…….. and maybe a little remiss in not posting this note earlier.

I’ve heard directly from some of you who I know are regularly out there reading.  It’s a rather oddly affirming thing to think about how people are out there watching the goings on of the world and think of me.  And wondering, and maybe waiting to hear. (see remiss above)

I was literally on the last flight to leave for a US destination before the borders were closed.  It was a chaotic and expensive exit.  And I left with a great feeling of sadness.  It’s always been a mixed emotions experience for me to leave Guatemala and come home to MN.  But I always get to the point where I’m starved to be around my kids and see my friends.  This year Covid-19 changed all of the circumstances.

My last Sunday in Santa Ana the bell did not ring for mass.  The weekly Processions of Lent, and the daily ones during Semana Santa had been cancelled.  The spiritual effects of that aside, the economic effects on average Guatemalans will be catastrophic and long in how it lingers.  As I sat having coffee that last Sunday, looking out on emptiness where usually there was the teem of thousands of visitors, I was fighting back tears.  Renato and I were texting back and forth.  Usually on Sunday mornings I meet the family for mass at the Cathedral and then we go out or go back to their house for breakfast.  I was in a fight to keep my mood from completely tanking.

Renato, to his credit, had been encouraging me to go home for about ten days.  He kept saying, this is going to get really weird, and he was exactly right.  It did.

From all of this I have one useful tip to pass on.  If you are going to be in a foreign country for any length of time, week or more, register with the US Embassy.  An alert from the Embassy was the earliest notice of impending border closures.  Because I’m not a person who digests a lot of news or social media, this was a difference maker for me in getting out of Dodge.

So now I’m back in my living room in St. Paul, safe and sound, boy there’s a relative term, and experiencing the self imposed distancing that we all are hopefully practicing.  I can tell you it’s pretty frustrating to not see my kids for some months, only to come home and still not be able to gather with them.  Then I think of my friends who have kids that live elsewhere in the country and I jerk my perspective back where it belongs.

Now, more than ever, I leave you with, I am well and hope you all are too.