Bienvenidos a Guadalajara

Anna and I arrived in Guadalajara amid a tormente, not your usual rainy season thunderstorm but a monsoon that swamped streets, stalled traffic, and delayed flights. As we rode in the late-night taxi with Jorge to our new home, he excitedly told us how this tormente was so out of character for the rainy season – the lightning, the downpour, the momentary flooding. He assured us that the rainy season here is normally quite pleasant.

Unless, of course, that rainy season kills the power in your new home. For 24 hours.

This unusual tormente was not our first of the day. When we left Madison in the morning, it was amid a rare downpour in this summer’s drought. Badly needed but full of crackling thunder and lightning and flash floods–what I thought was a reminder of the kind of powerful summer storm I was going to miss after leaving the Midwest. And as we drove to Chicago in a car chock full of family, pets, and necessary baby goods, I was reminded of our arrival in Madison six years before, amid a perfect bookend of thunderstorms, tornado sirens, and torrents of rain.

It’s been such a dry summer at home—record-breaking. Perhaps it was coincidence that these arrivals and departures were ushered in with similarly torrential storms, but perhaps it was also the universe’s way of reminding us in grand fashion of the torrential upheaval our life was undergoing at each moment.

It’s been such a dry summer at home—record-breaking. Perhaps it was coincidence that these arrivals and departures were ushered in with similarly torrential storms, but perhaps it was also the universe’s way of reminding us in grand fashion of the torrential upheaval our life was undergoing at each moment.

For almost six months, it has felt like a torrential upheaval as we’ve prepared for this move. The red tape of moving animals, securing visas, booking travel; the headache of packing up and storing an entire life; the frantic pace of graduating and finishing work projects; the surprise of another soon-to-be family member. What more change could we pack into these few months?!

But we are here now (well, Anna and I, at least), and it feels not so much like an upheaval as a gently unfolding adventure. Our cats arrived with us, safe and sound, if a little tense. We survived our first day with no power. We’ve been spending full days conversing with Nicolassa, our new nanny, in fractured Spanish. We’ve explored the local mercado and tianguis (street market). We’ve navigated garbage day, water day, internet hook-ups—even scheduled a doctor’s appointment!—in Spanish. We conquered our first cucaracha (lucky for us, he was already dead). And yet unlike the storms that welcomed us, this new life feels quiet, calm, easy. Anna especially is more relaxed than she’s been for months, sleeping through the night, taking long naps, and laughing, laughing all day long. She loves her new space: the door that looks out onto our street filled with pajaritos, our backyard garden full of flowers and palms, the playroom full of new toys and discoveries. She loves the rapidly expanding community of friends and faces who tell her at every opportunity, “¡Qué hermosa!”

So this is our new life. It’s unfolding at a pace we rarely get to enjoy at home—slowly, sweetly, but still with a new adventure around every corner. So much for the tormente; I think this is going to be una vida dulce.  ​