KNOWvember Day Twenty-Eight: Pamela

I guess you might say Pamela is my sister in law in law. That is she is recently married to my brother in law’s brother Brian. We had the pleasure of sitting across the table from one another at Thanksgiving. This is a big task. Because there are 61 other people sitting there. Most, if not all, I know because I married into this family.

Pamela (pa-Mel-a) hails from Mexico City but met Brian in Houston eleven years ago. But it wasn’t until the two were ready to move to Oregon from Hamburg, Germany that they decided it was time to get married. There’s was the wedding I wanted. Quick and to the point. The fact they did it in Denmark made theirs even more awesome.

How did they get from Huston to Hamburg to Beaverton, OR? That’s what I wanted to know.

Barley three months into their courtship, Brian got a job offer with an engineering firm in Hamburg. This forever bachelor and Peruvian playboy invited his girlfriend to move with him. “Ok. Why not?” answered this Mexico City native. She was done acting, tired of singing in night clubs, and in need of a new adventure. “I took a risk, but isn’t it what life is all about. Taking risks?”

Raised by their mother she and her little brother would learn how to live life by the seat of their pants. Both learned how to be independent at an early age. In college she studied psychology, but her university also had great acting and singing workshops. She loved both the creative and the intellectual sides of her brain. At twenty she was working on her first American film “on this side of the border.” It was here she learned how to really take hold of her life and live it fully. “I left Mexico for a week on my visa and met with a guy in the US who I worked with in the film. It was before Facebook so my mom didn’t know I was in another country with an older man. She thought I was at the beach with my cousin (who was in on the lie).

For the last decade she had worked as a Life Coach - which allowed her to work in Germany and now in the US without having to retrain in a different language. She worked for a non-profit company that helps “expats” transition to new environments. Like me, her work is done virtually from her home.

When you come to a new place, meet new people (and not just one or two or ten but close to sixty other people), and carry on conversations in Spanish, Catalonian, and English you have to be on you game. Pamela was and is that woman who can pull it off with a smile. An amazing conversationalist, singer, and human being I am glad she is related to me by way of marriage to someone who is related to my sister in law’s husband. This is how strangers become more than friends...they become Family.