May, 2006
Little by little, one travels far.
- J.R.R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973)
My house is a mess. Okay, so I'm not the best housekeeper anyway, but right now the place looks as if the feds have ransacked it. Boxes all over the place. Huge, black trash bags, one in each room, fatten with every passing day. I'm trying to sort our lives into simple catagories: trash, garage sale, Costa Rica. It's harder than I imagined. Sometimes I'll sit and stare at something for a while, trying to think of a good reason why I should keep it. I'm not really a pack rat by nature, but for the past two weeks, I've actually cried over my inability to justify the presence in my life of some inanimate object. I need to get this done quickly and have a huge garage sale before I start to rummage through the boxes rethinking my reasons for getting rid of a fondue pot I've only seen once since my wedding and never considered using.
This time last year we were in the process of buying this house. I was running around trying to get things done quickly and still trying to swallow paying so much for a home in a neighborhood that, honestly, before the boom we would never have considered living in. Three years earlier we (me, my husband Tom, my mother Irene and 11 dogs) left our home in the Redland just north of Homestead, Florida and moved to South Carolina. My daughter was born a few weeks after our arrival. We firmly believed that the move would be permanent and that we would quickly acclimate to life in the Deep South. We could not have been more wrong. Maybe later I'll go into how much of a disaster that was, but for now, I have this trauma/adventure to live through.
Mid-way through last December Tom got a call from a large international cellcom interested in hiring him as a content manager for Latin America. He had recently left a company in it's death throes and was eager to find something challenging that he would actually enjoy, instead of tiptoeing around financially stressed bosses, waiting for the plane to crash. This position fit the bill perfectly, only two downsides: the start pay wouldn't be great and the position was located in Central America. After much thought and hand wringing he decided to accept the position and on January 28th, we flew down to Costa Rica to set him up in an apartment and plan the next year of our lives. Not knowing anything about Costa Rica I prepared myself for a dingy, third-world backwater and was already plotting how Tom could begin looking for a job with another company immediately.
The morning after we arrived, I got my first surprise: the view from our hotel room. I opened the drapes and there were lush green mountains, some low-lying clouds and humming birds flashed back and forth past the window. Over the next few days, against my will, I fell in love with the place. The people were friendly and helpful. The weather was fantastic. The cost of living too appealing to pass up. Then we took a day trip to the coffee fields, Arenal volcano and the La Paz waterfalls and butterfly gardens. I left my husband there after two weeks and came back to Miami to work on my cookie business and figure out how I was going to afford to continue living here. The cookies were selling, but not enough or fast enough to stop the slide, I missed my husband and our daughter missed her daddy. Things got stickier and stickier and the day after a weeklong visit by Tom in April, I got a letter from my insurance company giving me the good news about my premium. It would only be going up 25%. Yay, lucky me. I sat down and took a good look at where we were financially and added that to my growing concern about how to raise our daughter and whether we could really afford to have another child and still catch up so we wouldn't be working into our 80's. Looking at it all down on paper, it was a no-brainer. I called Tom and told him we were coming down. I'd be selling the house and the cars, garage sale-ing anything that could be easily replaced and moving to Costa Rica as quickly as possible. He was thrilled - and completely freaked out. I know the move will be harrowing - the packing and house prepping has already driven me half mad - and I don't have any silly illusions about my life suddenly and magically becoming perfect down there, but I can't imagine it could be any worse than it will get if we try to stay in S. Florida.
So, here I am again. Less than two years after returning to Miami, I am saying goodbye again. Packing up a life again. Searching for boxes and bubble wrap and keeping a growing list of details that need to be seen to before and after the move. This time though, I am having to decide what I have that is important, what I want/need to keep and what I can (and possibly should) live without. That's what's different this time: I'm not going some place hoping to find what I want. I'm going some place finally knowing what we need and what is most important. My family and my sanity.
For now Tom is fine, if a bit lonely, in Costa Rica. My daughter misses the security of having her little family wrapped around her, but she's thriving and otherwise happy. Even my mother, who initially had a meltdown at the idea of not only moving, but leaving the country, has had an epiphany and just today told me that she knows we're doing the right thing. I know I'm doing the right thing.
I also know that I want to keep in touch with our friends and let them know what's going on with us. I'm not good on the phone most of the time and my emails will grow more infrequent as the pace of our move picks up. This, and my desire to be able to look back on all of this a year from now and laugh, is why I'll be keeping this journal/blog. There won't be many photos at first...my digital camera bit the dust a couple of months ago and won't be replaced for another couple of weeks, but as soon as I'm able I will add pictures.
Thanks to all our friends for just being. Wish us luck.
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