- We adopted a child in Oregon who had a Costa Rican heritage that we wanted to be sure to celebrate.
- So when she was 4, we moved to Costa Rica. We fought and returned to the US after a few months.
- We learned ways to embrace her roots without having to leave the community we had built in the US.
In 2008, my husband, Jonathan, and I adopted our daughter from the foster care system in Oregon when she was 18 months old.
The Department of Human Services ordered months of preliminary classes, many of which focused on how best to celebrate an adopted child’s ethnicity. I took this directive very seriously.
Our child’s birth mother was born in Costa Rica and adopted by an American couple two decades before she became pregnant and relinquished the baby to the state.
I knew enough about the emotional scars that adopted children can deal with to believe that I should take drastic measures to try to ease any pain my daughter might experience.
When she was 4, I had an even bigger idea for how we could do this: We could move to Costa Rica. It would be an adventure, I thought, a perfect escape from the cold, rainy Northwest winters at our little cottage in Oregon!
Call it a breakthrough or call it a midlife crisis, but my husband took a six-month sabbatical, I quit my job, and we found a short-term tenant to take care of our cats until we found a new home to buy.
In December 2011, we moved from the US to Playas del Coco with two backpacks and a bag of children’s science books.
We spent weeks trying to embrace the local culture and fall in love with our new home
We spent a lot of time on the beaches of Costa Rica, but none of them felt right. Jonathan B. Smith
For the first few weeks in Costa Rica, we spent our days at the beach or taking the public bus all over the Pacific side of the country, looking for the perfect place to put down roots.
However, we were not prepared for Christmas. We had spent the holidays at my mother’s house in California, drinking eggnog and opening presents.
In an unfamiliar place, Jonathan and I wandered the aisles of the local supermarket looking for last-minute portable small gifts for our daughter.
We got a makeshift cardboard tree and tried to feel cheerful without our handmade stockings hanging over the fireplace and our 6-foot tree covered in memory-rich ornaments.
Our new apartment was still empty and felt bleak, so we went outside for some classic Christmas cheer. We found ourselves on the beach clutching mugs of shaved ice in sweaty palms as red-faced kids in taffeta suits and dresses sang and swayed to Let It Snow on the hot sand.
“I miss my friends,” our little girl whispered. “I miss our cats.”
I missed our pets and my friends terribly, but we had decided to surround her with the people, music and traditions of her birth mother’s country.
Instead of comforting her, I suggested we go out to dinner.
We tried to find our position in Playa Samara. Beth Harvey/Shutterstock
We sat down to plates of gallo pinto—Costa Rica’s ubiquitous rice and bean dish—and fried plantains in a pastel-painted room full of empty tables and a neon purple Christmas tree.
We hadn’t met any other families yet, so we went home alone, pointing out the holiday lights at our new neighbors’ houses and trying to feel festive.
For another seven weeks, we traveled the country by bus and occasionally in a rented Jeep. We spent most of our time in Playa Samara, where we enrolled our daughter in a bilingual kindergarten.
We wandered the beautiful beaches, kayaked the rivers, and introduced our child to the animals, birds, trees, and insects of her birth mother’s land. She met local children of all ages and merchants who pinched her cheeks and swiped bags of fried plantains.
However, our daughter was miserable. “I want to go home!” she said every day.
After 3 months in Costa Ricawe returned to the US
In early March, Jonathan returned to me, flushed and sweaty. “It’s been boiling since eight in the morning,” he said. “Makes me miss winter in Oregon.”
“I miss winter in Oregon,” I replied. “I miss the rain and the cold. I think I miss the mud too!”
We went down to the beach, our daughter riding on his shoulders, and crossed a small dilapidated bridge to a new restaurant we had heard about.
Outside, we stopped and stared. Oregon Ducks flags — the green and yellow emblems of our home college town — hung everywhere. The owner, we learned, had moved from our part of the world.
As our child gazed longingly at the flags over another bowl of gallo pinto, I stared out at the dark ocean. This seemed like a sign that Oregon was our perfect place, and my husband agreed.
By the middle of the month, we were back in the US. We accepted our change of heart with sadness, but our friends and neighbors welcomed us with joy.
Now that we were home, I studied what other adoptive parents did to honor their children’s culture—everything from special summer camps to weekly dinners, church services, and festivals. We started creating a community of kids who looked like our daughter and started taking Spanish lessons.
There were less extreme ways, I found, to celebrate our daughter’s heritage and fortify her against the inevitable grief that can come with adoption. We didn’t need to move 4,000 miles away from everything she wanted.
The next Christmas, Jonathan hung our stockings over the fireplace in what now seemed to me to be a charming cottage, overgrown with graceful firs and cedars.
We sewed mice with cats and put them in little socks. We put up our big tree and enthusiastically hung the ornaments we had swapped for years.
Next, I took my daughter into the kitchen, where I got out the steps and the cast iron pan. “Open this can of black beans,” I said. “We’re going to learn to make gallo pinto.”
