While most of my colleagues have returned to the classroom, I am able to work from home, teaching classes via Zoom. Teaching live requires preparation and planning but I can read the room and freestyle it a bit. Remote teaching does not offer this luxury. I teach two 2 1/2 hour classes each weekday. This requires a visual on the screen at all times. Planning these lessons is far more challenging than prepping for a live class. Trotting around a classroom never sapped me as much as talking into my computer for over two hours. I’ve declined a third Saturday class. I like this work and am fortunate to have the job, but I am weary. I love doing it, but I think that I’d love not doing it more.
While it seems that not having to spend time commuting (or grooming in my case), 18 months of confinement would render us ready and rested, Himself and I are exhausted. We’ve both fantasized for years about living elsewhere, and the research, fomented by our desire to live decently and work less, we’ve settled on Ecuador. We have an exploratory trip planned for December. The UNESCO heritage town of Cuenca has a large ex-pat community, and while we’re going to check out other places, if we do settle on Ecuador, Cuenca will likely be the place.
We’ve watched a million YouTube videos and slavishly follow local newsletters and Facebook groups. I check real estate listings sussing out furnished apartments that take pets. I’ve read up on banking, visas and health care. I could live cheaply in a beautiful location where folks speak a language in which I have intermediate abilities and have an excellent healthcare system. Not to mention chocolate, coffee and flowers. Also, a shitload of bananas which neither of us eat.
I’ve spent days trying to lodge a complaint with the Post Office due to two car registrations and passports that weren’t delivered. My local branch doesn’t answer the phone and the website is unclear about how to report such problems. This will no longer be an issue should we retire in Ecuador. While it appears that the country has many advantages, there is no postal service. Really. Liquidated in 2020. Folks rely on DHL and FedEx and the prices are mind blowing.
The Ecuadoran penchant for paperwork is also widely discussed on the message boards. It is impossible to make anything other than a cash transaction without a cedula, issued only with a visa. The visa requirements are onerous and always relegated to bilingual counsel. Every U.S. document requires an apostille, a certificate issued by the Secretary of State that authenticates a document for use outside of the U.S.
The other big Expat concern is getting stuff. In Ecuador, Amazon is a river. Baking soda is not easy to find and sunblock is dear. Many spices are not available. Imported goods are wildly expensive. Sheets and towels are of crappy quality. Larger sizes of clothing and shoes can’t be found, as the average height of an Ecuadoran man is 5’5.” Ex-pats jam small appliances, shoes, clothes and pantry goods into oversized suitcases on return visits to the States.
Some folks go minimalist and land with only suitcases. Others spend thousands of dollars to have household goods shipped from the U.S. in a cargo container. Holders of visas are entitled to a once in a lifetime duty free shipment of personal possessions.
Thirty years of living in a fairly large house has led to an accretion of lots of crap. One of the reasons that I love traveling is that you throw a minimum of stuff that you actually need into the drawer of a hotel room and are liberated from the weight of a lifetime of possessions. Perhaps though we’ll do the crate route so we can have our most beloved possessions, wardrobes and kitchen things.
My dad was a picture taker and album maker and I have boxes of family photos and scrapbooks. This kind of stuff flummoxes me. I don’t mind so much the thought of the kids sifting their late parents’ crap from the current homestead, but I can’t imagine the kids having to fly down to Ecuador to disperse my high school yearbooks and aerograms that I sent home from Europe.
We’ve been gobbling up all of the practical information that we can lay hands on. Additionally, we’ve been exploring Ecuadoran alternative rock which is surprisingly satisfying. Our postprandial activity is Spanish language TV, of which there is an excellent selection on Netflix. The first binge was on La Reina Del Sur. All 123 episodes. And not bored for one second by this action packed, finely acted telenovela.
I’ve lost count on other shows, but sampling programs from Mexico, South America and Spain we’ve enjoyed a lot of sophisticated, beautifully produced television.
Whether we stay or go, I am plagued by a lifetime of accumulation. My pandemic cleaning jags have abated and I can’t motivate myself back into purge mode. Clean? Nope. Write? Nope. Leave the house much? Nope? 63 out of 100 is more flourishing than most, but 63 on a test is still a D.
But it’s not an F. A friend asks for some suggestions for her book group. I come up with a list and single sentence descriptions. This is just books that I like and there have been a lot that I don’t. While it seems that I watch TV 24/7, somehow, I’ve managed to read a lot of books.
I’d read Andrew’s Solomon’s Far from the Tree, a study of parents who are challenged by children who don’t deliver as expected. I check out the documentary, hooked immediately upon seeing that the music is by Yo La Tengo. Solomon appears in the film, himself having experienced a tortured childhood, growing up gay and clever back in the 60s when homosexuality was still considered a psychiatric disorder. Sadly, Solomon’s mother died when he was 27 and there wasn’t enough time for her consciousness to be raised. Solomon’s elderly father survives, however, to make a loving speech at his son’s wedding to a man.
I am amazed by the patience and equanimity of the parents in the film. A severely autistic boy thrashes at his mother’s face and draws blood. The child is unable to speak but is eventually taught to communicate by typing. It’s like the pump moment in The Miracle Worker when Helen realizes that w-a-t-e-r spelled into her hand represents this stuff that is water. Parents lovingly surrender their dashed hopes and expectations and strive to help an unconventional child milk the optimal outcome, given what there is to work with.
A mother and her forty-something son with Down’s syndrome have a pleasant visit at a museum. She is wistful discussing the preparations necessary to provide care for her son after her death.
A sixteen-year-old with no history of mental illness and no evidence of pathology, impulsively murders an eight-year-old boy. He is incarcerated for life at Louisiana’s infamous Angola State Prison. The parents speak to him every night and anchor him with unconditional love.
The love thing is it. That is a parent’s job. Solomon’s parents, and my own, fulfilled that obligation. To a parent, a child’s inability or unwillingness to meet expectations boomerangs and suggest a parent’s failure. To a child, the love of a parent often feels contingent upon living up to, often outdated, hopes.
My parents ached that I was fat and mouthy because it would prevent me from achieving happiness as they defined it. I sit here feeling smug that I’ve given my own children the space to define their own happiness. (Although while not suggesting disownership, I did convey to my eldest that dropping out of grad school would involve my expectations raining fire on his, [still formative,] definition of happiness.)
I read good books. If my parents knew, despite disappointing them again and again, that the life I lead is satisfying and full of love, they would be happy for me. Although the Ecuador consideration would probably freak them out. I dread the possibility of announcing a move to my stepmother. Although teaching is draining, I am fulfilled when my students demonstrate progress. Most days I manage to walk in the hills for 3 to 4 miles. That certainly adds a few points on the flourishing scale. Having written this is also a big bump up. If I can force myself to clean out a cupboard it’d maybe reach a B-minus. But there’s something sexy and pouty and involving a couch about languish and flourish sounds kind of Type A. C plus might be the ticket. Or C if I succumb to more Internet quizzes.
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