McGinnis Adventures: Atlanta to Atlántida : Waiting for Voom

Marilyn, April 10, 2015

I've been parenting long enough that I sometimes think of my life in terms of Dr. Seuss books. Lately, the Cat in the Hat has been on my mind, or more precisely, his buddies Little Cats A, B, C, D, and so forth. Remember those 26 cats, each progressively smaller, who live in the hats of the cats who directly precede them in the alphabet? They are Troublemakers, those cats, with a capital T. They mess up everything, and moreover, they delight in doing so. The more of them that pop out of their hats, the worse things get, with each little cat adding to the confusion that the last one created. I've had the sense lately that my life is a whole lot like those little cats. Everything I try to do to put things in order ends up instead compounding the chaos. I get my head around how a day or a week or a Trip to Uruguay is going to go, and something happens to confound all my plans. Each new plan to set things right is an invitation for miscommunication, disappointment, disaster, and every time my day again dissolves into disarray, I imagine another little mischievous cat popping out of a hat, with no goal other than to create havoc in my life.

If you had asked me, I would have told you that The Plan I started out with at the beginning of this adventure wasn't all that ambitious. In fact, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of heeding the advice of a friend whose many years' experience abroad qualified her to share her wisdom. She warned me shortly before we left the U.S. to be careful about my expectations. "Expectations," she told me, "are the seeds of resentment." So The Plan I arrived with was, I thought, appropriately scaled down, and assuredly resentment-proof. By this point in our Uruguayan adventure, The Plan called for me knowing my way around the language and the town, having a few Spanish-speaking friends to socialize with regularly, and being involved in a community activity or two. Modest enough, wouldn't you say? I had expected Teo and Javy to have made friends by now also, to be speaking Spanish well, and to be enjoying some sort of regular classes or sports teams. Too optimistic? Apparently.

Even though I have recently met a couple of kind women who are happy to let me practice Spanish with them, I have to admit that, in general, The Plan has failed, especially for my boys. There are a number of reasons for this failure. Suffice it to say that I have not found following through on commitments to be a strong cultural trait of Uruguayans, nor boldness in embracing new situations a strong personal trait of my boys. From a sociological viewpoint, I find our lack of ability to form relationships here rather interesting. From a personal and parental standpoint, I find it terribly frustrating, and I find myself on the verge of that resentment that I had been warned about. But with plenty of practice in my life dismantling failed plans and restructuring them into new ones, I have evaluated what other opportunities besides friendships and Spanish fluency the next two and a half months might hold.

The obvious answer is travel, and that has become Plan B. There are still a few places within Uruguay that I've been wanting to visit, and we certainly have no day-to-day obligations to tie us down in Atlántida. In addition, before the end of May, if we intend to obey the law, we have to leave the country to renew our visas. And if we have to leave the country, why not do it right and go someplace really fabulous, someplace we've all always wanted to visit? Throwing financial caution to the wind, we booked flights for mid-May to Cusco in Peru, to visit Machu Picchu, the ancient city of the Inca, high up in the Andes Mountains. Part of planning for this once-in-a-lifetime adventure involves getting in better physical shape so that we won't be disabled by altitude sickness. I've started a stair-climbing regimen that should boost my oxygen-carrying capacity in no time.

But that still leaves more than a month before and after to fill with meaningful activity, or at least with activity that keeps the boys and me sane and liking each other a bit. Plan B, therefore, includes Little Plans for as many short trips as we can fit into these weeks. This week was a good week to launch some of these Little Plans, since Gene was out of town doing some field research. So Monday morning, the boys and I took a bus to Montevideo, and then for the first time headed west from there. We enjoyed a lovely 24 hours in the town of Colonia. In our study of Uruguayan history, we had learned about this town that changed hands from Spanish to Portuguese back and forth for 150 years, and that at one point was burned to the ground by the Spanish just so the Portuguese would have nothing to reconquer. Colonia is often described by Uruguayan as muy tranquila and indeed it was tranquil for us. We spent Tuesday morning meandering its cobblestone streets, wandering through its museum of indigenous history, climbing its lighthouse steps, and agonizing over which souvenirs to buy at the gift shops. That afternoon, a bus ride back to Montevideo and then to Atlántida had us home by dark. Little Plan A: implemented successfully with no shenanigans from little cats. I should have known better than to let down my caution.

The next plan-within-a-plan was a return trip yesterday to Punta del Este for what would probably be the boys' last surfing lesson before the weather becomes too cold. I called the bus company and made reservations on a bus that was to pass our bus stop around 9:15, getting us to Punta del Este with plenty of time before their 11:00 lesson. Lunches and beach gear packed, we were at the stop early, just to make sure we didn't miss our bus. Two busses going to Punta del Este stopped at our stop, but I resolutely waited for the bus on which we had reserved seats. By 9:35, I had just about given up on it. But here it came, barreling down the highway, too fast for me to read its destination until it was almost past us. I frantically signalled it, but it paid me no mind and continued on its way. Left with too little time for a new Little Plan to get there by 11:00, I texted the instructor and instead made Little Plan C to postpone the lesson until today. I was terribly disappointed, not so much because of the missed lesson, but because I've been here this long and have yet to figure out the bus system. Seeing my disappointment, the boys set to work as soon as they got home to make me a wonderful card, which raised my spirits a bit. Then, like unexpectedly benevolent little cats popping out of hats, other plans materialized and we had an enjoyable enough day, with a bike ride to our town's Thursday market, a bit of exercise in anticipation of Cusco, and a walk on the beach for me with a neighbor and her dogs.

We were not expecting Gene home until very early this morning, but as it happened, we had misunderstood his plans, and he arrived late last night, making it possible for him to accompany us to Punta del Este this morning for the postponed lesson. Up early to pack lunches and beach gear again, all four of us headed back to the bus stop, determined to get on whatever bus was going there. We signalled the first one we saw, and it stopped. But, no, we were told, we need to wait for the next one, which would get us there more directly. That one stopped at our signal as well and accepted a woman traveling alone, but we were told that there were no more seats. No matter that every single bus we've taken in this country has had passengers standing in the aisles. We were assured that another bus would come along shortly. It did not. Out popped Little Plan D, and we decided that we'd rent a car, which actually wouldn't cost much more than the four round-trip bus fares. Thirty minutes later, starting out for the highway, pop! Surf instructor responds to my text saying he can't wait for us, we need to reschedule again for a different day. We feebly pop out the next Little Plan and decide that instead of a day at the beach at Punta del Este, we'll make use of the car we just needlessly rented and go climb a mountain. If nothing else, it'll be good training for Cusco, we say. About that time, Teo announces that he feels sick. Short on sympathy and having reached the limit of our flexibility, we load him in the car anyway and set out. An hour later, we are rewarded with a boy who feels better, a challenging climb on a beautiful day, incredible views from the top of the mountain, and some really valuable family time together.

Do you remember Little Cat Z, who finally pops out of Little Cat Y's hat? He's too small to see (so don't try, you can not), but he has some pretty powerful stuff in his own microscopic hat. He has something called Voom. Voom is so hard to get, you never saw anything like it, I bet. Voom cleans up anything, clean as can be. Then (the Big Cat) yelled, "Take your hat off now, Little Cat Z!" And the voom, it went VOOM And, oh boy, what a VOOM! Immediately, all the chaos is corrected, all the turmoil is calmed, all the havoc put in order, all the Little Cats obediently returned to their places.

I imagine that before we land back home in Atlanta, we will have gone though numerous alphabets of plan changes. But maybe in the end, all of our messy, ragged, stomped-in-the-dirt expectations for our time here will clean up pretty well. By the time we get to the last Little Plan Z, maybe we will have realized that we have some magical voom of our own that will turn at least most of the disappointments over unmet friends and unmastered grammar and lack of bus savvy and missed surfing lessons into sweet memories of making a card to comfort Mom and biking to the market and walking on the beach and practicing Spanish with a kind neighbor and climbing a mountain on a gorgeous day. I'm not planning on it, you understand. I'm not expecting it. But there is enough Seuss in me to know that voom is possible, and that might be just enough to get me through the next several hundred changes in plans.

Just to help these memories along, here are some photos of our adventures this week.