This is not about anyone or anything in particular, just about a way of life. Isn’t it true that at one point in life the past seems more attractive than the present? Does this mean you are old now? That you are not happy with your new life? Or that reminiscing is good because it makes you see all the wonderful things you have had in life? Whichever it is, this is the time to remember and I am determined to enjoy it. It’s been more than three years since my husband and I left our island home.
Years ago, when my father was living in Nicaragua, my sisters and I spent a year with him. There I met this very attractive young man, who was fond of saying that life in the Tropics was overrated! Everything was summed up with such is life in the tropics from then on. I don’t know if at the time I agreed because he was so attractive! The truth is it stuck with me. Then one day, I moved to Curaçao, a small island in the South Eastern Caribbean, an independent part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and that phrase seemed so appropriate. It serves to explain anything that happened from a power outage to high prices in the supermarket. It’s a magic sort of phrase that makes me feel better and makes my friends laugh.
Sitting on my comfortable loveseat, looking into a glorious view of Biscayne Bay, I go into remembrance mode. Twenty some years ago, I was a young and very enthusiastic wife and mother. Life had given me the chance of actually move to a place where the pace was slow and the rhythm was soft. Frankie, my husband, and I thought this could be the perfect place to bring up our children and start the life we always thought we deserved. What do you know in your thirties? It turned out that we didn’t know much, but somehow it had been enough.
Looking back, now that I am living away from the island, it was a good life, we just didn’t know it. Or, I didn’t know it. How did it start? The idea of moving. Yes, Frankie’s parents lived there. Their families had arrived on the island more than 300 years ago. Their ancestors left Spain during the Inquisition and never looked back. After spending time in Amsterdam, they arrived in Curaçao in 1659!
Some have stayed forever; others immigrated to different parts of the world. I had made friends during our holiday visits and Frankie was going to work with his father. All was planned, it would be easy; and we’d settle into a life that would be a combination of expatriate and local lifestyle. So we thought.
There was a catch, though, life away from your roots, was new to me. Living in the States did not seem to count as expatriate life to me, somehow. Anyway, I was soon to discover that the life of an expatriate is different from anything you have encountered in your home country. It can be exciting and exotic, primitive and sophisticated. It is definitely not the same to live in London, than to live in Saudi Arabia, Paris or Delhi, Rome or Curaçao! I am sure my friends back home would prefer to be in sophisticated city like London, but sometimes you do not have a choice. Curaçao is what I was offered and I have discovered that life in the tropics is something else. An experience I would not have missed for the world. I have learned and grown and found out things about myself that had surprised me!
