Chile Road Tripping, Inside and Out

It’s 2013, a brand new year. It’s one of the more predictable things I’ve been waiting for amid all that’s unpredictable about this journey and all I wait for to emerge from it. In many ways that cross the heart, the waiting has felt like the thing. But as 2012 narrowed down to its inevitable close, Ryan, Ruby, and I decided to take a serious break from the waiting and set off on a nine-day, off-the-grid road trip to and through Chile’s famed Lake District. We stopped in Pucón, Frutillar, and Vichiquen, with side trips to Caburgua, Carelmapu, and Punta de Lobos. Some 800-1,000 kilometers from Santiago, it was the farthest south we have ever tred. It was the Chile I’ve wanted to see for some time. It was peaceful and it was necessary.

Lake Villarrica, Pucón, Chile.

Upon returning, there is much to report… stunning volcanoes and three cabins near three lakes…

Lake Llanquihue and Orsono Volcano, Frutillar, Chile.

The joy of watching our city pup discover all that abounds in the great outdoors…

Ruby Girl, ready for the adventure.

A three-hour hike in the intermittent rain straight up a mountain and a few days of blissfully burned-out muscles as a result…

Mountain hike outside Pucón. And that horse!

Drives over 22 kilometers of gravel road in order to arrive at a more-or-less private beach (and Ruby’s first!) except for the few others who elected to do the same…

It took a minute for Ruby to recognize Ryan in his wetsuit
emerging from the ocean.

Dinners from the grill and thunderstorms…

The rain didn’t dampen a thing–quite the opposite.

A lakeside piano/opera concert to celebrate our second wedding anniversary and a sun that didn’t truly set until 10 PM…

Quiet before the “End of the Year” concert
at Teatro del Lago, Frutillar.

A welcome sunset at Lago Vichiquen, after a long drive navigating dirt roads that literally weren’t on the map…

This was the shortest leg of the trip.
We’ll have to go back someday.

A New Year’s Eve jaunt back to Punta de Lobos, where Ryan and I also rang in 2011 when we honeymooned there two years ago. Last year, we went to celebrate our birthdays, when I was newly pregnant and we were the only ones who knew and Lorenzo was still with us in some way. This time, we got to share the special place with Ruby Girl…

Punta de Lobos, Chile

As well as countless cows, horses, sheep, birds, pigs, chickens, and all the sweet street pups we met along the way…

Happening upon a herd of cattle, as you do.

Not to mention all the hearts! We found them shaped into clouds, tree stumps, M&Ms, bell peppers, chalk, shadows, sand, windows, raindrops, a shockingly symmetrical pile of cow dung (I kid you not), and the curved necks of two pink flamingos on the t-shirt Ryan gave me to commemorate the “cotton” part of our second anniversary.

Heart-shaped tree stump.
Check out more hearts from the trip here.

At the same time, there is really just the basic principle to relay: We were good to ourselves and went away as a family to a beautiful corner of the world. We felt grateful for the clean air in our lungs, our pup running free past our feet, and the beauty of a landscape far older and wiser than any of us walking along it.

My family.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that we skipped Christmas in order to do so, and while that was true in terms of the ceremony and tradition that felt impossible this year, I hope it’s clear that it wasn’t true in terms of sentiment, of finding peace in this world together with the person you love, of thinking of family and friends back home, and of remembering this as a time of year for giving to those in need. So, instead of wrapping up presents, Ryan and I made donations to the hospital where Lorenzo went from this world to the next. We gave to the babies fighting for their lives in the NICU there and to the families who have already lost there and are seeking counsel at the bereavement center. One is the place Lorenzo did not struggle; the other is the place we would go ourselves if we were back in California. Because, of course, while we think of Lorenzo with each waking day, we think of all the others like him, like us.

Lakeside picnic at Lake Caburgua.

I want to carry that awareness forward into this year, so I’m becoming an official volunteer at the local orphanage I visited before we left for our trip. It came to be as many things that seem fated do. The same day I learned that Ryan and I have to continue to wait some time to grow our family I received an email that extra volunteers were needed. Would I join them in holding babies and playing games with the older kids?

Yes, I would.

Heart in the sky above Ruta 5, Chile.

Sometimes, it turns out, the road trip takes place right where you live. So, I road out on a metro, then a bus, and then walked for many blocks with a group of women across ages and reasons for being here in Santiago. But it didn’t take long to understand why each of us felt called to spend our time with these children. Most of us had, in some way, lost profoundly… a child, one pregnancy or several, the hope of a biological child, a marriage. It was stunning, really, when I think about how much we revealed of ourselves waiting on a park bench for everyone to arrive or riding out on a bus once we did. It’s equally stunning how all of our stories, how all of “our” selves slipped away the moment we were in a room with those children. Little ones who just wanted to be picked up and held. Little ones who just wanted to play telephone. Little ones who just wanted to give you a sticker when it was literally all they had. It was heart-breaking and heart-filling, and as we know well of me by now, it’s all about the heart these days.

Heart in the sand, Carelmapu, Chile.

On the road with Ryan and Ruby, I couldn’t stop thinking about those little ones and the ones who care for them full-time while they are waiting, too, to hopefully be placed back with their families in some way or with a new family if not. The ones I met are mostly one and two years old. They are babies. They are innocent. They are as stunning as any vista we saw on our trip. They are more so. For two hours in the middle of the day, they make all the waiting go away and I hope we do the same for them this new year.

 

The Chain-Link Heart Project

I’m officially announcing the Chain-Link Heart Project (#chainlinkheartproject), a new blog where I ask you to send me the hearts you find because I think the results could be amazing.

Everything you need to know (for now) is explained on the new blog’s Lorenzo and Submit Your Hearts pages, in this post, and on a page dedicated to this Project that you’ll always be able to access from the homepage of Notes from the Southern Hemisphere.

 

Hearts are everywhere… at your feet…
As I’ve shown you recently, I’m collecting hearts. I keep finding them here and there. I see them painted on the wall, carved into the concrete, sculpted into rock, and even scattered across the grass by a strong wind. They remind me of Lorenzo. Maybe they are from him
…in your coffee cup…
I’ve stopped questioning their prevalence and now relish each heart when it appears. They feel like links in a chain. I still have no idea where the chain is leading or how much darkness is up ahead. We had a significant setback recently that confirmed there’s still much darkness to feel our way through, but seeing the hearts makes me feel like I’m at least following the path, even if I’m standing stock-still. Maybe I’m not too far off course, as much as Ryan and I feel that way when it comes to being parents.
… painted on a bench…
I miss the hearts when days go by without a link in the chain. So, I want to ask all of you to help fill the gaps and create this path with me. The initial idea to collect hearts from all of you was my friend Shana’s and I think it’s a wonderful one. I knew Shana in high school and while we haven’t seen each other face-to-face in years, time gone by didn’t matter when we found out we were both pregnant and both due on the same day in September. Her lovely little girl is in the world with us, smiling and heartbeating. Lorenzo, physically, is not. Shana has been amazing as we continue to share motherhood journeys, even if they have led us down shockingly different branches. She also happens to be an incredibly talented designer and has kindly offered to help me eventually collect all of our hearts into a digital book. My big dream is to produce the book in a way that could also raise money for heart causes. But first things first…
… emerging from the metro…
…Let’s build a chain! Let’s acknowledge all of these hearts out there in the world. All you have to do is email me images and captions for the hearts you find. As I mentioned, this project has its very own blog, where I’ll post your hearts and commentary. I’d love to know:• The Who (that’s you)
• The Where (where you took the photo)
• The Link (anything you’d like to share about what you were feeling or thinking at the time).Some of you (Gina and Jen <3), have already done this on your own… sharing the hearts you’ve come across. You are an organic part of the process and evidence that it helps just as much to see your hearts as it does to see the ones I find. You can already find both of their contributions on Chain-Link Heart Project.

…and tiled into the ground.
A quick google search will show that I’m not the first person to collect hearts, but that’s not what this is about–being the first or the only. The heart, especially, is too universal for that kind of thinking. This is about how what you find on your path may just help someone else on theirs. This is open to all and dependent on building a community, so please feel free to help me spread the word… and the heart. Forward a link to this post to your friends. Hashtag (#chainlinkheartproject) the project on your social media of choice. Whatever you’re comfortable doing to add links to the chain that helps me both recognize my son in the world and believe I’m still on the path to motherhood. I thank you for having heart and I have a feeling others will, too.

<3<3<3

Skipping Christmas

Christmastime Vows, 2010

I woke up this morning with a Christmas song in my head. It wasn’t one of my favorite carols or something I can remember hearing recently by happenstance. It’s the one that goes: “Rocking around the Christmas tree, have a hap-py hol-i-day. Everyone dancing merrily in the new-old-fash-ioned waaaay.” I can’t pinpoint the place or time I would have known these lyrics, but Christmastime works like that, infiltrating your senses and traditions layer by layer, year after year, as you grow up and move around and create traditions of your own.

The oddness of this makes a little more sense if you know that Ryan and I are skipping Christmas this year. It’s entirely too hard to think about celebrating what would have been Lorenzo’s first Christmas with us. It’s too much to think about getting on an international flight and bouncing between our two local families and maintaining an upbeat attitude as we catch up with more people than we’ve socialized with in an entire year. As selfish as it may sound, I don’t have the energy for that. I miss my family and I’m still trying to figure out a way to shrink the world so we can all see each other more often, but this year and this holiday are different than all the others that have come before and there’s no denying it. And beyond Christmas itself, I think you can understand why Ryan and I are eager for a new year to begin.

We’re still acknowledging the holidays, but we’re toning it down and doing so on our terms. We’re renting a car and driving south just about as far as you can comfortably travel by car here, to Chile’s Lake District. And we’re driving because we’re taking Ruby! It’s her first Christmas and she is a big part of our family now, and Ryan and I want to spend this time with her, too. So, I went in search of “pet-friendly accommodations,” which is more of an oxymoron here in Chile than it is back in the States, but I found a couple of cabañas that don’t mind, provided we follow a few basic rules. That we can do. Boarding her over the holidays this year is what we couldn’t do.

So the Pardinis are hitting the road! The luxury of traveling by car for once is that we can pack all that we need, and we can really see this country as we travel through it. I’ve expressed before that there’s a Chile I want to see that doesn’t have anything to do with Santiago. It has everything to do with nature and fresh air and clear lakes and volcanoes and maybe even penguins! How amazing that we can also show it all to our little Chilena Ruby Girl. And while that may buck traditions like decorating a tree or decking the halls, that feels pretty special and family-focused and, hey, we’ll be surrounded by more tall green trees than we’ve seen in ages.

Our anniversary also falls between Christmas and New Year’s, so that will mean Ryan and I can honor that day without having to carve more time away from the people we travel so far to see when we’re typically home for the holidays. This year, we need that. We need to remember what we felt like nearly two years ago when we, surrounded by all those people we’re going to miss this year, committed our hearts and our lives to one another.

We never could have known what kind of challenges we would face so soon into our marriage. We never could have had a conversation then about what we would do if a fatal illness befell our first child. You may think you can have those conversations with someone, but you can only converse on the surface of the water, in the little boat you’re floating along in when your love is relatively new and uncomplicated and the challenges are still invisible to you. You don’t know what’s going to tip the boat or what you’re going to have to swim through to get back to solid land with somebody. And Ryan and I have swum through the thick of it together. It’s a journey we’ll always be on to some extent, and I can’t say we’re on anything like solid land yet. But we’re swimming. We’re swimming our committed hearts out, and we need to take a little rest together.

So if you need to skip Christmas one year, Chile might just be the perfect place to do it. Of course, they celebrate here, too. But it’s a summertime holiday. It’s not even the biggest holiday of the year—that’s reserved for the dieciocho. Plus, we’re just about as far from the North Pole as possible. So Santa and all the rest feel like something that happens at another time of year, not now, not in December with Chile’s reliable sun high in the sky.

But I suppose, even with all that, I can still wake up with a Christmas tune running through my head. As much as you want to avoid something, it has a way of reminding you it’s there because it always has been, even when you’re so very far away.

So, Happy Holidays, everyone. Thank you for supporting us this year. Thank you for reading. Thank you for writing. Thank you for listening. I didn’t write a Thanksgiving post this year or much of anything last month, and I might tell you why one of these days, but in the meantime please know how grateful I am for all of you and that I hope you dance merrily and have a hap-py hol-i-day.

 

Island Living

It’s not what you think. Though Chile may be geographically isolated, it’s no island. We live 90 minutes inland next to the enormous dividing wall of the Andes Mountains. I’ve written about missing water before. Namely, missing our dear Pacific Ocean, it’s healing ions, and proximity to its beat. That’s why we traveled to coastal Peru, to rest and let go on a day that needed waves, not mountains.

I summon the island metaphor because of the isolation factor. While Ryan and I have lived here for 2.5 or 1.5 years (!) now, respectively, California is receding more and more. It’s simply been a long time since we lived there or called any part of it our own. Without a home base, we stay with our Moms or in hotels when we visit. When we return, it’s always a bit of a mystery as to when we’ll go back or for how long. We have to miss big days in our friends’ lives, just as they miss them in ours. That’s how expat living goes, just as Santiago grows more familiar, friendships deepen here, and the Spanish vocabulary slowly accumulates.

 

 

But I know what I’m feeling isn’t just about the distance anymore. It’s about what Ryan and I have been through this past year, how rare our experience is, and therefore how isolating it feels. I think no matter what goes on to happen in our lives, losing Lorenzo will feel like the main thing, the inciting event that changed everything. Our first child is forever out of reach—that’s where the real sense of being an island comes in. Most of the time, Ryan and I are at least huddled together on the sand. Other times, we have to go occupy our own islands for a little while before we can float back together again.

We’re still here on our island when a Hurricane devastates the East Coast and jeopardizes the safety and comfort of family and friends. We’re still here on the island when an election determines the next President of the country where we still do our voting and tax paying and maintain some of our healthcare. It’s a strange feeling to be far away during such focused points of national attention. Even though it’s relatively easy to find out about what’s going on back home, I feel like an outsider looking in on all of you.

 

 

Then I wonder what any of you can really see of me or what goes on here? That’s why I’ve kept this blog going, after all, to give you all a peek—even when the view is heartbreaking or it’s hard to explain. That’s the human experience. You walk in your shoes and I walk in mine and we try to connect when we walk alongside one another.

But our loss makes it hard for me to see and then show you what else is here. I no longer write to tell you about my quest for hummus (there’s a new mall with a new supermarket that carries it on a fairly regular basis) or how many people I had to meet with in order to schedule and pay for a standard teeth cleaning (the answer is five; six if you include the dentist). I forget to describe the familiar sound of construction and protest horns coming in through the open window or remind you that it’s warming up here in the Southern Hemisphere. All of that is also happening, as life does. I need that reminder, too, but I still don’t think I’m ever getting off this island.

Found Hearts, Part II

 

Like I said last time, I keep seeing hearts. I continue to find them scattered about a neighborhood I’ve lived in for well over a year. Surely, most of these hearts have been here all along, painted on a wall or sculpted into the concrete sidewalk long ago. But others are fleeting, like the small paper hearts Ruby and I happened upon the other morning right on our block. They only had so much time to be found before they blew away or were otherwise scooped up. What were the chances we’d see them?

 

 

I loved your emails this past week and how many of you have tried to help me decipher these hearts and these odds. You said that what we need is often presented to us and, by extension, that which we need is always there, always present. (Thank you, Aunt Carla.) I suppose it’s just a matter of keeping our eyes—and our hearts—open. Clear eyes, full hearts, after all, right Emily and Laura Lee?

 

 

You said that someone is sending me love. I was hesitant to believe that at first because it’s been difficult to believe in a lot these days. But these hearts—and your belief not only in them but also in me—are helping me believe, too. (Thank you, Becky.)

 

 

You told me about seeking out and finding many a heart in your respective corner of the world and you reminded me that just when you think you won’t see any more, you start to find some misshapen ones, the kind that may not be perfect, but are hearts nevertheless. Exactly. Imperfect, but hearts nevertheless. (Thank you, Gina.)

 

 

You said you did some thinking and soul searching of your own, about stress and getting older and how we cope with change. (Thank you, Mike.) All told, you are a deep readership, and I thank you for engaging with my journey in these beautiful ways.

 

 

So, speaking of chances, I found a patch of wet gravel this week, on the sidewalk just around the corner from our apartment. Part of me wanted to pick up a stick, hop the temporary fencing, and trace a heart of my own, to both commemorate what a heart now means to me and for others to find as they head on their way. But, I didn’t. I know, I know… What held me back? I’m not sure. I suppose a respect for the property and hard work of others, especially after Ruby and I spent the week walking by the workmen as they labored. I suppose because I’m still a stranger. This is not my country, after all, though my life started to change so profoundly here.

 

 

As my walks with Ruby remind me, there are plenty of hearts yet to see and gather. Similarly, there are plenty of ways to leave my own heart upon the world. I wish for all of you to find some hearts along the way, as you journey, as you look up and down and to the side. You might be surprised by how many you find and when and how you do.