Put the blame on the influence of good-old Dr. Seuss. As a child I read and re-read his book, "Horton Hatches the Egg." What a guy this Horton was. Although he was an elephant, to do a friend a favor Horton sat on her egg until it was hatched. As this elephant of his word put it, "I meant what I said and I said what I meant." 

When the hirsute hippie broke my sunglasses and promised to replace them (so many unfulfilled promises made to me by so many men) to my shock and amazement, he kept his word. As I opened the rumpled, re-used brown paper bag that awaited me at my college dormitory and saw the new sunglasses--well, drop my fried-chicken-southern girl-routine--I knew that this Yankee from Lima , Peru was "the One." A man of his word, who meant what he said and said what he meant. I followed him back to Lima, Peru, with the sunglasses packed in my American Tourister hard-sided suitcase. 

Over the years those sunglasses glasses have seen many a bedroom. In the beginning in Lima the walls were of light green plastered cement in my in-laws home where we lived for almost a year. It was very Latin tradition to live with the in-laws and convenient, too, since my new husband worked for his father and they shared a car to drive to work. How fortunate I was to have the world's best mother-in-law, who soon became one of my best friends. 

The next walls were cheap laminated panel walls in a cabin we rented in Glendale, Arizona. In those  pre-menopausal years, I barely noticed that the only cooling system was a swamp cooler, just some water dribbling past a non-stop fan. The run-off kept four grapefruit trees in the garden viable--a free supplier of hand-squeezed juice during our year living there. 

In Aberdeen, South Dakota, the rented walls seemed to be made of paper, as we found ice and snow inside our closed bedroom window in the midst of a minus-40-degree Fahrenheit winter storm. Due to the landlord's oversight of putting in insulation in the clapboard walls, the impotent furnace was unable to raise the temperature of the house above 50° Fahrenheit. 

During our year there we joined the middle class when we bought an unmatched washer and dryer set. That house on Clive Avenue in Vancouver, British Columbia , Canada , had less than 900 square feet--but the walls were ours (and the mortgage lender's). In our four years there as property tax payers, we frugally stashed away every two-dollar bill that we could. My poor husband rented a steamer and invested a week's worth of labor in trying to remove 90 years of other people's wallpaper. In the end it was for naught, as he had to cover the old peeling wallpaper with brand-new Sheetrock. Our darling, dearest daughter Jennie, was born here. 

Just as we were about to close on a spanking brand-new, larger home, we moved to a humongously splayed rented home in Asuncion, Paraguay where the walls were once again of the common in Latin America white plaster-covered cement. Despite the wide-open windows it was sultry hot most of the year, perversely followed by freezing cold in the winter. Uncomfortable for most of our year there, the three of us returned to the USA with various degrees of bronchitis and ear infections. 

In a company-owned, air-conditioned mid-Manhattan New York City apartment we made camp for three months while our household goods took the slow boat home. Although the walls weren't ours, it didn't matter. It was home to us during those summer months.

To Rowayton, Connecticut, we moved once again into our very own home: the "Dick Van Dyke house," due to the rock outcrop that took up some of the basement just like his house on his old television show. Our son was born and came home to newish beige walls that we covered with treasures from our travels abroad. Eclectic, nodded our friends. Weird, nodded the others. But the siren call to far away places came once again, and off we went. Our kindergarten-aged daughter began that school year in a public school in Connecticut and then spent a few months in a private school in Ponce , Puerto Rico in a pleated skirt uniform. 

When we finally moved to Willemstad, Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles into the company house, our daughter finished her kindergarten year in a private school that didn't have uniforms or much of a physical plant, housed in a couple of side-by-side houses. Our company house had white plastered walls, and for three and a half years was a sanctuary from the island's eternal white sunshine. Without a doubt it had the award-winning ugliest green kitchen cabinets. Under the fluorescent lights they always made me feel slightly nauseous. 

Back to South America , we chose to go to Guayaquil , Ecuador for three years. The first rented house had a pool and a rat that entered the house by way of the guest room toilet. It was an event to watch a parade of a dog and a husband chasing a rat running about the house. The second rental had a grotto-style pool that occasionally attracted a 4-foot iguana who would take up residence at the bottom of the pool to the screaming hysteria of our children. 

With another move to Westport, Connecticut, the Sheetrock covered walls were ours--well, ours and the bank's that had issued our balloon mortgage. Through two 100-year floods in six years, our children went from childhood into adolescence. The off pink bedroom walls became increasingly more familiar to me than my hard-working husband who--toward the end of our time there was gone--80% of the time. There had to be another way. 

There was--and off to Mexico City, Mexico, we went. For our first time abroad we decided to buy a house in a foreign land despite the possible risks. The plastered walls covered a shell of a structure of cement, steel and brick that had been creatively lodged on the side of a hill. Inside these walls we have been shielded for six years from the ozone, fecal particulates and lead in the polluted air of this megalopolis. The heavy-duty, over-priced air filter machines run 24-hours a day as guardians of our lungs. But the walls have begun to close in and my tolerance of breathing air that 80% of the year is said to be unhealthy has been used up. 

Once again the walls will change for us--but where they will be is as yet unknown. But no matter, for those sunglasses will come with us, a constant reminder of the extra-ordinary value of a man who keeps his promises and the wisdom of women who choose well. 

Author's Biography

Candace Drimmer is a freelance journalist who has been published in The American Way (American Airlines in-flight magazine), International Living, Woman's Day, The Asbury Park Press, and Moxie Magazine among others. 

She was the editor of Amistad Magazine published by the American Society of Mexico City, a stringer for South-North News Service and former co-editor of a weekly newspaper in Glendale, Arizona. 

In addition to having taught high school journalism in Lima, Peru, she was first prize winner of "The Silver Quill Award" for a short story, "A Belief in Magic," and first prize mystery contest winner for "Mama's Little Horror Show." 

Having lived in seven countries in the past 29 years, she has constantly sought opportunity and experience wherever if may arise; while at the same time empowering her two children grow into their best selves. 

E-mail Candace at MaggieOakshot@bigfoot.com 

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