2018 New Year's Dispatch

Our 2017 was a “war of the worlds:” the Third and the First. In truth, we called the Northeast of Brazil “the third-and-a-half world” because it does not have the sophistication of the South. While we’re quibbling, the USA is edging towards Third each day, though our new city, San Diego, is beautifully organized and feels plenty First.

At the end of May 2017, we said good-bye to our dear remaining friends in the city of Natal, our beautiful, restful house, the ever-changing light on the ocean, the iguanas, the long-stretching dollar and the bad roads.

Moon from our bedroom window

Graceful mosquito net

Do you see the iguana?

Cotovelo Beach, our paradise

Our varied group of expats, locals, macho men, girly-girls, the wise, the crazy, the young, the rich, the intellectuals, the superstitious, the rascals…and six stranded African fishermen…taught us that if you get to know people well enough, you love them. Believe this. It is my favorite gift from Brazil.

Our African fishermen with Mary & Glades

My story about The Nigerian Fishermen 

Some of our friends returned to Europe over the past four years, so we’ve already had reunions with them in Majorca, London and Lisbon. 

September reunion in Portugal

Our hilarious friends closing up the Ericeira, Portugal town square this Christmas

For those precious friends remaining in our city of Natal, we feel the untranslatable “saudades:” missing them with love and sadness:

Our brilliant biologists & soul-mates, Ali & Priscila

Graceful, accomplished, loving: Alicia & Ernesto ("wild man")

...and their fantastic children, Carlos & Alicita

Elegant, sophisticated, down-to-earth, heart of gold: Carmen & Pascal

A complete original: Flavia

A woman from whom I learned so much and her fearless husband: Rita & Fred

Saudades, indeed (sniff).

Lizard playground

Our house on Cotovelo Beach gave me such a strong sense of place, even in a foreign land. I was clearly meant to rest there after working and raising children. I loved every room. My unexpected bonus: the 'medicine' of the natural world. We left the house furnished for rental and moved with suitcases only. 

Another lizard playground

My sacred balcony

What a kick it was deciding just who, exactly, should get which clothes, shoes, craft supplies, games, books, and doodads. I remain satisfied with my choices. Betania, our cook/cleaning woman, wanted to keep the photos of children from the NY school where I had worked in the frames I was offering her! She loved hearing my story about each of them. Our caretaker, Marcos’ teenage daughter wrote us a lovely (and literate!) letter from the interior to thank us for the bounty she and her sisters received, including our Christmas decorations. Newton sold his squash racket and all electronics to friends or through an ad. 

Our suitcases were bursting, anyway.

San Diego, California is near our daughter in Los Angeles, not too far from our son and daughter-in-law in Las Vegas, and his in-laws live here! The weather is temperate. I am still longing for some rain to give meaning to all these sunny days. Apparently, rain is expected over the winter. The people are friendly and kind. The roads and highways are carefully planned (we’re wondering if anything inside the city limits is more than 11 minutes away?), and I love the way everybody signals and drives in their traffic lanes!

Our move started with one week to find a rental in San Diego. Bingo! A cozy adobe house with apple, orange, lime, tangerine, kumquat, persimmon, fig, cherimoya, and macadamia nut trees, plus blackberries and grapes.

 

Next came New York, culling our most prized possessions that had been in storage for eleven years for packing into a moving van. Most everything about storage was a fiasco: the unit was filthy and had been infiltrated with insects and rodents; our six rolled up Kilim rugs were decimated; falling rain and dirt in 2007, when the facility installed a new roof that leaked over our unit, left the furniture in dreadful condition. Insects/rodents are not covered by insurance. The $2,000 possible coverage would certainly help with furniture cleaning and restoration, but in the end, the insurers informed us that the statute of limitations had passed in 2010. ZERO. If you need to store anything, better you live on the same street as the storage company.

Six months after the moving van’s arrival in our North Park neighborhood of San Diego, we are happy to say that our back-breaking work to restore fine walnut and teak pieces with steel wool, garnet paper and the proper oils turned out pretty well. Even though the packed storage boxes looked damaged, most everything inside survived. Unpacking our treasures after eleven years was better than Christmas in July!

We find picking fruit out of the garden endlessly amusing.

I found the best yoga studio imaginable four minutes away, so my sacred balcony in Brazil has been replaced with transcendent teachers! The city offers a big catalogue of free Continuing Education courses. I have four weeks to go in my fantastic Creative Writing Workshop, and there may even be a friend or two resulting.

One evening when we returned faithfully to our favorite Mexican Cantina Mayahuel around the corner, our friend Miles, the bartender, asked if we had any friends coming, in order to help us find seats. We said, “Miles, you and Jorge are our only friends in the city…except for our grandniece Emily!” It turns out Miles knows Emily, who used to sell tequila! Making friends is definitely the hard part and takes time, as we already discovered in Japan and Brazil. Newton is seeking out soccer, tennis and poker connections via the “Meetup” site we joined (we’ve both signed up for the San Diego Boomers!), so we’re hoping that will speed up the process. An old high school friend recommended a lovely guy to help us house-hunt, and the rousing Christmas party he and his wife threw added more possibilities. Patience.

In truth, the transition from Brazil back to the US seemed more of a known entity - despite the political and weather-related disasters - than the transition from our prior 29 years in New York to the West Coast. That is a thing! But I’m definitely on board with kale. We go to two street markets per week for organic produce, grass-fed anything and Newton’s favorite African, Turkish and Argentine dishes to supplement our loss of Betania’s cooking. The city has rich arts offerings. It’s just that there’s only one New York…and those winters that go with it.

We agree that we have precisely the right dose of ‘urban’ in San Diego. These city neighborhoods around the extraordinary Balboa Park have mostly one-story Arts and Craft bungalows and adobe Spanish Revival houses from the ‘30’s and ‘40’s, along with properties converted into two-story apartment complexes. Each neighborhood has its little center of bars, shops and restaurants. This offers a small town feel within the city. Most neighborhood businesses are locally owned, like the actual, real hardware store that sells nails by the handful! Seven minutes by highway gets us to the mall and the chain stores, but we usually avoid that scene.

Balboa Park Botanical Gardens

Balboa Park trail

Elise, Jake and Larissa came for the holidays, decorating the tree with those long-missed ornaments from their childhood. 

We played lots of games, though the funniest was this moment at a little bar:

And now to the business at hand: 2018. More new beginnings for all of us, or at least fine-tuning of previous beginnings! Health, natural beauty, love…we wish you the big ones that make all else better.

Our best,

Sandra and Newton