As parents, it is satisfying to see our children transform into emotionally independent and autonomous young men. We have always encouraged our four boys to go far and wide. Each flew the coop with gusto and determination, taking initial flight toward their new homes, armed with the knowledge that we would be there for them, when they would be ready to return for an occasional visit to the family nest. Of course, in our case, they readily understand that the family nest is mobile and that rather than provide them with the continuity of their childhood home/nest, we would endeavor to meet with them along the way on our green global trek.
Our offspring have already shown their own proclivity for new environments and embracing change, both in geography and lifestyles. Josh (24), the oldest, left Chicago for Boulder, CO, a
nd a year ago relocated to San Francisco. Ezra (22) moved to the city of Chicago and after a year moved to Kansas, Michigan, California and now Portland, Oregon. Oren (21) also moved to the city of Chicago for a year, then took the initiative to relocate to the West Coast. He settled on Santa Cruz, CA. Adam (19) selected Austin, TX as his home for now. Our experience to date is that the first year “away from home” yields extraordinary growth and allows for fuller personas to emerge. In at least two cases of our four sons, there were lots of family opinions as to their readiness to fly the coop, concern about our encouraging them to do this too soon and fretting about their maturity levels. Our feeling was, what better way to mature, than to fly solo and experience adult life.
While all of the boys have previously visited Nicaragua over the past 3 years, we appear to be entering a phase which will bring hopefully all four to visit in the near future.
The first of our “muchachos”, Oren, arrived for a visit over Thanksgiving break.
While sitting on a panga motorboat on the Pacific ocean, navigating our way through huge rocks covered in pelicans, the spray of the ocean hitting our faces, Oren summarizes his visit in Nicaragua: “Everything is an adventure here. “ After a year solo in Northern Cal, we can see the evidence of his year of grow. How sweet it is!….
Rather than our setting the tone for this trip he himself has “driven the agenda” by wanting to see our new reality, meet our friends and neighbors, experience our weekend escapes to the beach, discuss the bamboo business and broaden his palate by embracing what new foods he encounters –something he might not have done before.
One of our original ideas for our investment in Nicaragua was for our boys to be exposed to a new country and culture and for them to use our place as a springboard for travel. This vision has already been realized many times over. All of our boys have been here at least once, with this being Oren’s second visit. His first was three years ago when he was 18 and our home was not yet ready to stay in.
Oren’s top 10 best moments from this trip:
1) Driving in the jungle, in the back of the open truck with his dogs, avoiding asteroid fields of pot-holes
2) Seeing the house and how we (but primarily how the dogs) are enjoying life in Granada
3) Jumping and swimming off
the boat in middle of the wide ocean
4) Policemen stopping our car on the Pan American highway to sell raffle tickets – Grand Prize: a 100 lbs pig
5) Shots of Tequila at a Granada sports bar for Thanksgiving football
6) Going swimming in lake Cocibolca in Granada with the dogs
7) Pure Pong a creative 3 dimensional “play off the
walls” ping pong, across the road.
8) New restaurants on the main street, that didn’t exist 3 years ago
9) Going to
our beach property at Ostional and discovering it’s “ way better than expected”
10) Body surfing in the Pacific and eating the best fresh tacos ever.
I guess that explains the recent lack of posts on the blog…?
Looks like a great time! Do you treat all your visitors like this? Where do you sign up? ;0)
Lovely
Yes, we DO treat all our visitors like that. Boyd, get your ticket already!