The Journey of Pata Caliente
From farm girl to global explorer
I was barely seven years old when we moved to our new home (my fourth since birth), a two-bedroom farmhouse on over 100 acres (40 hectares) of grassy fields with a couple of ponds, barns, and an abundance of farm animals.
The wedding was a simple affair at the courthouse. My siblings and I chimed in to say “I do” when Mama married my stepdad. Seems odd to reference him that way as Daddy is more of a father than my birth father could have ever been.
Exuberantly jumping, skipping, and running, I discovered my wonderland while creating fairytale stories to go with each discovery. Freedom to explore the land, meet the neighbors, and learn new skills through 4-H and life on the farm formed my wanderlust spirit. I had always been a busy child, but life on the farm brought a new dimension to the possibilities in life.
Broadening My Horizons
At 18, through 4-H, I was selected as an ambassador to represent Missouri with the International Four-H Youth Exchange (IFYE) to Italy. The six-week sojourn was transformative because I saw the potential of a bigger life to explore cultures different from my own, learn a lyrical and seductive language, witness masterpieces from the Renaissance and Golden Age, and build relationships with people from across the world.
The experience was amazing; however, returning home felt limiting. Sensing the constraints of life in Missouri, I wanted to marry a non-American, an exotic man who would give me the life I dreamed of.
My final semester at Central Missouri State provided the chance encounter. Impossibly tall, dark, and handsome, Sylvester Stallone’s doppelganger walked in moments after the professor of International Marketing shut the door. Sheepishly, he apologized profusely for his tardiness. His accent, smile, and charm captured the attention of every female in the room. He moved quickly to the back of the room.
The next class he was catty-corner to my seat a row ahead. Holy shit! That voice. Those muscular legs. The foreignness of him radiated like angel dust transporting me to a life together exploring the world.
Our friendship started innocently and morphed quickly into a passionate love affair that ruined his engagement to a girl back home in Argentina and mine to a guy with whom I shared an apartment — complicated times.
Becoming an Expatriate
A month before he graduated with his MBA, we picked a day in October that quickly got moved to July. We had an Uncle Sam shotgun wedding. Without his green card, he was unable to find employment. I was twenty-three.
I wanted an exciting life of seeing the world; however, I was unprepared to move halfway across the country within six weeks of getting married. My first experience with culture shock hit me hard. Life in New Jersey was very different, and he traveled all the time for his job.
Within five and a half years, pregnant with our second, we moved across the pond to Belgium. It was a life we both actively sought; we wanted to be expatriates. Our eldest was three and a half and I was finally a stay-at-home mom.
Our journey across two continents lasted eleven years. We left pre-Internet and returned post-911. The world, our friends, and life moved on in different ways. We were also changed by our experiences. And, our marriage was held together by our common goals of life abroad. Repatriation tested our resilience and we incinerated like a space shuttle entering Earth’s atmosphere without a heat shield.
Life Back in America
The divorce was finalized in 2010 — I was forty-seven and damaged. I lacked agency throughout my marriage. When my therapist asked if I felt like I was a worthy adversary, I knew I wasn’t. I needed to face the ghosts of my past that shrouded me in a complex of worthlessness and unlovability.
Fear of being alone and unsure of my financial future, I agreed to remarry far too quickly. Galen helped me begin the process of recapturing my sense of self while building the necessary skills to ameliorate the shame of events from my childhood and marriage.
Within a few weeks of our marriage, Galen was unemployed without many prospects or the drive to find work. I was on my own to support the family. Necessity transformed into a rich and rewarding career as a global mobility executive.
Within the professional community, I built a brand that few in the industry possessed — professional experience as a supplier and client and personal experience as an expatriate. Working within the international community fed the wanderlust, both with business travel, including a stint in Stockholm for a short-term assignment, and collaborating with people from various cultural backgrounds, where I often conversed in Spanish.
My retirement came early after a series of unfortunate and untimely ends in roles with three different companies. By the time the last one happened in May of 2023, at sixty years old, age-ism had impacted my ability to get another role.
Living Life Large After Retirement
Without the encumbrance of work or children at home, 2024 was a blank canvas waiting to be filled with adventures. By the end of 2024, I will have spent seventy percent of my time traveling across five continents including Antarctica. It has also given me the flexibility to be with family and friends who live outside of New Jersey more frequently. Galen is supportive of my travels and is regularly asked by friends: “Where is Shelly now?”
I am living up to the nickname given to me thirty years ago by cousins in Argentina — pata caliente — a person with hot feet who never stays put.
In September, I reconnected with friends from my IFYE homestays in Italy. After 43 years, I wasn’t sure what the reunions would be like. Arriving in Bagnaria Arsa, the first village where I stayed in, was like coming home. I stayed with Luigino, one of the brothers from the host family, and was surprised to realize a core part of my value system developed when I was with the Taviani family, Luigino specifically. Accountability.
This past May, while visiting my daughter in Colorado and soaking in one of several hot springs during a Mother’s Day / Birthday retreat in Steamboat Springs, Kate asked where the focus on accountability came from. She said, “It certainly didn’t come from your family.” While there may have been some underlying development in my youth, Luigino’s philosophical musings about dependability and accountability became guiding principles in my interactions with others.
As I travel the world making friends and remaining connected via Instagram, I wonder what would have happened had I not met Tall, Dark and Handsome. Would the world have seemed smaller? Would my wanderlust have been confined to daydreams and virtual travel experiences through documentaries? Would connection with others have been less important? Would my twenty moves have been a fraction of that? Would change be less attractive to me?
One thing is certain, I wouldn’t have become Pata Caliente.
Thanks for reading! Follow me on Instagram @patacaliente1963.
