Transitions

I am now, really and truly, looking at my final days in Brasil.  I started ‘Flowers’ as an experiment, just to learn something new, pass the time, and it evolved into a means of talking about, of showing you my world.  It is full of the inevitable comparisons between the USA that I knew so well and Brasil, a country that I was learning to understand and to, at times, love.  It also, from time to time, became a voice to my efforts to know and understand myself as I have changed through aging and experiences, and now may become a place for me to express all the changes I will have to make as I return to the place where I started.  

I find that this idea of changing back has occupied my thoughts at the oddest moments; while visiting my sister a month or so ago, or when in a hot shower, just walking mindlessly through the grocery store, or while standing in long lines, waiting.  The idea of what defines us now and of how we make our way back to a place where we are comfortable with ourselves, and our expectations is a question that needs answering.  Are we the sum of all our titles held: daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, divorcee, wife, widow or of the things we enjoy doing: reader, talker, walker, dancer, cook or what others see from the outside looking in, student, bookkeeper, manager and back to student once more.  How will those secret character traits we keep so well hidden: shy, unsure, child, needy, affect us while we wait for the transition back to be complete. 

I suspect we are all ever evolving.  Sometimes being influenced by our hidden traits and at others, being pushed forward by who we have become to be that person we have yet to meet.  I suspect that the transition takes time and patience.  That in the end all those titles we have been, become a part of our new self.  Like a well cooked stew, in the end all the components add taste and character; widening, shaping, determining who we will be next.