put THAT in my HHE?" white elephant gift exchange with a big group of friends and coworkers. HHE = household effects, i.e. the stuff that we start dragging around the world, growing in size like a snowball through the years. Our first party was in Bogota, and we had such a fun time we decided to do it again.  People really got into the spirit of getting rid of things they'd been packing around for a while, including among many other things: a 3-foot hookah from Tunisia, many small kitchen appliances that seemed useful at the time, a much-coveted set of Super Hero glasses, a 4-DVD set of the Andy Griffith Show (now on our shelf), a 2004 DreamWeaver user's manual, a bird feeder and pounds of bird seed (which were actually from different people, but married up in the end) and a 10-pound stone molcajete (guacamole grinder) - among other things.  My husband made pots of Mexican hot chocolate and mulled wine and we shared plates of Christmas cookies and a giant San Francisco sourdough loaf of bread shaped like a snowman.   There was lots of cheering each other on in stealing presents and I think we've started a tradition to carry on to our future posts. 

Meanwhile, it's crisp and cold outside and our garden has gone dormant with the last leaves of our pretty umbrella trees finally hitting the ground. We have a gorgeous red male cardinal visiting us and about eight ring-neck doves fluffed up to keep warm in the garden each morning. 

Next week will be our first Christmas in Mexico.
Feliz Navidad everyone!

Que Padre!

Que padre! = How cool!

The city of Monterrey, Mexico celebrated Father's Day with a free festival in the downtown center. I'm here on loan (temporary duty) from Juarez (more on that another time) and spent a nice mid-day observing how Mexico spends this muy macho, muy padre day. It starts like any Sunday in Latin America... with the cathedral. Very pretty, but naturally that's not where the action is. It's across the street in the plaza. Come take a look:

Unlike the Mother's Day celebration in my Juarez neighborhood, this celebration was distinctly masculine.

Meet the height requirement? You can join the Fuerza Civil and get kitted out with all this gear like this guy. Or this one:

Stroll a bit further into the heart of things and you'll find the feats of strength, like the use-the-sledgehammer-and-ring-the-bell machine, or el toro bronco, also known as easy methods of public humiliation. But not for this guy:

Once you've worked up a good appetite, it's time for some carne asada provided free and prepared on one of the dozens of grills all fired up at once:

Plate in hand, it's time to enjoy the entertainment. Why it's thumping music and dancing scantily-clad girls, of course!

Finally, what dudely event is complete without some vehicular muscle?

The crowd of men (example above) was truly enjoying themselves, but this IS Father's Day after all, so let's not forget the point of the day. It's to celebrate fatherhood, which is impossible without the kids, and there were plenty on hand who certainly weren't left out of the fun:

(Playing IN the fountain? What?! We weren't allowed to do that. Man, I grew up in the wrong country.)

And within the celebration was also blooming the possibility of future fathers:

Que Padre!

Oh Tannenbaum...

Christmastime in my growing up always meant bringing home a real Christmas tree. There were the traditional family fights about exactly which tree was the best in the lot, and I remember watching my father scale a four-story evergreen to take "just a bit off the top" and then drag that topping home to the living room. Let me not forget the time when he scaled a particularly sappy pine, saw tucked under his arm as he struggled upwards through the branches, and just out of earshot of the family below - madly gestured that he was ascending the wrong tree. 

But now that we're in the foreign service, we're adapting to different definitions of what a Christmas tree is, or can be. 

Without further ado, I'd like to offer a gallery of our foreign service Christmas trees... thus far:

The Oakwood Apartment's standard-issue fake-ficus-of-Navidad. I added piney aroma sticks to make it seem more Christmasy. I'm not sure anyone's buying it and the leaves keep hiding the ornaments.

FSI's two-story tree covered in the flags of the world - just my style!

ConGen's "Country of Z" traditional purple tree! ("Z" is the  mythical country  we use  in our training.)

"Arbusto de Navidad" (Christmas bush) from Bogota. Actually just a juniper with generally the right shape. For $30 we got it potted and delivered to the door - and it was live!