The Small Pleasures That Turn a Place Into Home: South America and Guatemala
None of it would go in a brochure, and all of it is what people mention when asked why they stayed.
Picture a couple named Iris and Hal. When they first arrived, they filled every day. Museums, day trips, a long list. After a few months the list ran out, and they felt a small panic. Was that it?
Then one morning Hal sat on the step with his coffee and watched the street wake up. Iris joined him. Nobody said anything. It was the first day that felt like theirs.
What people describe
The accounts I read had a shape in common. First the excitement. Then a quieter middle. Then, for some people, a settling in where travel stops and living starts.
| Place | The small thing |
|---|---|
| Colombia | After the big move, a murky middle. Then contentment, when travel stops and life simply goes on. One person described a morning on a farm and an aching body, and called it gratitude. |
| Ecuador | Four months in, a baking disaster at altitude. The cake collapsed and the writer was delighted anyway. |
| Uruguay | A couple finally retired together after years of working apart in a restaurant. They found joy in ordinary evenings, including strangers singing in the street. |
| Paraguay | Waiting on a doctor's porch, with an appointment booked by phone message, felt easy. And a family home and shop under one roof, with three generations, drew admiration. |
| Guatemala | An 85-year-old painter asked why she would go anywhere, since she already lived in paradise. Most people there, the writer observed, had meant to go further and simply stopped. |
I find that last note the most telling. They stopped. Nobody told them to.
What I read in it
I think the small pleasures do two things. They fill the hours, and they tell you who you are in this place. A baking mishap, a porch, a song in the street. None of it would go in a brochure, and all of it is what people mention when asked why they stayed.
Some of these joys cannot be planned. You can arrive at the market every morning and still not find the one that feels like yours. What helps, I think, is leaving room. If the calendar is full, the porch cannot happen.
Iris and Hal came to see this.
"I thought we'd be bored by now," Iris said.
"Are you?"
"No. I keep waiting to be, and it hasn't come."
"Maybe this is what the list was for," Hal said. "To get us to the step."
I like that. The list was real. It just was not the destination.
You could…
- Name three ordinary moments from your week at home that you would not want to lose, and ask where they might happen elsewhere.
- Leave one morning a week with nothing planned, and see what you reach for.
- Ask someone who has stayed for years what they do before breakfast.
- Try a new pleasure with no goal, such as baking at the wrong altitude, and see if you laugh.
What small thing tells you you are home?
Tell us in the comments