Paper and Walnut.

When I was young, I loved the holidays. The traditions. America. We might be young for a country but my Irish-Italian family knew how to make meaning for ourselves.

On Christmas Eve we would go to Mass and then have Chinese food from the place in town. Even after I walked away from Catholicism, I would still go on Christmas to appease my parents.

On Christmas morning, we’d go to my grandmother’s house, open presents, eat crappy microwave starters, then the exact same lasagne and bread. Then, a baby Jesus birthday cake. Every year.

As we got older, my cousin and I would sneak cigarettes at the park around the corner. We weren’t really trouble. We just needed a break.

A few days later we would go to my aunt’s house, my father’s sister. We’d eat her cookies and everyone would bring a different dish. The same cookies my father still talks about when he doesn’t have the words for what loss feels like.

We’d hope for snow.

Across the world, I would wonder what it might be like to feel so secure. But I always knew that rituals were for other people, not for the likes of me. Too tired and too lost to carve out space.

Before us, I had always envied people who had ways of making meaning. The people who were safe enough to put down roots, to relish their time together. Would I have known you then? In Slovakia, my winter would begin on the first stroke of November with the lighting of candles for All Hallows' Day. Then, the lines of people on a Christmas Eve street, heads bowed as they waited for the priest to open the wooden doors of the church and for their mass to begin. I was surrounded by other people’s rituals but none to call my own.

Always on the outside looking in.

I didn’t know you yet. The death of my aunt and the death of my grandmother changed everything about the holidays, as the changing of the matriarch is bound to do. We never went back to how warm Christmas had once felt. The practices I’d once mocked but secretly cherished buried with them.

Each year after that, I became increasingly isolated, only leaving my room for short stretches at a time. There was nothing to talk about.

We arrived knowing different winters.

Together, in the basement flat in Newport, we ate Larry the lobster and fought Poe for the last bite. She successfully swiped some lettuce, of course she did. She still goes for the swipe. We laugh as the paw tilts towards a scallop or a prawn. Neither willing or able to stop her. It has become part of our dinner routine.

Here, winter means the steady shrinking of storms. The thunder retreating into a red patterned sky as it gives way to an enduring but gentle sun. The evenings are a little cooler and the doves a little louder-braver. Butterflies zip through the verdant banana leaves and rambling vines like they are traversing a roller coaster made just for them. There is freedom in seeing as a participant and not a bystander to it all.

It's been a year since we exchanged our walnut wedding rings, and we have finally begun making our own heritage. Sacred and untouchable to anyone but us.

Now we are here in the land of smiles, where smiles can mean anything from “welcome, I love you” to “you just paid the farang price.” It is friendlier here, though less forgiving. On weekends, we walk through Khum Klao. We buy vegetables from the beautiful woman and T-shirts to lounge around in from the T-shirt man. He lives between the machete man and the cat food woman.

Our life is gentle, and we choose gentleness. I am learning how to tend a tropical garden. We are learning each other. Our house is full of brilliant smells and fresh coconuts, real smiles and steady laughter. We write. We tend. We love.

It’s odd to start over in a new country, especially when you’ve lived in one place your whole life. I find it even stranger that I don’t feel out of place here, I feel at home.

We still stumble through other people’s rituals: Lat Krabang banana boats to give thanks to the river for all that it provides. A parade or monks giving hope to the people. We are learning but this time we are doing it together. Clumsy sometimes, but beautiful still.

We move with each other and the seasons. Winter brings with it the fresh succulence of pineapple and the comforting bitter-sweet of newly sprouted tamarind. Fridays belong to the market. Returning home with our arms laden with soon to be discovered tastes stored in plastic freezer bags: soy eggs, blue river prawns, fresh green coconuts and pickled mustard sprouts. They look like adventure but they smell like home. We always visit the same khun bpâa before we leave. She is beautiful in a way that only a woman who has lived with the land can be. Cheekbones rise high into her wide set eyes. Her hair is tumbled into a bun. She smiles knowingly as she takes our Baht for our bag of vegetables. She knows us now. We know her. No words are necessary.

We watch the sunrise on Saturdays. It hangs low in the sky before spreading like watercolour paint across the sky - seeping and smudged. Red and gold light up our world. Then you water the garden. The sun for all its beauty is both harming and healing.

We sip slowly now. Evening dinner idles into the night. Food is shared and cherished. Steamed eggs. Salty and sweet. Chicken lettuce wraps with a lashing of spicy chilli paste. These are home now. Burritos and burgers are the occasional reminder that once we lived a different kind of life. And once not so very long ago we were different kinds of people.

I can see you from the kitchen window as you tend the vanilla vine. You talk to it softly as it takes root in the rain tree. I smile as I dig my hands into the already brined cabbage and mix in the fiery red paste. I think of the kimchi pork we will eat later on the coals you will have already nested on the barbecue.

I think of our wedding vows and the I dos that are becoming life. Then I add the fish sauce, and stir.

The carved wood of our security, it turns out, looks good on our index fingers.