A New Day

Wednesday 20August2008

I woke up in a dark place today, but decided not to write about that, again.
Instead, I got on with my day as best I could and am now glad I didn’t write it down, commemorating forever this day as a dark day, because it wasn’t.

A few days ago we left a note on our new neighbor’s door step. Today we met her. We bought a penthouse apartment in a very tall building. We have one neighbor, a 42 year old widowed architect, and we wanted to meet her, to talk with her about her project, to get a feel for who we’d be living next to, so we left the note.

I got a call a couple of days ago and she agreed to meet with us. We went tonight to her apartment and Leticia and her boyfriend Jose spent the evening with us, brainstorming ideas for dealing with the consortium (HOA), talking politics, discussing mutual understandings of the world and so on. At one point in the evening I mentioned my late husband and Leticia and I discovered that our husbands died exactly 4 days apart. She has a great dog, Bobo, who loved me, and loved Jimmy more. Her apartment is interesting and creative. Her boyfriend, partner, Jose, is interesting and creative too. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Leticia is the first local, Porteno, that I could imagine being real friends with. I know there’ll be more but she’s the first. We struggled at moments with language, we lost a word here and there, but overall we understood each other on more than just a verbal plane. She is a woman I can respect. She is a woman I can see as a friend. Leticia is smart, experienced and has a life of meaning here in Buenos Aires. That makes me feel hopeful and excited to be here with her, to be her neighbor.

A Bikram yoga teacher from New York came to visit my class today. She took class, brought a friend and will be teaching tomorrow. She has been teaching for several years, her husband for more, and she gave me a lot of good feedback about my class. There is a reason this matters so much to me. Being here alone is a hard thing sometimes. I am alone often as a woman. Tonight I made a connection there. I am alone as a yoga teacher. Today I made a connection there. I am never completely alone because Jimmy is here, but even for him this new place can be lonely. We have mostly each other, and, I am finding that when meet someone we connect with we are hungry for connection with someone other than our partner. We’ve had so much meaningful and amazing time together in the last few months, and, it feels really good to connect with someone new, someone else. Tonight I enjoyed being with Leticia. I enjoyed, almost as much, looking over and seeing my partner talking animatedly with his new friend. All those weeks ago as I sat on the floor of our apartment crying and wondering if I would ever fit in here, I didn’t have this night to to add to my experience of what living here will be like.

Every day is a new day in Buenos Aires, every afternoon is a new day, every evening...