Vacation 2009

As my stay in Argentina is winding down, and I am almost with a foot on the plane I cannot help but think, as I do every year that I come here, what will the next 12 months have in store for me until I return to my place of birth.
I admit that I take my visit here as the beginning of the (fiscal) year, but also from other perspectives. I guess it’s because of the football season, the basketball, which means that winter is just round the corner in New Jersey. Here, in Buenos Aires, people are counting the days until spring. It is very funny to see them in thick jackets, overcoats and scarfs with temperatures in the 40s and 50s. They even had days when the temperature went up to 80s. In winter. This would be considered spring at home, but here people talk about the cold as if they lived in the pole. The maximum clothing I’ve wore has been a light jacket that I wear in early fall.
There are always reasons for sadness when I leave my country, family of course is number one. The fact that my parents are entering, what they call, the final approach after a long and rewarding journey, is of concern. Not of their final destination, because I know that my savior came to die for us and conquer death, but as humans, we, many times, are selfish, and want them to stay longer in this brief stay of us in this world that we loosely call life. So, hopefully, when I come back the following year and find them here it is a time of rejoice again, a time of thanksgiving.
This year I also take with me the happiness of having seen again many friends, some that I haven’t seen in 35 years, others 27, 23, 16, and some that I see every year and that hold great value for me.
I am also very grateful that God has given us the possibility to come here, given us safety as we travel and more than anything else, given us good health. I always wonder when people treasure other things more, such as money. There are many things in life that money has no part of. Somebody said many years ago: “There where your treasure is, that is where your heart will be.” Words of knowledge.
We tend to rush through life without a compass, just pedaling full speed ahead, to come to the conclusion, late in the journey, that we missed some valuable gifts that life had laid ahead of us only to embrace and appreciate things that were not important, or that left anything special in our lives, or the lives of others.