Leaving - Part Two

We were hired. It sounds crazy, right? But other than meeting with a board member, a distinguished, well respected member of an international conservation organization, who happened to be in Washington DC shortly after receiving the phone message, we spoke to several people over the phone, gave some references and were offered and then accepted the jobs.

Peter would be the park manager and I would be marketing and involved with the education center.

We began to say good bye to friends and family, pack and planned to sell our home.

I would say it was bittersweet but it wasn’t. The move was perfect in so many ways. How many people get to follow their passions and live their dream? Not many.

OK, so it wasn’t my dream, but it seemed ideal for all of us.

And in many ways, this proved true.

But considering our children would be 8 and 3 when we moved, I had no qualms about uprooting them. I had no fears about bringing them into a foreign country. Afterall, my parents uprooted our family and emigrated to the United States from the Philippines. And unlike my parents, who left three toddlers in the care of their parents while they set up a home and became acquainted with their jobs in the hospital, our children would be coming with us.

I remember my parents leaving us, even though I was the same age as my son. At the time, my sister was only a year old, I was three, and my brother was four. Apparently, our parents were only supposed to leave us for two months, in which time, my mom’s parents would bring us to the USA. But my mom’s father didn’t want us to go. He thought we’d be raised disregarding our culture. He felt we’d become “wild” as American kids.

So, when he was supposed to bring us to New Jersey, instead, he stalled. He resisted and only after nearly a year of holding out, my mother’s threat to board a plane and come for us was the impetus my grandfather needed to finally concede.