“Do you remember the first time you met me in Asunción?” I asked Art on Monday. It was our 40th wedding anniversary on February 16th and we were “iced in” for the day in Asheville watching the freezing rain coming down in sheets pinging against the windows.
The school year ended in early December and we boarded the Eugenio C – an Italian ocean liner, in Buenos Aires for Naples. Travel seemed to be what we did best together and so we toured southern Italy, Greece, Crete, Tunisia, Belgium and London for two wintry months. We arrived back in the US in February for our wedding on February 16th in New Haven Connecticut and then left for Mexico City a day later for our second wedding on Feb. 22nd at my parents home. The two wedding idea seems to work best, as we want to please both sides of the family.
Was it love at first sight? No, it wasn't. But I often reflect that it was much better. We started as colleagues, became friends, travel companions, and with time lovers and soul mates. Perhaps it was being so far away in such a remote place that gave us time to know each other deeply. I wonder if in some other circumstance we might have passed each other by. After all, we come from opposite backgrounds. But we met in a far away place and spent a year and a half getting to know each other slowly. I can say it has been the best adventure of our lives.
“Didn’t I ask you out to play tennis?” He quickly answered.
“I think so,” I said. Images of damp, cold Paraguayan winter days in July, a freezing cold room at the Pensión La Pocha near the American School of Asunción, and walking to the nearby tennis club came back to me.
“But we must have seen each other before then…possibly at the first teacher’s meeting at school after I arrived?” I insisted.
“But we must have seen each other before then…possibly at the first teacher’s meeting at school after I arrived?” I insisted.
“I don’t remember,” came his answer. Probably I was introduced at the faculty meeting as the new librarian from the States– Kristina Sampson. No big deal.
It was not “love at first sight” as the cliché goes. I had just done that…fallen hard for someone I really didn’t know. And that was how I found myself in Asunción, in July 1973 - a 27-year-old single girl, escaping a broken heart. I decided I would live life as an independent woman and have adventures. Going to Paraguay was just that - escape to a far away exotic place. Or so I thought.
Stuck at home because of the wintry weather, having cancelled dinner reservations, I found my letters that I wrote to my parents from Paraguay. Had I ever gone back to read what I wrote about meeting Art Aaronson - our friendship, courtship, falling in love, wedding plans, and start of our marriage? I was holding a treasure of experiences that I had not thought about in years. Far better than an expensive dinner or a gift to each other, we spent the day reading out loud the typed, single-spaced letters written on thin air-mail paper that have since faded. Every detail of my year and a half in Asunción, Paraguay was poured into a journal I wrote home every few days wanting to share everything and trying to keep from being homesick for family and friends. My mother kept them all knowing I’d appreciate them years later. I knew this because her mother had done the same for her with her letters when she went off to Santiago, Chile to marry my father.
It was not “love at first sight” as the cliché goes. I had just done that…fallen hard for someone I really didn’t know. And that was how I found myself in Asunción, in July 1973 - a 27-year-old single girl, escaping a broken heart. I decided I would live life as an independent woman and have adventures. Going to Paraguay was just that - escape to a far away exotic place. Or so I thought.
Stuck at home because of the wintry weather, having cancelled dinner reservations, I found my letters that I wrote to my parents from Paraguay. Had I ever gone back to read what I wrote about meeting Art Aaronson - our friendship, courtship, falling in love, wedding plans, and start of our marriage? I was holding a treasure of experiences that I had not thought about in years. Far better than an expensive dinner or a gift to each other, we spent the day reading out loud the typed, single-spaced letters written on thin air-mail paper that have since faded. Every detail of my year and a half in Asunción, Paraguay was poured into a journal I wrote home every few days wanting to share everything and trying to keep from being homesick for family and friends. My mother kept them all knowing I’d appreciate them years later. I knew this because her mother had done the same for her with her letters when she went off to Santiago, Chile to marry my father.
What a sense of relief to so easily fill in blank spaces of how I met the most important person in my life. Whether I admit it or not, a difficult thing about aging is remembering “past lives” - as I think of them. Keeping my focus on the present and the future has been the way I’ve lived although not everyone is like me. I have spent little time looking back and yet milestone events can’t help but push me back to remembering.
July 22, 1973 - “I feel so at ease in Latin America…I was thinking how much less fearful I am asking my way around in Spanish and not being frightened…something I haven’t always felt in the US…my first impressions lead me to see this place as being very rustic and probably the most backward Latin American country I’ve lived in.
How is it I came to Asuncion as a single independent woman and left with a lifetime companion, very much in love? It happened gradually and the truth was there were few young expats to socialize with at all. I met Art a few days after I arrived and wrote, “Art Aaronson is the Social Studies teacher at school who is single and just a super guy. He must be about 28 or 29…former Peace Corps and has been everywhere in the world!” I had spent most of my life abroad and yet I didn’t credit myself with being as “worldly”?
My letters all through July, August, and September 1973 were full of setting up the library media center at school, a social life in a small expat community, and extracurricular activities from horseback riding lessons, German lessons, guitar lessons, trips to the dressmaker to have clothes made, and playing tennis all the time. Did I really have the stamina to play 3 to 6 sets in a day in that humid climate and say I loved it? I even took on a part-time translation job for the Embassy, translating documents from Spanish into English. That earned me extra money to supplement my $700 a month salary. It was clear that we made our own fun with endless bridge games and Scrabble, listened to records, went out to eat, had cookouts by the swimming pool and frequently saw mediocre movies because that was all there was. There was nothing at all going on in Asunción. And we were often planning the next getaway out of Asunción for long weekend trips.
I must have had a bad week in October when I wrote home discouragingly, I’m sort of down on this relationship with Art lately…it’s getting to be kind of a burden…I’m just plain tired of seeing the same person all the time. Problem here, of course, is that there isn’t anyone else and it all works itself into being a convenience and nothing else! By December school was out and we were off in separate directions on summer holiday - Art to India by himself and me to La Paz, Cuzco and Machu Picchu with a girlfriend and then home to Mexico City.
By February 1974 we were back to start a new school year and something felt different. Art and I had been apart for several months but he stopped in Mexico City to see me. Traveling back to Paraguay together I reported the trip down (to Paraguay) was really fun with some ups and downs but traveling with Art was so easy…he is such a responsible guy and when we travel together he insists on taking care of all the arrangements, and even paying for most of it. As we passed through Guatemala City airport I wrote, Art bought me a lovely silver necklace.
How is it I came to Asuncion as a single independent woman and left with a lifetime companion, very much in love? It happened gradually and the truth was there were few young expats to socialize with at all. I met Art a few days after I arrived and wrote, “Art Aaronson is the Social Studies teacher at school who is single and just a super guy. He must be about 28 or 29…former Peace Corps and has been everywhere in the world!” I had spent most of my life abroad and yet I didn’t credit myself with being as “worldly”?
My letters all through July, August, and September 1973 were full of setting up the library media center at school, a social life in a small expat community, and extracurricular activities from horseback riding lessons, German lessons, guitar lessons, trips to the dressmaker to have clothes made, and playing tennis all the time. Did I really have the stamina to play 3 to 6 sets in a day in that humid climate and say I loved it? I even took on a part-time translation job for the Embassy, translating documents from Spanish into English. That earned me extra money to supplement my $700 a month salary. It was clear that we made our own fun with endless bridge games and Scrabble, listened to records, went out to eat, had cookouts by the swimming pool and frequently saw mediocre movies because that was all there was. There was nothing at all going on in Asunción. And we were often planning the next getaway out of Asunción for long weekend trips.
I must have had a bad week in October when I wrote home discouragingly, I’m sort of down on this relationship with Art lately…it’s getting to be kind of a burden…I’m just plain tired of seeing the same person all the time. Problem here, of course, is that there isn’t anyone else and it all works itself into being a convenience and nothing else! By December school was out and we were off in separate directions on summer holiday - Art to India by himself and me to La Paz, Cuzco and Machu Picchu with a girlfriend and then home to Mexico City.
By February 1974 we were back to start a new school year and something felt different. Art and I had been apart for several months but he stopped in Mexico City to see me. Traveling back to Paraguay together I reported the trip down (to Paraguay) was really fun with some ups and downs but traveling with Art was so easy…he is such a responsible guy and when we travel together he insists on taking care of all the arrangements, and even paying for most of it. As we passed through Guatemala City airport I wrote, Art bought me a lovely silver necklace.
I moved to my own studio apartment and was happier. Our life resumed spending all our free time together reading, listening to records, doing schoolwork and simply enjoying companionship. Our record collections were a big part of our life in those days. I wrote home about many Sundays spent with Art. My air conditioner and record player seem to attract him…or was it my company? I hoped so.
I have often thought there is nothing like traveling with another person to really get to know them. It’s usually in travel situations that either the best or the worst in a person comes out. By March I was writing home I seem to be very hung up on Art lately, much more than I’ve ever been…we seem to be much closer this year and rely on one another for a lot of things. I hope it doesn’t get too complicated.
We had adventures to the Hotel Tyrol in Encarnación, Paraguay – a remote resort that we later learned was run by Belgian Nazis who escaped Europe. In April we were off to Rio de Janeiro for a long weekend and in May we went back to Buenos Aires and Montevideo, two cities I had lived in and loved. In Argentina I shared much of my childhood growing up in Buenos Aires, which was truly home. It was a part of me Art had not seen - one of those layers to uncover while getting to know each other. I decided I couldn’t leave Paraguay and wouldn’t quit my job when the semester ended in July. Instead I invited Art to come home with me to Great Hawk in Vermont, where my mother was spending the summer. We would stop in Connecticut to meet his family and then spend part of our three-week holiday in beautiful Vermont.
In July we were back in Asunción and I was homesick. I wrote home, Art is so patient with me and so kind…somehow he has a much more positive frame of mind about the good things here. Looking back on the husband I have known for 40 years he has always seen the positive in everything. By August I was frequently writing about Art. The doorbell just rang and it was a florist delivering a dozen beautiful chrysanthemums…and they turned out to be for me. What an unexpected surprise from Art. Not the most romantic flower but this was Paraguay.
The Head of our American School was off to a conference in Quito in October and promised he’d inquire about jobs openings in other schools. He knew we would be leaving in December and that we would go together even if I had not completed my two-year contract. It was not long after that we heard there were openings for a Librarian and a Social Studies Teacher at the International School in Santiago, Chile. Were we interested? YES! Was it fate? It had to be… And that was it. With jobs lined up, knowing we wanted to be together, it was only a matter of working out the details. I picked out a topaz ring with tiny diamonds at Stern’s Jewelry Store in the Hotel Guarani in downtown Asunción. I wrote, I really am so happy these days…it is so wonderful to love and be loved. Art takes such good care of me and is absolutely the kindest, sweetest and most considerate person ever…
I have often thought there is nothing like traveling with another person to really get to know them. It’s usually in travel situations that either the best or the worst in a person comes out. By March I was writing home I seem to be very hung up on Art lately, much more than I’ve ever been…we seem to be much closer this year and rely on one another for a lot of things. I hope it doesn’t get too complicated.
We had adventures to the Hotel Tyrol in Encarnación, Paraguay – a remote resort that we later learned was run by Belgian Nazis who escaped Europe. In April we were off to Rio de Janeiro for a long weekend and in May we went back to Buenos Aires and Montevideo, two cities I had lived in and loved. In Argentina I shared much of my childhood growing up in Buenos Aires, which was truly home. It was a part of me Art had not seen - one of those layers to uncover while getting to know each other. I decided I couldn’t leave Paraguay and wouldn’t quit my job when the semester ended in July. Instead I invited Art to come home with me to Great Hawk in Vermont, where my mother was spending the summer. We would stop in Connecticut to meet his family and then spend part of our three-week holiday in beautiful Vermont.
In July we were back in Asunción and I was homesick. I wrote home, Art is so patient with me and so kind…somehow he has a much more positive frame of mind about the good things here. Looking back on the husband I have known for 40 years he has always seen the positive in everything. By August I was frequently writing about Art. The doorbell just rang and it was a florist delivering a dozen beautiful chrysanthemums…and they turned out to be for me. What an unexpected surprise from Art. Not the most romantic flower but this was Paraguay.
The Head of our American School was off to a conference in Quito in October and promised he’d inquire about jobs openings in other schools. He knew we would be leaving in December and that we would go together even if I had not completed my two-year contract. It was not long after that we heard there were openings for a Librarian and a Social Studies Teacher at the International School in Santiago, Chile. Were we interested? YES! Was it fate? It had to be… And that was it. With jobs lined up, knowing we wanted to be together, it was only a matter of working out the details. I picked out a topaz ring with tiny diamonds at Stern’s Jewelry Store in the Hotel Guarani in downtown Asunción. I wrote, I really am so happy these days…it is so wonderful to love and be loved. Art takes such good care of me and is absolutely the kindest, sweetest and most considerate person ever…
The school year ended in early December and we boarded the Eugenio C – an Italian ocean liner, in Buenos Aires for Naples. Travel seemed to be what we did best together and so we toured southern Italy, Greece, Crete, Tunisia, Belgium and London for two wintry months. We arrived back in the US in February for our wedding on February 16th in New Haven Connecticut and then left for Mexico City a day later for our second wedding on Feb. 22nd at my parents home. The two wedding idea seems to work best, as we want to please both sides of the family.
Was it love at first sight? No, it wasn't. But I often reflect that it was much better. We started as colleagues, became friends, travel companions, and with time lovers and soul mates. Perhaps it was being so far away in such a remote place that gave us time to know each other deeply. I wonder if in some other circumstance we might have passed each other by. After all, we come from opposite backgrounds. But we met in a far away place and spent a year and a half getting to know each other slowly. I can say it has been the best adventure of our lives.
