Transitions...

Coming home to Vermont from a month in Buenos Aires has its ups and downs. Suddenly I can't drink the coffee that seemed fine before I left, and the wine that was perfectly adequate (because it fit the budget) doesn't come close to the Argentine Malbec I enjoyed all month. I am not eating bread because it is unedible unless you live near a bakery and can buy it fresh. (There is no bakery within a 35 mile radius of home.) I haven't seen the sun but one day in the last five. The old aches and pains are creeping up on me probably because I am missing the warmth and humidity of Argentina, not to mention the long and invigorating city walks. I don't hear Spanish anymore and there is no corner kiosk to buy a morning newspaper.

I could go on but I should get to the "ups. I came home inspired to write by starting a new blog to put down ideas and play with words while I decide what to do with the written and stored memories of a month in Argentina. My laptop is set up on the card table in the downstairs bedroom and I look out to the bare trees still waiting to bud which are outlined against the snow covered Green Mountains. I watch the clouds moving across the mountain tops and patches of blue sky that come and go and welcome the light that pours into the windows of my Vermont house. No need to ever draw the shades here. Nature is all around me wherever I am indoors. I am struck by how I no longer have to crane my neck out the French windows of my B.A. apartment to look up past the tall buildings across the street just to catch a glimpse of blue sky.

I have seen very few cars go by this morning on Sparrow Hawk Road although I still hear the sounds of the buses and taxis rumbling down Vicente Lopez below our third floor apartment in Buenos Aires in my head. It is quiet on this midmorning cold spring day in Vermont. When I stepped out for my early morning walk I breathed in the mountain air and was relieved I wasn't inhaling the exhaust fumes that I tried to ignore in the city.

The house smells delicious from baking a double batch of homemade granola which includes more ingredients than usual, as I got carried away shopping in the Coop. My creative cooking juices just keep flowing as I whipped together a large pot of curried lentil soup to last a few days. Being in my own kitchen is as familiar as breathing. No more three course meals in the middle of the afternoon in a different restaurant every day , or midmorning coffee breaks with two media lunas (croissants), or the daily tasting of a new flavor at an Italian ice cream store in the city. My waistline definitely took a beating!

"It's good to go away but always nice to come home.". I repeat this cliche as it has become a mantra while I adjust from one place to another. Buenos Aires and Rochester, Vermont are two opposite environments and yet I am strangely at home in both. Part of me will always be feel at ease in a Latin American culture like Argentina because I grew up there but my other half has learned to love the peace, solitude, silence, and beauty of Vermont.

I just upgraded to drinking a better brand of coffee and discovered that Malbec wine, though a bit pricier, is available right here. I am not eating bread because I need to lose a few pounds anyway. Spring will eventually come to Vermont because it always has in the past and I can get out and hike the muddy roads which are only a temporary inconvenience. I can invite a neighbor who is from Spain to come over for tea and chat in Spanish and I can correspond with my Argentine friends that I recently reconnected with. Most of all, I can start thinking about where I will go next year for a change.