"Things We Miss and Things We Will Miss Someday" Part #1: Friends and Family Back Home

OK. We have been getting a bit lazy about blog posts the past few weeks. My Mid-November's Resolution is to get back to at least weekly posts. The kids are going to get some posts up soon, too. Stay tuned for those...

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A couple of weeks ago we sat down as a family to talk about some of the “Things We Miss.” It was a great conversation and it ultimately bled into thoughts about “Things We Will Miss Someday When We Leave CR.” Audrey and I kept kicking both topics around after the kids had gone to bed. Granted we have only been here for just shy of four months but it has been enough time for the kids (and parents) to pick up some interesting insights...

I'll try to recap some of the main themes but I'm going to break it up into two posts because the first theme is a bit more in depth than the others...

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Yes, this has been an absolutely amazing experience thus far, but it has also helped reinforce just how lucky we are to have so much of our family and so many good friends nearby back home. Audrey and I talked about how we have been able to appreciate this through two different lenses down here...

Liadan on the porch in Milton at cookout before we moved (with cousins and friends)

Ella with Anna and Sophia before we moved.

1. Living in a “Family First” Culture...:

One of the aspects of Costa Rican life that is often noted in all of those “happiest country on earth” studies is the ties that Costa Ricans feel to their families, close-friends, etc. A lot of ex-pats will talk about the fact that Costa Ricans are incredibly friendly (which they are)…but that in many cases there is a level of friendship and closeness that is primarily reserved for family and maybe a few close friends (they keep a very tight inner-circle).

Easter 2014 on the back steps (after Easter egg hunt with Sophie and Sam)

Ticos definitely need to “think globally” because it is a tiny country that heavily (understatement) relies on imports and now leans on being a provider of global tech and service sector outsourcing to attempt to even out that balance of trade. Many middle and upper class Ticos have spent time abroad, speak multiple languages, etc. BUT they tend to eventually settle down back in CR. And in a country the size of Kentucky, as long as you eventually come back to the country, itself, you are going to be “close to your roots.” There is an almost anachronistic (from an American’s point of view) continued focus on things like “Sunday is the day the whole extended family gathers together.” The heavier focus on having an ACTUAL work-life balance only adds to this focus on nurturing close-ties in Costa Rican culture.

For Americans, it is different. While there is a lot of focus in the US press right now on the fact that a lack of job training for emerging jobs keeps people from moving or that boat-anchor mortgages hold people in place, etc….the reality is that compared with much of the world, the size, scale and economic/political structure of the US fosters a great deal of mobility for the middle class and that mobility can send people 1,000's of miles away (all without leaving the country). Go ahead and pursue that tech job in San Fran or the engineering job in North Dakota or the policy-wonk job in D.C.! Not to mention the slowly (slooowly) but steadily improving American mindset toward the rest of the world (the number of Americans who have studied abroad, lived abroad, worked abroad, etc. continues to grow each year).

The next generation will need to be even more versed than the last in the multicultural, multinational, multilingual reality of the world (not just to be successful in a global economy but also to better appreciate and enjoy what the wide-world around us can teach us). However, the unintended side effect of all of this is that more Americans are a bit more “rootless” than perhaps their parents were in the mid-to-latter half of the 20th century.

Which brings me to the next lens…

With Gavin-side cousins at Auntie Mary and Uncle Shawn's wedding last year.

2. Realizing Why People Don’t Leave Costa Rica…and Why We Eventually Will…:

We have met a number of ex-pats who came down here with a short term plan (e.g. transferred for work for 2 years) and ended up staying for the long haul. And in many, many ways we can already see why they did so. The one HUGE difference between our situation and theirs is that every one of these ex-pat families was already living far from family and friends back in the U.S. If we were from Boston but we were living in Chicago for 5 years and then San Fran for 5 years — and THEN we did this for a year…hells yah, we would think about staying long term. It is a beautiful country, a great lifestyle, we have met some great people, found a school that fosters creativity and independence (and where the kids are COMPLETELY trilingual by mid-high-school), it’s the same flight time from CR to Boston as SF to Boston, and so on. You can see why people find a way to make it work.

I'll admit that Audrey and I have had moments during which we have talked about what a longer-term stay would be like. But those discussions always end at the same overriding point --- the reality that the pull of family and friends back home is too strong to ever make a long-term stay a reality. We also have a growing appreciation for the fact that having that type of a "pull" is relatively rare these days.

Christmas 2013 at our house with Auntie Tor, Auntie Boo, Uncle Alex and Grandpa Duncn

Do we want our kids to grow up with an open-mind and a global perspective? Yes.

Do we want them to have further experiences living abroad, living in other parts of the US, etc.? Damn straight. (the whole point of this year is to give them a taste of what is out there beyond Route 128...we want them to take that curiosity and run with it some day).

But do we hope that they eventually settle somewhat close to family? Yup.

Sure...it isn't a prerequisite to being happy, but we are extremely lucky to have the roots that we do. I don’t know of that many kids out there these days that can (like ours can) point to the fact that they have: grandparents all living within 30 minutes of home; 14 aunts and uncles (no, we don’t have THAT many siblings…I’m including spouses) within 45 minutes of home (and the 15th is only a few hours away in NYC); 18 cousins all within 45 minutes of home; and of course so many close friends nearby.

It is one of the positive ways in which our life back in Massachusetts mirrors in a small way one of the best cultural aspects of life in Costa Rica.

And it makes you realize that with the right attitude and with the people you love around you, anywhere in this world can be “The Happiest Place On Earth.”