Back in the Saddle Again

It’s hard to believe it has been seven months since we left Mexico. A brief summer interlude in Vermont getting one of our vacation homes ready to sell and settling our youngest child, Gavin, into Champlain College in Burlington turned into a much longer stretch in the USA when Bob’s mother, Jane, called us in August to say she had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

So after spending three months painting a house, tiling a kitchen, planting two gardens, refinishing a wooden floor, staining two decks, replacing multiple windows, and doing more tasks than I care to remember on both houses – punctuated, thank God, by a couple of long weekends in Montreal and Burlington and a lot of visits to local craft breweries – we moved into Jane’s house in Mechanicsburg, PA, in October to care for her in her last months.

Nanowrimo winner's certificate

While living here, Lisa signed up for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) in November and wrote a long-postponed book, and Bob threw himself into editing of his many videos from our time in Mexico and started populating the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel. We both have spent countless hours studying Spanish and playing our instruments (Bob saxophone, Lisa guitar). We spent 9 days in Cancun in November, during a period when Jane was doing better and we needed a break.

We also had a chance to spent time with some of Lisa’s family members around the holidays, and got to know Jane’s neighbors in her over-55 community. As her health deteriorated, we became close to her regular visitors from Homeland Hospice, who became our family’s lifeline: her CNA (certified nursing assistant) Sherry, who came every day to bathe and dress here; her hospice nurse Hannah, who came weekly; and our social worker Pam, who supported us in too many ways to count.

Meanwhile, we bathed Jane and dressed her and fed her and loved her. We watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy with her. The kids came home for Christmas break and got to spend time with their grandmother. Bob’s sister Beth came to visit regularly. We celebrated New Year's Eve in her bedroom.

Jane celebrating New Year's Eve
 with champagne and shrimp

And on Jan. 7, 2020, at the age of 89, Jane Greenawalt left us.

Now the funeral is over, the spawn are back in school, and we are officially empty nesters. Although Jane’s stuff needs to be sorted and dispersed, and her condo needs to be fixed up and put on the market, we are deferring that till the summer.

It’s time for us to get back to our lives, at least for a while. So we are planning to return to Mexico later this month and spend the rest of winter and half of spring there. We’ll return in late April, before Gavin’s school lets out for the summer.

This time we are headed for Mexico City! We are excited at the prospect of living in a big city, after spending the summer in rural Vermont and the fall in this Harrisburg suburb. We are currently deciding between several condos in a safe neighborhood – Condesa, Roma Norte or Polanco – near a huge park (a requirement for us as runners). We are also looking at language schools, because we plan to study Spanish every day, at least for the first month, the way we did in Tlaquepaque last year. It will only be for two hours a day this time, because Lisa is editing her book and we want time to enjoy the city.

We’ll keep you posted as things develop! Right now the plan is to leave Jan. 28 and drive our trusty Toyota Tacoma (with two cats on board; the third now lives with Gavin at school) slowly south, stopping in Cincinnati, Memphis and Austin on the way so we can see some friends and take some breaks from the road. We should arrive in CDMX (Ciudad de Mexico, Spanish for Mexico City) on Super Bowl Sunday. Wish us luck! Hasta luego!