It usually takes about two months before I stop noticing flesh. My flesh, to be exact. That's when the fact that I am wearing a bikini most of the time no longer informs my every action. A few weeks after that, I don't notice that my body is 42 years old. Well, not too much. I love this about living here. I am remembering it again as I watch our recent pod of friends from the United States adjust to showing so much skin. One of them won't take off a shirt. Another talks incessantly about how much courage it took to get into her suit. Not all of them are highly self-conscious, but a lot are.
I want Luca to grow up with Rio skin and not midwestern US skin. I want her to forget she is almost naked because skin is just skin is just skin is just skin. I watched her today, running out of the ocean carrying her body board, then turning around and with her small four year old body, shrieking as a wave raced her towards shore. She is all hard bodied and brown from so much swimming and running and playing and good food eating. She is healthy. We are all very healthy.
For the first time since being here, I actually wondered if growing up in Rio would be better for Luca than growing up in Minneapolis. It's nice to wonder that. Most of the time I am dead certain that Minneapolis will always be our base. Reason number one is so high on the list above all the others that it really deserves its own list - our friends and community at large. Irreplaceable. Without fanfare or footnote, it is the underbelly of our every day.
And then there is the easiness of living there, the beauty of the land, all of that - which has to compete hard with going to the beach every day and being the kind of strong that comes from simplifying your life.
There is no way to replace our people. Missing them pulls at us, carries us, informs us. But I also love my partner's homeland. It was nice today to actually have a moment of missing the future that Luca might have if we didn't have the people we have right now, waiting for us at home.
4 comments:
I'm guessing that if you lived there you might, um, actually have to get jobs. I'm just thinking that maybe there wouldn't be as much beach going...
You know, Iara told me that she thought you would move to Brazil for an extended period. I said to her, "Oh no, they will only be there 6 months" and she poo-pooed me with a wave of her hand (in her very Iara style) noting that life for you 3 would be easier in Brazil.....She would probably like to read that blog.
Would you really have to get jobs?
Ahem, people, can we please remember that one of us DOES have a job while she is here? I mean, sure, twenty hours a month might not seem like much, but it IS paying our bills. (Snort of offended dignity)
I was thinking more of the other one in the family...you know, the surfer? As good as she is, I don't think she can make a livin' at it...
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