All’s well that ends well.
What a year it has been. On this last day of 2013, looking back over all the major life milestones still visible in the rear view mirror, I want to give thanks for finally making it back here to my hometown in the southern Appalachians, reunited at last with my family at the end of a long and uncertain journey.
When this blog went offline at the beginning of the year, I had just left Iquitos after living there for three rollicking years. I left in February and didn’t see Corrina or Maverick again until the end of October– nine months later! That’s a long time to be apart from your family, especially if you care deeply about them. Corrina joked that she could’ve made another baby in that time and it would have given her something to do while she was waiting for me.
As it was, I spend most of this year preparing camp for their arrival: I found a home for us, got a job and went to work. I also spent a lot of time fretting over a protracted immigration process that cast a long shadow over the summer and fall.
Ultimately though, her papers cleared, and with visa in hand, they got on a plane and we were together again. Except for the day my son was born, that was the happiest day of my life.
Not long after that, there was a wedding. That was a pretty happy occasion too! My entire family was able to be there to welcome Corrina into our family, including my 95 year old grandmother who had to be carried up two flights of stairs like Cleopatra when the elevator broke!
Reader, I married her.
Corrina and Maverick are adjusting well to stateside life, and getting a taste for southern culture. We’ve got a great little barbecue joint down the road, and the other day I taught her how to make collard greens. We go out to our local pub to listen to bluegrass and old time music, and sometimes we go driving in the mountains just to have a look around. Young Maverick, who just turned three, has amazed us all by picking up English in just two months. When he first got off the plane, he was speaking only Spanish, but now all our conversations are in English. It really is a whole new world to be able to interact with my child in my native tongue.
For me, this year has been an enormous hinge, bringing peaceful closure to our life in Peru and swinging open into a new life together in the States. For all the stress and uncertainty, and for all the problems that yet remain, we’ve passed through a crucible of enormous distance and we are more fully formed for the experience. I think Corrina and I have become more grounded and mature people as a result of all these events, and we stand now as though on the threshold of a new place in the sun. I think 2014 is going to be a very good year.
To all our friends in Iquitos, I hope you are feeling the same way! We will look forward very much to seeing you all again in the days and years to come, as I know now that in our hearts we will never be far from that noisy, ragged, chaotic little spot of bother deep in the Amazon. (Even now I can almost hear the motorcars.) Iquitos was my finishing school, and grateful I am indeed for the lessons I learned there, and more grateful still for the woman and child who share its spirit, and who are with me now.
I still get contacted sometimes by people who happen across this blog while researching a trip to Iquitos. If you’re one of those people, I invite you explore the archives and to reach out with an email if you have any questions about any of the material covered here; I’d be happy to point you in the right direction if I can.
Happy New Year!
Jungle Love 