double re-entry

It has been an uneventful week at my parents' house. In-between napping and eating, I occasionally reflected upon this seemingly hapless string of wanderings that I currently call my life. Buenos Aires seems like a dream to me, although every time it starts to rain I have a compulsion to run to the terrace to take down my laundry.

If someone had told me fifteen years ago, when I was learning to drive, that in another fifteen years time I would be unemployed, unmarried, and spending large segments of time in the same bedroom I was in then, I probably would have killed myself. But I think I failed to see the possibilities in this arrangement. It just takes a lot more self-motivation to get things done. Or to get dressed in the morning.

Tomorrow I am going to San Francisco, and of course I couldn't be happier. I am excited to see my friends, to hug them and hear their voices and to walk with them on the sidewalks, sit with them in the parks, to have the long silences of observation and nothingness that aren't so doable over our dozen forms of digital communication. I want to shower them with endless love and hear their stories and thoughts on what has changed since I last saw them. I'm excited to tell them what I have learned about time and people and to learn from them about how they are balancing their lives and growing and changing within San Francisco, something I never quite learned how to do.

I also know that this trip will different than other returns, because on Friday I will be reunited with Marido, a long-awaited reunion after almost three weeks apart since our honeymoon in Spain. With all of the intense (yet measured) emails, video talks, and even (*gasp!*) phone calls, we have a lot of hopes riding on the next few weeks--not just in terms of fun, but also in deciding our next steps in remaining in each others' lives beyond this second honeymoon.

It is a lot of pressure, but it is also very exciting.