Immigrants
A morning drive on a barely manageable, but “newly fixed,” dirt road. Nature takes over anything man made here. The multi-textured and colored jungle lines one side. Cow pastures open into a vista of the pacific ocean on the other. Panama, somewhere in the distance. The car, which has a nearly irreversible amount of dust caked on it, makes its way down the road following two green parrots above. Monkeys howl in the distance. The bridges don’t look far from collapse. Safer to do a river crossing the old fashion way. Maybe the car will get a little clean in the act. Nothing left behind but a trail of dust. And my surfboards. Reason to come back.
We arrive at the airport on the coast which, if you didn’t know it, could be mistaken for a doctor's office with a gift shop. A propeller airplane arrives. That’s my plane. The feeling is surreal for me, movie-like. This place turned me into a man in a year. The first chapter of many, but for now this one is complete.
Time to bid farewell to my beloved. Although, this is just for the romantic, movie-like, effect because the real goodbye was the evening before. In which, we walked to a secluded beach, chanted by a fire, and skinny dipped in the warm moonlit ocean. Pure magic.
I won’t see her for some months. The feeling is bittersweet. Bitter because that moment of looking in her teary eyes, feeling the immensity of love from and for another human being, couldn’t last forever. Sweet because I know the growth we have apart is creating the space for a deeper evolution of our love.
We seem to like this airport hello and goodbye thing, though. I guess we both have a romantic touch that naturally creates such circumstances. It’s fun to enjoy the drama of life. To really live in the role and feel it, but also know that we’re something beyond the role.
Anyway, art does a good job of depicting such departures but when it comes to the real thing, there’s no comparison. You know what I’m talking about. Time stands still and that’s all there is; the love you’re experiencing in that moment. How could it be possible to feel this good? Your heart pops open and for that moment you are completely free. Other than to procreate, I believe this to be the core reason we desire relationships. To experience and be reflected such love. Why else?
But, I digress. I board my plane barefoot. My feet want to enjoy their last hours of freedom before the shoes come back to suffocate them after a year. How symbolic of modern-day society. That’s something I love about this place, you don’t need much. Not even clothes and shoes.
I guess I could be that guy that walks around everywhere barefoot, even in big cities. But, I decided I don’t want to be that guy. I thought about it, though. No joke, a serious inquiry, but I decided that would be more of a pride thing and therefore useless. Sandals aren’t too bad. Welcome to Jaden’s mind.
My beloved blows me kisses from my window seat on the plane that would make a small person feel big. It hits me, everything I’ve received from this country over the past year. The blissful times, the challenging times, the really challenging times, the ups, the downs, all flash in my mind. I shed some tears in gratitude as we takeoff towards the capital. Something tells me that this is home. I already miss it and haven’t left. I never really have had this feeling with any place before. I don’t know how or why I ended up here, but I feel committed to understanding. And I know that requires me to walk, allowing the answers to be revealed to me as I carry on.
I’m going to visit my family and friends in the U.S. I have been refraining from using the phrase “I’m going back,” however, because it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like I’m going back. It feels like I’m going. I’m visiting a place that will always have a homey vibe, but I know where my home is.
Immigrating to Costa Rica may be a newly minted representation of it, but it’s subtler than that. Something inside has shifted. Something ephemeral touched. Foundations built and doors opened. Actual and metaphorical.
I’m an immigrant. Not of a place in the world, but of the Heart. On a pilgrimage home to find where I have always belonged. Where the magic of life is experienced from moment to moment. With a trustful surrender and will, I open myself to what is here.
I’m giving it all I got.
I’m grateful.
That’s an understatement, but I must end here. The flight attendant just called for last boarding to what they call the “Land of the Free.”