As focused as I’ve been on anniversaries, placeholders of passing time, I almost didn’t notice that today marks two years of living in Chile. It wasn’t until one of the very first friends I made here in my first Spanish class that first week said, “Hey, haven’t you been there about two years now?,” that I realized, “Yes, in fact, I have.” Two years exactly.

Street art in Bellavista, 2011

It’s tempting to look back and see the timeline divided: one year of culture shock, travel, talking about home, sizing up Chile, and the general adjustment and adventure of expat living. Then, one year of an altogether different kind of shock, grief, coping, and an adjustment to a version of motherhood more foreign than anything that came before.

Chicks at Los Dominicos market, 2011

June divides time in that way, being both the month I moved here and the month I held Lorenzo. Had our second pregnancy made it, June also would have been the month we welcomed another baby into the world. That date passed quietly a few days ago… I made it all the way to noon before I realized I’ve now seen two due dates come and go after our babies have. To take June a few steps further, it’s the month we got Ruby. If you can believe it, we arrived back in Chile after saying goodbye to Lorenzo on Sunday, June 17 last year, which happened to be Father’s Day. Three days later, I picked Ruby up from a dirt yard in the rain and took her home.

Our first Dieciocho, 2011

I’ve stopped asking, “How did this happen?” I’ve stopped wondering exactly when anything will happen. In more ways than one, Chile has prepared me to go as things go. In a small way, I never know how long the line at the bank will take. In a larger way, with Ryan’s job the way it is, we still don’t know where we will move next or when or how long we will be there. In the most significant way, I do not know when I will become a mother to a healthy, living child. We embrace the unknown, right?

Backyard rain, always welcome, 2012

As Pema says, “the answer to these questions seems to have to do with bringing everything that we encounter to the path… It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us… The source of wisdom is whatever is happening to us right at this very instant.” (When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron). In this very instant, that could mean bringing fear and worry and hope right onto the path. That’s not to say we focus on it or let it undo us. But we accept it as part of who we are and we carry on.

Art therapy, 2012

It’s reassuring to think this way because it divorces us from “time.” Instead, we see the present and what we have on hand, whatever that is. The past and the future are where they are, but not here right now. This helps, which is why I still wonder about, “time healing all wounds.” Why do we resort to that in times of hardship? Why do we put it on the future to resolve the present, or, Heaven help us, the past? Yes, time distances us from the significant event. But what kind of real barrier is distance, anyhow? Doesn’t it just make our heart grow all the fonder? Doesn’t it teach us what longing is all about? Doesn’t every parent who has lost a child think of that child when leaving this world and going to the next?

Walking Ruby, 2013

Instead, I believe it’s on us, and really us alone, to heal. It’s about what we do day-by-day, as time passes, that matters. It’s how we generate meaning in our lives and the lives of others. Biology may fail us. The chaotic world may bear down. And still beautiful babies are born. Still, we must accept circumstance, we must accept ourselves, and we must accept others.

A heart on the way to the orphanage, 2013

So, as I look back over these two years as an expat, I am thinking about all I might have chronicled for you had time not split last June: a list of our favorite trips through South America; how I got locked in the bedroom the other day and had to hollar my sweet Spanish skills out the bathroom window so Ruby and I could be rescued (yes, this happened); or all the people we would never have met unless we took this leap of faith and moved to Chile as newlyweds two years ago.

My loves, 2013

But mostly, I am thinking about all the meaning Chile is now a part of: hearts from Lorenzo and all of you; the faces of the children at the orphanage; the real conversations with Ryan; writing the words; holding Ruby; and the tethers of love you have cast down to me so I haven’t gone and slipped right off this earth we’re so close to the bottom of. Thank you for those tethers. They are countless, independent of time, and rooted in meaning.