by Michael Cook

Created on: August 05, 2009   Last Updated: August 06, 2009

When I first arrived on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica eleven years ago this coming October, I had no idea I would eventually come to view this place more like home than I now do the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and the seacoast of New Hampshire.

On a recent three month visit back to Newburyport in April, a visit I thought would be for six months so I could work in the restaurant business to replenish the liquid savings I rely on, to spend the other six or so months of the year here, I found myself feeling so out of place that I very quickly decided to throw caution to the wind and come home.

On the plane, I finally figured out what it was that made me so uncomfortable. It was the rampant materialism that seemed to permeate almost everything and everyone, and the fact that any true sense of community was largely an illusion as I realized the friends I was renting space from did not know their neighbors and vice versa.

What was even more disturbing, at least to me, was that they had neither the time nor the interest in getting to know them.

One of the beauiful things about Costa Rica, especially choosing as an ex-pat to live among Costa Ricans as opposed to inside an upscale, gated, condominium or resort community that caters to foreigners more interested in a return on their real estate investment than in the local culture and customs, is you get to see what a rich life and a sense of neighborhood are really all about.

Now, by Americans' materialistic standards most of my neighbors would no doubt be considered poor. But, in reality, they are anything but poor.

The intergenerational connectedness of families and neighborhoods here, ironically, reminds me of what I experienced as a kid on Seabrook Beach where my grandparents' beach house was on the next corner, and the neighborhood was populated by families who'd summered together for, literally, generations.

Sadly, as America has become a more transient society, and the demands of living in a corporate culture have resulted in families being forced to move when ordered in ways not so dissimilar from those of the military, much of that intergenerational connectedness and sense of being part of a true neighborhood have been lost.

That loss, I believe, comes at a great cost to everyone, but especially to children; who often only know their grandparents as people they talk to on the telephone once a week and visit a few times a year, and neighborhood kids as people who won't live next door too long

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