Hi Reader,

Although most people I meet LOVE Costa Rica - its beaches, jungles and Pura Vida people - it's a complicated place for me.... when I was eleven years old my father decided to move here, leaving me and the rest of his life behind in Canada.

I kinda hated him for it, and hated the country too.

A few years passed with long hand-written letters and the very occasional phone call until I was fourteen and came for my first visit. We toured the beautiful beaches, watched Arenal Volcano erupt, and enjoyed the historic theatre in downtown San Jose. I found the Spanish enchanting, impressed with my father's new fluency.

The love started to grow and a part of me understood what had captured his heart. Over my teenage years I visited as often as possible, often bringing along friends and quickly finding my own comfort in the language and rhythm on the country.

Still, it was always difficult. I would arrive wanting... wanting the father I didn't get, the family that fell apart (long before his emigration), and a place that felt like home.

And now, as an adult in her forties, it's still hard, and sometimes that still surprises me.

This trip has brought up all the feelings of all the trips before... the wonderings of where I belong, of which relationships matter. My Tico family includes two-step brothers I have watched grow from toddlers into men, and in our home here Spanish is the common language. Even in speaking to my own children over the last few weeks, Spanish words and phrases get mixed in, and I don't even notice.

As I write this, I'm sitting by one of my favourite pools, a little tucked away oasis belonging to one of my oldest girlfriends. Twenty-five years we've known each other. We were ridiculous in our youth together, and now our teenaged children are only a few months apart.

Some folks think I'm a local, as my Spanish is the Spanish learned amongst friends, my pronunciation on point. I've often been called a "Gringa-Tica", and I only correct the "gringa" identifier, clarifying that I'm Canadian, not America.

Yet each time I come here, part of me says it will be my last. Part of me still wants to push against this place, this second home of mine, and claim that it is not me, I am not it. I refused a Quinceañera when I turned 15, and I would refuse it again.

And yet I feel powerful here too, strong, determined, inspired. I believe in myself deeply as soon as the plane touches down. But I've realized, it's not what my father has built here that buoys me. Rather, it is what I have built here for myself, in spite of the grief of losing the close relationship with my father that we once shared during our every other weekend visit schedule of my earliest years.

Despite the heartache, I made it work here and now I show my children with pride my ability to navigate the crazy driving, introduce them to these lifelong friends, instruct them in how to be safe in the big waves, and encourage them to pick up the language bit by bit so they can converse with their tios and abuelita.

Over 30+ years this country has become my second home, complete with a complicated father-daughter relationship. But I understand now that happens all over the world, and I'm not the only woman wishing her father had paid her more attention, had chosen her over everything else.

In these last few days here, I will continue to take care of myself. I will write (thanks for reading!), and do yoga and watch sunsets and eat casados con pescado. I will bring love and joy to our last family dinner. And on Wednesday, I will hug my father goodbye at the airport, as I have so many times. Since 2018 he has been "summering" in Ontario so it won't be so long til I see him again.

Sometimes we have to accept that our people won't be everything we want them to be, even when it breaks our heart. The amazing thing is we have the ability to mend it ourselves, enough, at least, to find our way home.

Pura vida,

Parrish

​

​

​

​

​

​