First of all, who are “we”?
My husband and I are “30-somethings” with three children, seven-years-old and younger, and one on the way. We’re pretty average folk, in that I stay at home with the kiddos and he wanders out everyday to work as an engineer. By night, he’s a neat-freak with some new project to focus on, like scanning every document we own onto discs. His latest passion is what he calls “streamlining.”
“We need to streamline, honey. Won’t it be great when we have nothing to move?” he says as he’s eyeing our only couch. He’s already suggested selling our bed and just sleeping on mattresses on the barren floor.
He claims this is in anticipation of our move to Panama. I think he secretly loves executing complete control over inanimate matter. Thank goodness he gave up on doing that with human beings, coincidentally around the same time he married me.
A wife and children can easily jerk anyone out of their fiendish grip on control.
Speaking of jerking people around, I used to work in state politics on the uber-conservative side of things in Texas. That’s where I met and married my husband and we started our lives together. Now, I dabble in writing here and there, and try to learn as much as I can about everything. I’m the dreamer in the relationship. He’s the practical one. It’s a good mix.
But one thing we have both agreed on is that from the start, we wanted true economic independence – meaning no more dependence on 9-5 jobs, and the kids waiting all day to see an hour of their father every evening. It felt wrong to our very core to live that way, and we often expressed our disgust at our own lifestyle and dreamed of a different life somehow, somewhere. Meanwhile, we saved every extra cent we could.
(Well, he did anyway.)
We also dabbled in rental property, but that wasn’t a perfect fit. Meanwhile, I noticed something about my life that bothered me. I didn’t know my neighbors, and they were gone all day anyway. I had to work hard to set up playdates, and people just didn’t get together and socialize as much as I wanted to. It really hit me hard how scattered both our families were: his on the East coast, and mine all over the West coast.
It’s funny how it doesn’t smack you in the face just how important connections, community, and family are until you have children … and by that time, you’re chest-deep in a mortgage with a “good job” you can’t lose.
Meaning, you’re stuck.
Having visited Europe and Latin American, I knew we were missing some key ingredients to our lives. Yes, we had money and opportunity (to some degree) and, yes, that’s a good thing. But what we didn’t seem to be experiencing was a sense of culture and connection to our homeland or to our community. We were living in a rat race we never knowingly signed up for and we desperately wanted to change that.
But how?
Coming soon, Why We’re Escaping, Part II
Until next time,
Mels
