50th Story – Playing House

Our time is going by so quickly.  We have now been here in Panama three months!  How can that be?  And we are still visiting new spots and finding out more and more about this beautiful place.

I did not intend this to be a travel blog but hoped instead to create stories that document our new way of living during this autumn phase of our lives (I’m being generous.).  I hoped to present another approach to old age.  But our times are so interesting it’s hard to stay on track.  I want to talk about everything we see, all we do, our antics and missteps and things we do that give us satisfaction knowing we did it ourselves.  Still it might resemble a travel blog.

I’ve been told that reading my blog is like reading my diary.  That’s a good description.  I mentioned in a story a few weeks ago that this life is like playing house.  It is.  It is almost like nothing is real; nothing is permanent; it’s just pretend.  It’s as if at the end of the day, we will leave the playground and go home.  Yet this is our life. . .

We have days on end in which we are excited, everything is new and fresh; then we have some quiet reflective days too.  Some days we are like young lovers, incredibly in love and so thankful for the blessing of sharing each and every day with each other.  We hold hands.  Our eyes sparkle when we smile at each other and we love those inevitable opportunities to tell people we meet we’ve been married almost 47 years and remain best friends still.  Some days we can barely tolerate each other. 

While we love challenging hikes and walking/climbing through rainforest trails, spotting wildlife, visiting museums that give a view into history not usually found in history books and finding a new beach, we like going to the Super 99 grocery store.  It is fun for us finding obscure items like corn meal . . . the bag is labeled polenta here but it is in fact corn meal just as we know it.  We enjoy finding new restaurants and are always in search of authentic Panamanian food.  We like planning our at home meals too, making our grocery lists and deciding how many boxes of wine we should buy.  Yes, we drink boxed wine here.  At first we bought bottled wine, of course.  But the bottles filled our trash too often.  Then we discovered really good wine in a box.  We like Penasol Cabernet Sauvignon from Spain.  It is available in bottles and in 1 liter boxes which have about one more glass of wine than that in a bottle.  Boxes are recyclable and their rubbish footprint is much smaller than wine bottles.  As a note, the wine here is good and not necessarily expensive.

Some days we must take care of business, making sure our bills are being paid online just as we intended and confirm there are no mystery charges on credit cards or debits from our bank account.  Recently I had to reach out to UBER about additional charges on my trip receipt that were not quoted when we confirmed our ride.  Making a claim with UBER is very difficult.  It takes terrier-like diligence.  I can attest:  it can be done though.

Espanol continues to confound us.  About the time we develop a bit of confidence because we can put together a simple phrase, we overhear a conversation between Spanish speaking people on the street or on the bus and we can hardly pick out a single word.  It all sounds like, and say this really fast:  Ramada-Condada, Ramada-Condado.  When speaking with a single person or maybe two, I will ask them to speak more slowly.  I look at them with great humbleness and say “habla muy lento, por favor???”  Amazingly everyone is willing to slow down and we are then able catch enough words to get the idea.  We study DuoLingo every day, I mean every single day and we do our best to speak espanol with everyone we meet – which is usually confined to shopkeepers, grocery clerks and restaurant servers.  Don’t underestimate DuoLingo.  It is effective.  We have met a couple of people who have learned English using that app.

Occasionally we have a day or so when we are confined to the apartment but they are few.  We exercise every day.  It may be at the gym, in Pilates or sometimes we just take a walk as fast and as far as we can bear to go, shooting for 2.5 miles out and 2.5 miles in return.  I remember so many times in my twenties, I’d say, “I don’t get any exercise.  I just don’t have time.”  And truthfully with work, home duties a husband and children, there was little time to take care of me.   Back then the lack of exercise didn’t show.  Everything was tight and firm.  Nowadays, tight and firm are long-ago dreams but daily exercise is an absolute must. It helps counter-balance all the good food we eat, it strengthens our bones, helps keep our joints nice and lubricated and best of all, invites a pretty good night’s sleep.  At this age these are dire necessities!

One of our brightest spots right now is the little church we found.  The friends we’ve made there are wonderful and the message we hear each week centers us and remind us to love and respect everyone we meet.  I tuck a dollar or two in my bra or in my pocket if I have one.  When we meet a child selling candy for a dollar or a person on the street asking for help, we help.  Surely some are shams but who are we to judge?  We try not to ignore anyone.  If they ask for help, I respond if I can.  Poverty is a severe problem not just here but all over the world.  Sometimes people simply must do what they must even if it means lowering themselves to ask for help in order to eat or feed a child.

Family . . . we are still very much connected to family and friends, especially our daughters.  We delight in their happiness or when something makes them especially happy.  We worry when something is going on with one or sometimes both of them.  Our girls are competent adult women; still if they are ill or disappointed, frustrated, sad, worried, tired, we ache to help or be there to give hugs and cheer them on.  We lose sleep.

We think about having no home to return to  . . . but that does not make us lose sleep.  In fact, I think we both enjoy telling people we have no house, no belongings.  We imagine it may shock them when we share the big changes we have made, but most people especially young people say, that’s what I want to do . . . just travel.  Yes, the house and furnishings, even those items given to us by family or chosen piece by piece, stick by stick by us are gone.   We will always remember some of those material things with great warmth.  And we will always think of that house on Belmont Trace and that neighborhood as home.  We hope that its current owners love and care for it as much as we did.  But does not having that home make us uneasy or sad? Nope.  We are fine.  We definitely miss our friends and girls.  We do!  But heck, before we made this change, there were great gaps, sometimes many months between visits with friends and family, especially visits with Arkansas family and Shea and Tessa. 

Sound familiar?  Our lives look very much like everyone’s except we spend time on planes and buses and in apartments we will never see again.  Yes, we may be playing house, but aren’t we all?