Happy leap year!

Happy new year! Last year I wrote a bit of a tome summing up the previous year and all the updates and changes in our lives. So this year I’m going to attempt to be more efficient and make a bullet list of the highlights. Let’s see how successful I am at being concise…

KIDS

• William turned 10! A whole decade old. (And now he’s 11 since we’re already well into 2024.) And Liliana turned 8. They started (and completed!) 5th and 2nd grades. William continues to do robotics and take piano lessons. Liliana continues to take dance classes and love her kitties so very much, and at the end of the year, she decided to start piano as well.
• Tito started his university studies doing an intensive English program at Keiser University (an American-based school) outside of Managua. He graduated from the program in August and is now preparing to apply to colleges for this coming fall. We are looking at community college options in the U.S. for a start and he is studying for the TOEFL.

FARM, ANIMALS, ETC

• Elder continued to work on and grow the farm. He had green peppers and squash and tomatoes and watermelon and other fruits and vegetables planted. The first crop of plantains was harvested and sold and eggs are still popping out of those 2,000+ hens. (We eat eggs for dinner most nights these days!). And limes are starting to fruit from the small trees.
• As a family, we continued to spend time at the farm. The kids enjoyed riding their bicycles and Elder got an old small motorcycle which William started learning to ride there. I really enjoyed taking peaceful horseback rides on the country lanes on Yolanda until her pregnancy was too far along.
• Our equine family kept growing. Yolanda had her baby! She gave birth to a little filly in June, which I named Estrellita. She is a silly filly who likes to lick and nip at people’s clothes and arms - we think she likes the salty flavor? She is growing fast. She kicked me the other day with her front hoof as she was getting excited and rearing up, and I got a big old bruise on the side of my knee to show for it. So now we need to get someone in to train her to have better ground manners.
• We also got another horse, a stallion named Blaze! Our nephew Josias rode him in one of the “hipicos” here - an equestrian parade that goes through the streets of Leon. I started to ride him instead of Yolanda once her pregnant belly was too big. And now we think she may be pregnant again, this time by Blaze (stay tuned for next year’s letter to find out!).
• We still have four cats - Moon (the mama cat) and Sunny, Cloudy and Galaxy (her three kittens which are no longer kittens). And we still have three turtles, but not the same three as last year (an older one died and a new one was born!).

LIFE, WORK, ETC

• I’m still doing the same ol’ same ol’ job, which is great. I started toying a little with ChatGPT and other AI to see how it might help me with editing and brainstorming, which is kind of fun. I got to travel to Antigua, Guatemala in March for a conference and enjoyed soaking up that lovely colonial city again after many years.
• Still planning that patio renovation… didn’t get it done in 2023, now the plan is for this year! But I did finally get paintings up on the wall and it has made a huge difference in making our house feel more like a home. It only took ten years! Yeesh.
• Still dreaming of some new educational initiative involving nature on our farm property…
• Elder continued teaching robotics through his program, NicaRobotica, and had several teams participate in the National Robotics Olympiad, including William’s and Tito’s teams. Tito’s team won 2nd place for the Senior category. And NicaRobotica swept the Junior category, taking all three places! This meant that the 1st place Junior team and Tito’s team got to participate in the World Robot Olympiad which took place in Panama last year. We ended up all going as a family to accompany the teams, and it was an amazing experience for all the students, many of whom got to travel out of the country and on a plane for the first time in their lives. Muchisimas gracias to many of you who supported us in raising the funds to send the students!!

TRIPS

• We took a family trip to the US during winter for the first time since William was a baby and the kids got to experience snow for the first time! (Well, William had touched it when he was a baby but that doesn’t really count since he doesn’t remember it.) We spent some time with my dad in Connecticut and a few days in Vermont at Mount Snow, where the kids tried skiing (Liliana) and snowboarding (William) for the first time with a couple half-day lessons. I did one day of skiing and one day of snowboarding and realized that my snowboarding days may be behind me, as it felt so much harder than skiing now. But muscle memory is amazing and it was awesome to still be happy skiing after so many years.

• During Holy Week in April last year, we went on a family adventure to do some “glamping” - easy camping (where it’s all set up for you) at a nature reserve with a beautiful waterfall and natural pool, hiking, kayaking and zipline… and then a few days at the magical crater lake, Laguna de Apoyo.

 

• A big highlight of the year for me was that I got to attend my 25th Dartmouth College reunion! I had not been back in 15 years, I think, and was a little unsure of how it would be, if I would know anyone or have any fun. At the very least, I knew two good friends would be there, so I figured I’d just hang with them. But the long weekend there totally exceeded my expectations. I reconnected with so many people (and even met lovely new ones), and got to be reminded of all these wonderful, funny friends I had and how much fun we had together. I felt young again! I stayed up until 2am catching up with friends and drinking and dancing. I went canoeing on the Connecticut River. And I laughed and laughed and laughed. It was a much-needed balm for the soul. I am so grateful to have had that time to just enjoy… especially considering what happened just a month later (building suspense).

• In the summer, we were able to spend a month in Cape Cod and Connecticut. I had gone ahead of the family in order to attend my college reunion, so then I picked them up in Boston, where we spent a day seeing the sights before heading out to the Cape. We got to see the amazing fireworks all around us at the beach there for the 4th of July, and enjoyed a short but sweet visit from Uncles Richard & Robert. Then the kids were in the Wellfleet Bay Nature Camp for a week and a half. After that we had a week to do fun stuff as a family, including the Barnstable County Fair, which did not disappoint! And then we had plans to visit my uncle Jack in New Hampshire, but those plans were cut short…

HARD STUFF

• While we were having lunch after a hike on Cape Cod, I received a phone call from the hospital in Connecticut, telling me that my dad had been brought in the previous night after falling and hitting his head while out on a walk about a mile from his house. So we ended up heading to CT earlier than planned where I visited my dad in the ER and then got him moved into rehab. Elder and the kids returned to Nicaragua as scheduled, but I extended my stay in order to take care of things for dad.
• And then I had to extend it again as things evolved and we realized that we needed to be looking for Memory Care (in case you’re not familiar - a facility that specializes in caring for people with Alzheimer’s, dementia and other memory-related conditions) for my dad and not just Assisted Living. It was a very intense and stressful time, setting up all the care he needed and navigating all sorts of new situations, not to mention all the emotions involved with realizing that dementia had really started to set in and my dad was never going to live in his house - my childhood home - again. I broke down into tears more times than I could count over that visit. But overall, I really feel so lucky that things happened the way they did. To be honest, even before the fall he was in an untenable situation, and was not safe to be living alone anymore. So I had already started to look at Assisted Living places for him and was dreading the conversation my sister and I were planning to have with him to get him to move - anticipating resistance and denial. But he precipitated all that by getting himself into the ER and then in rehab, where they agreed that he should no longer be living alone.
• When I finally got back home to Nicaragua, I still didn’t have everything fully settled for him, but as much as I could before needing to get back to my own family! I remember standing in my dad’s temporary apartment taking a parent-teacher call with Elder and William’s teacher about some incidents at school and realizing… my kids need me too! It was time to head home. I was caught in the middle of the sandwich - needing to care for parent and kids at the same time.
• So when I left, my dad was set up in a lovely Assisted Living apartment with 24-hour care and on the waitlist for the next Memory Care unit to open up. Back home, I looked into one more Memory Care facility that I hadn’t had time to visit while in the US. After getting a virtual tour and then my sister visiting in person, we realized that this was the ideal place for our dad, and thankfully we were able to get a spot! So, in October, I was back in Connecticut for a super intense week with my sister to get him moved in. I’m still impressed with all we accomplished during that week. We made a good team and got his room set up nicely with furniture and touches of home. I’m happy to say that he seems to have settled in well and has developed his new routines, which is a real relief.
• Ok, this section (and maybe the whole email) probably should have been paragraphs, but I’m committed to this bullet list, so moving on…
• We got sick a lot in 2023, especially William and then Liliana and sometimes me or Elder. Spent too much time at the respiratory doctor, practically every 4 to 6 weeks with another cold or somesuch. Finally in August, I decided to take the kids to a different doctor and she diagnosed William with asthma and helped us try new treatments. Since around then, we’ve (knock on wood!) been much better and really not getting sick too much. Maybe it was also the post-COVID opening up to all the sicknesses again in 2023 or something, but I’m relieved that stage seems to be over for now… fingers crossed it stays that way.

AND FINALLY SOME MORE GOOD STUFF

• We had a very merry Christmas with the family from Managua and León. Featuring Christmas Eve dinner with the traditional gallina rellena, and now for the second year in a row the Christmas concert - this year with William on the piano and Liliana with her first song on the piano (Jingle Bells) and a folkloric dance.
• We decided to visit the US again in the winter, this time going at the end of December, so it’s still valid to cover it in this email about 2023. The main motivation was to visit my dad, see how he was settling in to the new place, and for the kids to visit with their grandpa since they didn’t end up seeing him over the summer as planned as he was in the hospital. It was really great to have some good time with him and have a mini-Christmas celebration with him.

• And of course… snow! We got plenty of it, and had a blast with skiing, sledding and all sorts of snow play. We went to Mount Snow again this year, and this time both kids did skiing (last year William had tried snowboarding) and got really into it, with longer lessons. I even got to ride up the lift with both kiddos for the first time. It was very special to be able to share with them this pastime that I loved in my childhood and youth.

TO CONCLUDE (not so concise)

My extended stay in the US last year started out joyful, celebrating my youth and feeling young again at my college reunion. It ended on the other end of the spectrum, dealing with the difficulties of aging and the loss of vitality and abilities. It’s made me reflect a lot on life, and this stage we’re in; where we’ve come from and where we’re going. It’s easy to fret about the future, long for the past, start to feel old, as the body pains and creaks start to set in, and worry whether I will have a similar fate as my mother or father, or if we’ll have the resources to deal with it all.

But then I look out my bedroom window at the hummingbirds flitting about the bougainvillea, the yellow-breasted songbird singing energetically to its lover, the petals of the golden shrimp flower unfolding and the limes bursting from the tree. And I am called back to the now. I see the cats curled up or stretched out in funny positions and my kids shrieking and diving into the pool, and I think… this is life, living, all around us, everyday. Life is now and meant to be cherished, enjoyed… lived! I receive a bear hug from my son, whose eyes light up at seeing me at the end of my work day. My daughter intertwines her fingers with mine as we walk to the park, and I realize… What a gift. I need to hold on to these moments and treasure them, be present and live. Especially while my kids still want to spend time with their parents and haven’t yet succumbed to the too-cool-ness of adolescence.

I am so lucky. I have friends, whom I love - you! We have a farm, how incredible is that? With centuries-old trees that we have been entrusted with caring for, horses, dogs, chickens. We have so much. And I am grateful for it all, and especially for you, dear friend. For it’s the people, our relationships and community, that make it all worthwhile. I love you and wish you a very happy (kind of still new) year for this 2024.

Love,
Abby

P.S. I know I didn’t really end up being that much more concise. The bullet points were all a facade to help me feel like I was being more efficient in recounting the year’s events… but I hope I have not bored you or overwhelmed you with my sentimentality at the end. If you got this far… just send me a quick line saying “I love you too!” or “ditto” or something. Regardless… I still love you. ;-)