Where in the world?

At first I was avoiding writing this post. And then I felt ready to write it, but couldn't make the time. Now I've got about 3 posts I want to write, and I just need to get this out of the way! So, while Colm naps beside me and Aedan is quietly watching t.v., I'll fill you in.

After 2 weeks of Costa Rica, we decided it just was not the right time or place for our family to be experimenting with the ex-pat lifestyle. We made a radical change to our plans, and came back to Ontario in time for the holidays. Costa Rica is absolutely beautiful, and it is a place to which I will return. There is so much more of it to be explored, and when the kids are older, maybe we'll see it all. The beach we stayed at was wonderfully low-key, almost undiscovered really, and we've got some great memories of it. Aedan discovered that he loves to play in the waves and to devour mangoes in the sand. And Colm never showed a moments hesitation with the water! He even tried taking his first real steps in the surf. I guess he thought it would be easier to enjoy from a slightly higher vantage. 

We relaxed, we soaked up the sun, we ate our combined weight in fruit, we dispatched no less than 6 scorpions from our house (and one enormous, hairy black spider), we watched a group of 10 howler monkeys move through the trees at our back deck, we played in the waves and watched the sun set over the Pacific ocean every night.

I felt so guilty, so ungrateful, when we first made the decision to come back to Ontario so soon. But I know now it was the right one. Spending the holidays with family felt like exactly the thing we should have been doing, and the boys are loving all the time with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. 

Without any further ado, here are some of my favourite photos from Costa Rica. Enjoy!

Finding our bearings

We've been here for a week now, and I feel like we're finally all getting settled. It's hard on the little ones, with travel by air and car, different beds, new faces, a totally different climate...and it's hard on the big ones, too! 

Our house is perched on a high hillside at the edge of a wildlife preserve: our view is of a jungled river valley, and mountains behind that. We can watch big black birds of prey surfing on air currents, and smaller, brightly coloured birds flitting from tree to tree. This morning we had a group of about 10 howler monkeys pass through the trees directly over our back porch. It was our first time seeing them, though we hear them each morning just before sunrise. Theirs is a chilling sound, deep and gutteral, like something out of a zombie movie. But to see them in full daylight, they're not very big, dark in colour. They studied us curiously, passing quite close to us. One of them had a baby clinging to her front. It's hard to reconcile that frightening call with the docile faces we saw today!

Being essentially in the jungle, there are a lot of bugs, too. We've dealt with our fourth scorpion (in the house!) tonight. They're not deadly, and apparently the sting is more like that of a wasp. Only dangerous if you have an anaphylactic reaction. I really hope none of us gets stung, though. I'm constantly scanning the ground ahead of me, I check the bed before we get in at night, pull back the shower curtain every time I'm in the bathroom...

It's the end of the rainy season, but it's still so green. There are flowers blooming in the trees, on bushes and vines, it's lush and beautiful. A few nights ago we had some very strong winds, and we've been told the winds signal the beginning of the dry season. I'm curious to see how things will change over the next 7 weeks.

We're in the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, staying near a village called Nosara. There are 3 small beach towns around Nosara: Pelada, Guiones and Garza. These are all connected by winding, extremely rutted dirt roads quite literally carved out of the jungle. We are closest to Playa Pelada. It's a quiet beach, often we're the only ones there. The waves are not too huge, and there are these big rocks that extend out into the ocean. There are lots of little tide pools amoung the rocks, which Aedan loves to explore. He and Colm both love to get right into them, they're perfect for kids to play in. We've seen lots of crabs, some little fish in the pools, and in one pool in particular, there are some sea urchins. The sunsets are stunning, but once the sun goes down, it's very dark. There aren't any street lights in our area. 

The fruit is so amazing, fresh and ripe and so full of flavour; we've all been gorging ourselves. Well, all except Colm, who wouldn't eat a piece of fruit to save his life...though he was curious about the watermelon today, finally! 

Unfortunately I can't share pictures with you...because although I replaced the connection cable I need to get them from my camera to my iPad before leaving Ontario, I forgot the cable at my parents' house. I hope my words will suffice, until we get back, when you'll get a huge photo update! 

Variations of Home

(I wrote this post a few days ago, and was waiting until I got a photo of the door, or something, to post. But I've had a sick baby in my arms for the past couple of days. The words are more important, anyway.)

I remember visiting my parents, not long after moving to the Yukon, and referring to their house as "home". My mom told me that it made her happy to hear that I still thought of it that way.

From then on, I made a concious effort not to refer to it as home. I'd decided that the Yukon would be my new home; I could not have more than one.

I am home now, in my parents' house. It is always a comfortable feeling, as we drive from the airport through the familiar streets of the city in which I grew up. It is a deep exhale as I step through the side door and drop my bags. Everything is familiar: the smell, clean and sweet; the creak of the stairs; the way I immediately begin opening the refridgerator and the cupboards, like my teenaged self looking for something to eat; the way my sister and I fall into the rhythm of setting and clearing the table; the dinner-table conversation. All of the things I fought hard in my twenties, I embrace now. This will always be home.

But home is also a log cabin on the other side of the country, blanketed in snow. Home is the woodstove softly ticking, it is the generator humming through the dark night, it is the complete silence that accompanies a 3 am trip to the outhouse. Each time we drive the long highway between Whitehorse and Dawson, I am awed by the vastness of the territory, the wildness of it; where the only thing moving is the wind through the trees, the only sound the beat of a raven's wings. It is something I treasure but will never possess. It is a darkly beautiful jewel. It is terrifying and comforting at once.

And as we begin this journey of uprootedness, of travel, of not-knowing, home is here, in this bed where I write, my two little boys sleeping spread-eagled, arms flung across one another. Home is any bed that holds the four of us, anywhere, in any country. The familiar sounds of our shared sleep, the particular scent of our skin. 

Home is any place in which we all lay down to sleep; home is any place we all wake up, together.

Leaving on a jet plane

I used to think that a true Yukoner had to "stay the winter". And I've done that. I've lost it at 40 below when the sun doesn't begin to rise til 10 a.m. Those days included lots of Bailey's, pot, and pierogies. T.V. marathons, dinner parties, wine, long bundled up walks on the frozen river. Going back to bed whenever I felt like it, buried under the covers with a space heater cranked up high.

Now that I've got kids, very young kids to be exact, those days feel housebound and crazy-making. Already I feel myself breaking. It's a battle to get Aedan outside for 15 minutes of running around the yard. I know that when he's a bit older, it may be different, but for now, it's really hard. And I am prone to seasonal depression; it's gotten much worse in the last two years. I could take pills. Or, I could leave.

That's what we're doing. We're headed out for almost 4 months, our longest stretch out of the territory yet. And I no longer feel like that makes me less of a Yukoner. Actually I'm over the whole "big tough Yukoner" thing. I want to be healthy and happy for my kids, for my husband, for myself. So we'll be spending 3 weeks in Ontario visiting with family, and then we'll be spending December and January in Costa Rica. We've rented a house there, and we're so excited to be trying out the snowbird lifestyle. It's something a lot of people around here do, and something that P especially wants to explore. 

I can't wait for fresh, ripe fruit juices running down my chin, seafood, ocean breezes, salt water swims, and walks on the beach. Aedan is in love with sea creatures, and for months now he's been talking about seeing dolphins and fish. I'm excited to explore tidal pools with him, play in the sand and the shallows with him. 

I'm going to try my best to update regularly during our travels, and I hope you'll enjoy following along with us on this new adventure!