What I’ve Been Doing Instead of Blogging

Estella contemplating the best way to help an injured bird (with coffee stirring sticks) in a Starbucks parking lot. We’re back in the states, sure as summer!

When I’m out of the loop for a while, you can pretty much guarantee that I am either too ill to think, that I’m being held captive by the needs of my family or that I’m enjoying my days so completely that to sit behind my computer would seem incongruous at best, a tragic disregard of life’s finest offerings, at worst. Thankfully, my recent absence can be wholly attributed to third set of circumstances.

Speaking of complete enjoyment, I finally got to see my beautiful friend, Renee and meet her two youngest boys. Renee and I have been friends since our 17 and 18-year-olds were 4 and 5 together. We both ended up with four kids (only she got three boys).

June was a blur. Its first week marked our last in San Cristobal. How those two years passed so quickly–and how I could ever carve a more fulfilling existence than the one we lived there–are quite beyond me, though I trust that the best is yet to come, which is equally unimaginable and delightful to sit with.

Of all the things I’ll miss, the markets top the list, so I wandered them every day during our last weeks there…

Our move to Tulum was smooth, and our time there brief…

Waiting at the airport with the bulk of our possessions.

After five quick days of unpacking, becoming acquainted with our new digs (and the surf and the sand) and hanging on Hunter (we’d been apart for nearly a month and would be leaving him again soon), the girls and I boarded a plane bound for Austin with giddy anticipation of our summer back “home”.

We could probably get used to this.

Since then, I’ve wanted to write, but not more than I’ve wanted to eat Thai food with Luna and her glorious belly full of baby Tula, now a few sweet days old…

Or more than I’ve wanted to hang with my cousins who lived with us in Mexico or my aunt Deanna, who’s just plain awesome…

Or more than I’ve wanted to daydream under live oaks while the kids reconnected with cousins…

If I could find time to write, I’d describe the realness of culture shock, the nuances of single-parent-couch-surfing and the relearning of etiquette in confined spaces like car seats and minivans.

The kids have grown quite intolerant of being strapped in for any length of time. Without Lexi and a watermelon between them, their smiles dissipate quickly.

I’d explain the heart swell that chokes me time and again seeing my people for the first time in a year; others for the first time ever.

My beautiful sister-in-law, Heidi and my ADORABLE nephew, Abel, whom I just met for the first time.

I’d attempt to relay the process by which I must file people like Maria and Lucia and Juani a little further back in my brain in order to fully enjoy the flavor of Austin (her fabulous eateries, her handcraft IPAs, her dime-a-dozen conscientious consuming options, to name a few) without overtones of guilt and confusion.

If you’re ever in Austin, you simply must try the dirty sanchez taco (pardon the name) at Torchey’s. People rave about the rest of their tacos, too, but I can only vouch for the one…I’ve never cared to deviate.

Somehow Torchey’s tastes a little different than it used to now that I know what Lucia eats for lunch.

I’d mention how hesitant I am to drink water from taps because they now look like upside down amoeba fountains and how Yolis’s contaminated well floods my thoughts every time I spot a sprinkler quenching the thirst of needy turf with perfectly potable water.

But to write of these things would mean less time for sushi with Heidi…

And wine bars and night swims with my dear friend, Carson…

For reconnecting with people like Diana, who share my love for Mexico…

And competing with my girls for attention from Andrew, ’cause you can really never get enough…

If I had a better photo I’d have used it, but this one reminds me of hugging him, and that’s a pretty sweet thing.

Besides, a good writer should also be well read…

There’s a lot going on in this photo. Taproot is an a brand new ad-free magazine that I am really excited about. The three girls belong to me and the three boys to my my friend, Renee, whom I’ve known since college. And the VW camper in the background? “Mole” has accompanied our families on many a camping trip. Those friends we can go years without seeing and pick up right where we left off become more and more valuable through the years.

And considering that by next summer, all the babies will be toddling, the preteens will be pimply and that I will be the parent of an adult child, you better believe I can set aside the writing for a minute or a month to gaze upon the faces I love, to make space for the molding of memories, to lose myself in the sweetness of summer.

“Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.  A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.”  ~Ada Louise Huxtable