We were clearly going to flunk Perfect Family if we stayed in our regular life. The five of us barely saw each other, but when we did I mostly harassed kids about screen time, while they bickered about nothing much and never hung up their backpacks. Believing Select Soccer was the pinnacle of human achievement, my son hadn’t read a book since I had no idea when. Extreme measures were indicated.
It never occurred to us when we decided to move to Central America that soccer would become a telling barometer, a canary in the coalmine of our family's health.
***
When our kids were 5, 9, and 12, my husband and I counted our pennies, quit our jobs, and jumped—right off the edges of our lives. We arrived in Costa Rica the day before school started, with no Spanish. I mean, of course we had some: Hannah, our eldest, and I had taken an intensive week of lessons, and all five of us logged time with Dora the Explorer in the weeks preceding departure.
Once we arrived, in picking up the language of our leafy new world, each of us led with what was most important to us. This meant that Harry was calling fütbol plays to his fourth-grade classmates before he could reliably communicate his name. I watched him on the school’s tiny pitch a few weeks in, half the kids in rainboots rather than a paycheck’s worth of cleats. I smiled. My boy looked…assimilated.
We’d been there a month when Harry got invited to try out for an organized team. He was thrilled and chatty: “I know I’m small, but I’m so fast I bet they’ll put me on defense, like at home.” We were a merry band, together that night at dinner. I told my story about how, in my attempt to replace Harry’s stinky foam mattress with a new one, I had inadvertently propositioned a teenager at the hardware store. My husband, Anthony, had a sidesplitter about trying to pay the electric bill, which apparently you did at the grocery store? Ho ho ho.
And then, somehow, our family collectively lost its shit.
I hadn’t been so naïve to think we’d escape it, but culture shock didn’t hit us the way I expected it to. Culture shock sounds so impressive, like an actual condition. We were just really cranky. We’d moved our bodies to an exciting and colorful new world, but our human faults and petty grievances had slipped down to Costa Rica with us. Far from becoming a better family, suddenly we were our absolute worst selves.
My worst self can be a tiny bit driven. Hell-bent on maximum language acquisition, I moved it into the haranguing slot formerly occupied by television. I instituted a rule that, every other night at dinner, we spoke only Spanish. Fun for everyone! The first night on our new program, I eked out a request. (I’d learned “butter” from Dora.)
“La mantequilla, por favor?”
Our youngest answered, “STOP IT, MOMMY! YOU KNOW YOU CAN REACH THE BUTTER.”
“Ivy, shut UP!” Harry’s worst self was often on my side. This would end.
Hannah, who hated noise, had been trying to hold it together. But she was done. She burst into tears and sprinted from the room.
Anthony stayed completely silent (worst self? check). While Harry and I went 10 rounds on Why You Need To Clear Your Dish, Anthony cleared around us and filled the sink.
What was happening to us?
It’s one thing to be messy and petty in the noisy, tacky USA. But here? In this peaceful, magical, National Geographic cover photo of a place, bickering took over. The contrast between the scenery and our behavior was almost more than I could take. I couldn’t remember us ever before being so consistently rotten to each other.
We were all horrible people for a few weeks, but Harry and I were the loudest about it.
Harry, the one I could depend on to say, “Thanks, Mom!” after every meal. Harry, who never grew tired of hugging and being hugged, who neither held himself apart nor raged against me, and whose bad moods came and went in the space it took to identify them. Harry turned on me. It was an ambush, from the corner where I’d least expected it, and I turned on him right back.
He chose the dumbest battles, and he fought them hard. Didn’t do his homework. Didn’t help with chores. Got defiant about whether he did or did not have the right to hit his sister when she clearly deserved it.
“You always think you’re so right, but you’re NOT,” he told me regularly. (Um, yes I am.)
I had been so excited for our new life, for the carefree joy I would fashion after so many years of striving. Look! I did it! From terrified unwed mother to tightly-wound overachiever, all the way to pura vida world adventurer. Look!
But instead of fun family hijinx, I was a shrew and my nine-year-old son was being a total asshole. At least soccer got him out of the house.
***
Shortly after Butter Night, Harry headed out the door to his tryout. Two hours later, he drooped back in. I sat beside him on the couch and started to get sympathetic, but he cut me off.
“I made the team, Mom,” he said. “I’m just not gonna do it.”
He talked about not wanting to fill his schedule and about not knowing the guys on the team—issues that back-home Harry would never have registered. Finally, he got past the red herrings.
“I was playing up front and a guy yelled for me to cross, but I didn’t know what he said.” Harry’s voice was tiny. Harry’s voice was never tiny. “I would’ve known ‘cross,’ but it was some kinda colloquialism.” (Harry knows the word colloquialism! Focus.)
“We lost possession.” His face was red. “And then he yelled at me.” The tears spilled over. “In front of everyone.”
Harry had played his first real soccer game at age six. When a high, fast, ball headed toward the goal, Anthony and I had flinched in unison as our son, who couldn’t yet tie his own cleats, acted on his preposterous, evolutionarily-devastating instinct to jump straight at the ball with his head. Since that moment, Harry on the soccer field had been high-fived and slapped on the back; he’d outrun boys six inches taller and been praised for his sportsmanship. But not once, until now, had Harry been yelled at. Not once had he felt ashamed.
Harry was off his game.
***
Culture shock didn’t come to us tidily labeled, and it wasn’t about missing a favorite brand of toothpaste. It just happened when we’d used all our energy getting through the day—and then still made mistakes at things we’d always been good at. Day in and day out, tasks we once did without thinking were suddenly hard. (We still hadn’t paid the electric bill.) No wonder we didn’t have the reserves left over to treat each other well.
Then came a trip that would put soccer field humiliations and my own various manias into perspective. All that newness had put our family in cardiac fibrillation; Nicaragua was the shock paddles that got us beating again in our old, familiar rhythm. We were still entirely imperfect, but at least I recognized us. Harry opted not to join the high-end team, but played for hours every week after school, teams fluid and shifting as kids arrived after chores and went home to dinner, and I thought: “Perfect.”
You can read more about Margot's journey in her book Paradise Imperfect
About the Author
