I talked in the last post about Panamà City feeling like home, which it does. But to get to that overall feeling, I think it’s like a quilt. There are a lot of pieces that come together as you find your place in your new environment.

First, being here with Mr. RO is everything. One of our art pieces that I love the most is a picture of an older couple with the following Rumi quote: “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.“

Then, of course, are the dogs. I don’t have an eloquent quote about them, but I consider them little pieces of my heart running around outside my body.

And then there are refrigerator magnets.

I collected refrigerator magnets for years. They were small, relatively easily obtainable, and could be readily displayed. It started out that I would get a magnet for every national park I visited, but that soon expanded to other noteworthy locations.

At one point, I had almost one hundred magnets from every corner of the world that we’d visited. They were mostly national parks, and most of them had pictures that were nice reminders of our visits. My magnet collection covered one side of our refrigerator, and I loved it.

Five years ago, we moved to a house that had a stainless steel refrigerator, and the magnets wouldn’t stick. Did that deter me? No! I bought a whiteboard, arranged my magnets on that and hung it next to the refrigerator.

Then came the obstacle I couldn’t defeat – time. Over time, all the lovely pictures on the magnets faded. I could see the printing of the locations, but the beautiful colours of the landscapes slowly disappeared from view.

On one hand, it did make some downsizing decisions easier to an extent – I didn’t have to bring faded magnets! However, I did have to say goodbye. That left me with a much smaller collection of non-fadeable mementos that accompanied us to Panamà.

When we first moved into our apartment, we had another stainless steel refrigerator, and again, the magnets didn’t stick. I resolved that I would have to find another white board.

Then, one Monday out of the blue, we heard from our landlord. Would we like a new refrigerator? He would arrange to have one delivered the next day. There was nothing wrong with our current one, but since our landlord seemed intent on providing us a new appliance, we arranged to accept the delivery. (We’ve since learned from multiple sources that this last minute kind of delivery is very Panamanian.)

The new refrigerator is great – inside storage is larger, it has an ice machine……and my magnets stick to it!

Putting my magnets on the refrigerator is just a little thing, but it felt like something clicked into place while doing it. Just about all the magnets hold a story. There’s the cross-stitch magnet that my grandmother made over 40 years ago. There are also two small metal magnets that used to be on her fridge. The Paddington magnet is also from that era; it was one of my favourite book series to read as a child (and it might not surprise you to learn that I have a much larger stuffed Paddington that has made the journey to Panamà – not quite deepest darkest Peru, but he’s getting closer to home!).

Others hold more recent memories. Ceramic magnets from Maui. Wooden magnets from Raja Ampat. Crossing guard signs from Germany. College mascots of schools that all of us have attended (I’m missing my undergrad, and Mr. RO is grad).

And then there are my LEGO magnets. They have all been gifts – I’ve never been to New York City, and I have two magnets from there. I’ve been to LEGOland, but that one was given to me by a coworker.

Little things add up to make someplace feel like home. For me, the magnet collection is one of them.