Nuria

My last blog post was six days ago. It seems longer to me. I guess I'm not doing much these days.

Sometimes Nuria (my domestic partner) gets quiet. She did that this morning. She was quiet a long time. I asked her if anything was wrong. She said, "No." Yet I knew something was wrong. Sometimes people don't know how to put something into words. Then I have to dig. I ask questions until I start to feel I'm getting somewhere, and then I drill down into that topic, whatever it may be.

I finally got Nuria to talk about what was bothering her. She misses her family in Costa Rica: her three daughters and her three grandchildren. There is Joanna, her oldest child, who has two children, a boy and a girl, "R" and Stephanie. ("R" is, of course, a nickname.) There is Maria, her middle child. And there is Mary, her youngest child, who has a son called Nick.

I can't replace her family, and as of now, she can't leave the country. She is applying for permanent resident status and she can't leave the country until August of 2023. It doesn't take much to entertain me. I can spend hours looking at YouTube. But Nuria is more of a "people person" than I am. She likes being around people. I'm not a people person. She had a family. I didn't; not a "real" family. She had a life with many friends. I had a life with a few cherished friends. She likes people. I tolerate people. 

(I just went to the door to accept a package—a large brown box from Walmart—addressed to Nuria. She's in buying mode. I never know what to get people. Humans of my milieu already have everything they need and really want. Trying to select a gift for them is like trying to decide what kind of icing you want to put on your red velvet cake, only infinitely more complex. My father couldn't do it, either—make my mother happy. As a child, I felt sad for my mother, who bought birthday and Christmas gifts for everyone in the family but received from my father whatever dregs remained on the drugstore shelves on Christmas Eve.)

I can't make people happy. They have to do it. I'm here if they need me. I can ask questions, but I can't always fix what is broken. Especially when someone is a long way from home and family. When people around me are sad, it makes me sad when I can't help them. But what will be, will be.