Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?
For those of you who have song lyrics running through your head right now, I'm right there with you.
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I leave there may be trouble
But if I stay it might be double
Well, sitting here 1 month and 4 days after the day when we left the Hogar with our 5 newest family additions in tow, headed to our home here in Costa Rica, those song lyrics are pretty fitting.
Yesterday we sat at the Costa Rican passport office for just under 4 hours taking care of applying for our kids' passports and we are scheduled to pick them up on Monday. Next comes the appointment at the US Embassy for our visas, and then the Holleran family can pack it up and move it out to "Estados Unidas."
I'm ready to leave. Ready to see my newest grandbaby and ready to drive myself to the store without hailing and waiting for an Uber to arrive. Ready to love on my sons that are back at home, and ready to sit under the roof of my church on Sunday morning, singing and praising the God that brought us here. Ready to order food at a restaurant and not end up with a tray full of things I didn't realize I had ordered. (Seems my Spanish has its failings) Ready, oh so very ready, to flush toilet paper down the toilet and not have a stinky trash can full of used TP. (welcome to plumbing in many other parts of the world, and yes, I am thankful that at least we aren't using squatty potties) I'm ready for our ticos to experience life in an English speaking community because no matter how many times I encourage using the English vocabulary that we've been working on, they just say they'll do it when they get to the US. There are some things I can try and convey, and other things I guess they will just have to learn for themselves.
But....I'm also sad to say goodbye to their unique culture. We had the chance to celebrate Independence Day while here, and all of the parades and lanterns and foods. I can try and recreate that back home, but it won't be the same. While it's been really tough to watch our kids jabber away at social workers and museum workers and the Costa Ricans here where we are staying, because it reminds me just how slow and simple our conversations are in our Spanglish mash up, I know that my kids get a certain level of comfort finding someone who speaks their native tongue and that just won't be easy to find at home. I look ahead to struggles and challenges that await us with school and everyday life, I think about how drastic changes in these kids' lives can bring about drastic behaviors, and I start to think, "Should we really pack it up and leave? Maybe we could figure out a way to bring our lives here and they could attend a local school and Mike could switch jobs and we could have our van shipped and we could make this work..." But truth is, we're all headed to the US one way or another. Challenges will have to be faced head on, adjustments made, struggles endured, behavior corrected. We just can't stay here in limbo, neither home in the US and not really home in Costa Rica.
Today watched a video that was made of our family the very first day we met our kids. There was the initial meeting, the tour of the Hogar, our first lunch together, and finally a quick interview with us at the end before the kids headed back. I can remember sitting at that lunch table, with kids slurping down packets of mayonaise and ketchup, with little man G trying to stand in his chair and trying to climb the fence, with the 4 girls wandering away from the table so that I really didn't eat and thinking "we've lost our minds, this is crazy, we will never keep them together and we'll exhaust ourselves trying." I woke up that next morning with my stomach in knots thinking about the day ahead when there was no other adults but Mike and me to corral our crew. But now, a little over a month later, I packed up 6 kids, walked them through town, down a busy street to watch a parade and I didn't even have to keep repeating "juntos" or "together" every five seconds. We've just grown and adjusted and learned to live the way we will when we return to the US. I think it will be more difficult than the days we've had here, but maybe these days are about God granting us the courage to keep on living out the rest of what He's got planned.
So, we can't stay, we have to go. Maybe not right now, but this time next week, I could be typing from my house, dogs at my feet, and 5 little kids in the 5 little beds that have been made and waiting for them for months. It seems so far away, but we'll be saying goodbye to Costa Rica before we know it.
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I leave there may be trouble
But if I stay it might be double
Well, sitting here 1 month and 4 days after the day when we left the Hogar with our 5 newest family additions in tow, headed to our home here in Costa Rica, those song lyrics are pretty fitting.
Yesterday we sat at the Costa Rican passport office for just under 4 hours taking care of applying for our kids' passports and we are scheduled to pick them up on Monday. Next comes the appointment at the US Embassy for our visas, and then the Holleran family can pack it up and move it out to "Estados Unidas."
I'm ready to leave. Ready to see my newest grandbaby and ready to drive myself to the store without hailing and waiting for an Uber to arrive. Ready to love on my sons that are back at home, and ready to sit under the roof of my church on Sunday morning, singing and praising the God that brought us here. Ready to order food at a restaurant and not end up with a tray full of things I didn't realize I had ordered. (Seems my Spanish has its failings) Ready, oh so very ready, to flush toilet paper down the toilet and not have a stinky trash can full of used TP. (welcome to plumbing in many other parts of the world, and yes, I am thankful that at least we aren't using squatty potties) I'm ready for our ticos to experience life in an English speaking community because no matter how many times I encourage using the English vocabulary that we've been working on, they just say they'll do it when they get to the US. There are some things I can try and convey, and other things I guess they will just have to learn for themselves.
But....I'm also sad to say goodbye to their unique culture. We had the chance to celebrate Independence Day while here, and all of the parades and lanterns and foods. I can try and recreate that back home, but it won't be the same. While it's been really tough to watch our kids jabber away at social workers and museum workers and the Costa Ricans here where we are staying, because it reminds me just how slow and simple our conversations are in our Spanglish mash up, I know that my kids get a certain level of comfort finding someone who speaks their native tongue and that just won't be easy to find at home. I look ahead to struggles and challenges that await us with school and everyday life, I think about how drastic changes in these kids' lives can bring about drastic behaviors, and I start to think, "Should we really pack it up and leave? Maybe we could figure out a way to bring our lives here and they could attend a local school and Mike could switch jobs and we could have our van shipped and we could make this work..." But truth is, we're all headed to the US one way or another. Challenges will have to be faced head on, adjustments made, struggles endured, behavior corrected. We just can't stay here in limbo, neither home in the US and not really home in Costa Rica.
Today watched a video that was made of our family the very first day we met our kids. There was the initial meeting, the tour of the Hogar, our first lunch together, and finally a quick interview with us at the end before the kids headed back. I can remember sitting at that lunch table, with kids slurping down packets of mayonaise and ketchup, with little man G trying to stand in his chair and trying to climb the fence, with the 4 girls wandering away from the table so that I really didn't eat and thinking "we've lost our minds, this is crazy, we will never keep them together and we'll exhaust ourselves trying." I woke up that next morning with my stomach in knots thinking about the day ahead when there was no other adults but Mike and me to corral our crew. But now, a little over a month later, I packed up 6 kids, walked them through town, down a busy street to watch a parade and I didn't even have to keep repeating "juntos" or "together" every five seconds. We've just grown and adjusted and learned to live the way we will when we return to the US. I think it will be more difficult than the days we've had here, but maybe these days are about God granting us the courage to keep on living out the rest of what He's got planned.
So, we can't stay, we have to go. Maybe not right now, but this time next week, I could be typing from my house, dogs at my feet, and 5 little kids in the 5 little beds that have been made and waiting for them for months. It seems so far away, but we'll be saying goodbye to Costa Rica before we know it.
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