Where is Home?

We arrived home late, the house looked great, Maya and Monica did well together, Maya's violin teacher texted me just as we landed and told me that Maya won second in her violin competition and will play in New York in April. Work was busy with patients and messages and prescriptions, but I had time to drive Monica to the airport in the early afternoon, got Maya to her ballet class, taught my pilates class, got homework done, Maya bathed and in bed. A usual sort of working day.

So amazingly different from my life the past few weeks, cruising through the Galapagos, driving into the jungles and up in the highlands, planning our lives in Ecuador. I am going back and forth about the school decision and tried to ask Maya and she was not much bothered about the 45 minute drive to and from school. I asked my father about it, and I remembered that when I lived in Rome as a child, I went to the Overseas School and lived almost an hour away in a more modern part of the city called EUR. It had been built by Mussolini and had huge neoclassic buildings and we lived in a fourteenth floor apartment with marble floors and massive windows. I don't recall being disturbed by the endless drive through the clogged streets. I loved my school and riding on the bus was actually fun.

Our year in Ecuador will significantly impact Maya's life. I was in Rome only a few years as a child, and think back on the time with nostalgia and an incurable wish to return. I don't believe a year goes by without a visit to Rome or Venice or Florence. My sister Karen had a home in Tuscany for years, and I felt very lucky to see her there regularly. I wonder if Maya will fall in love with Ecuador in the same way and return to live there one day.