Just after Brokeback Mountain

Unsurprisingly, this blog has been created for a week and I am only now posting to it. No one yet knows I've created a blog - I suppose part of doing this is telling people. Creating a blog seems like the right thing to do. Here we are, living in Brazil, far away from the large majority of friends and family. Most of the time I manage to write emails - quick news bites letting people know how Luca is growing, how tan we're all getting, what trips we've been on. Sometimes they go deeper than that. But lots of days pass without really talking to anyone. Writing in this blog gives the illusion that someone is listening.

What is it like to live here - in Rio de Janeiro - right now? Being here for six months is this strange thing - it is too long to be a vacation, way too long to just sit on the beach and read novels. But it is too short to really create the kind of new life that means putting down roots. As it's summer, I go to the pool in the mornings with Luca. There, we play with and talk to some of the other children and adults who live in the condominium. We are social. Sometimes we laugh. But neither of us - me or Luca - have found the kind of people we want to invite upstairs to our apartment.

We play until lunch time when we go inside to eat and then Luca goes off to school. Raquel usually stays inside reading or working on the computer while we swim. Sometimes she has surfing lessons and then she comes back, all salt encrusted and happy, and jumps in the pool with us.

I like the afternoons when Luca is at school. She's almost four and I love her dearly but it is so nice to have time without children. I think so often of how, when I was a kid, the majority of the moms stayed home with the kids - until we started kindergarden. How come they didn't kill us? Or kill themselves?

In the afternoon when I'm working at the computer, it can feel quite odd. I will be working on grant proposals for District 202 or emailing back and forth with folks from rTransitions, and intellectually I am in Minneapolis. After a few hours I look up and there we are, the sun blazing through the window, the sound of Portuguese coming up from the courtyard and a kind of quiet in the house that is different from quiet at home.

I miss my people. A lot. It will be good to go back home.