I'm American. I grew up here and had a wonderful childhood. I lived in an old house in the suburbs, feeling safe and happy. I had a great experience in both private and public school. I went on to graduate from a prestigious four-year university in my home state. During this time, I met the man I would eventually marry. He is a dual citizen of the United States and Bermuda, the tiny island where he was born and raised. After our wedding and honeymoon, we moved to Bermuda to begin our life together. Ten years and two babies later, we finally decided to move to the U.S. where my family lived - something I always dreamed of.
And now, after living in the States for three-and-a-half years, we've decided to move back to Bermuda. My husband's business is there, as well as his family business. This was the main impetus for our decision to move back. But it's about more than just the businesses.
An international move is no joke. It's a lot of work and no small task to physically relocate a home and family across the ocean. And here we are doing it twice in less than four years.
Trust me when I say this was not a decision taken lightly.
First of all, leaving my family is killing me. I absolutely love living close to my parents and sisters. When we leave the country, we are not doing it to leave them. I wish I could take them all with me. I love having my niece text me to ask if she can stop by for a quick visit because she's near my neighborhood. I love being able to call my mom at the last-minute to see if she'd like to come with me to the fabric store. I love that my boys have enjoyed countless hours with their grandparents because of their proximity to us. I love the sweet relationship that has bloomed between my brother-in-law and my youngest son. All these things along with some wonderful new friends have made our time here more than worth it.
But there are a lot of things the U.S. offers that I thought I wanted but eventually realized I actually don't. It has taken me these last three years to admit it. Many of the superficial things that had made America so desirable were suddenly not that important to me anymore. When we first arrived here, I was adamant that we were done with that tiny island. We were American and we would be spending the rest of our lives in America. We would raise our kids in America. We would do all of the American things. We would take advantage of shopping and restaurants and movie theaters and road trips and amusement parks and large spaces and cheap prices. And we did, for a while. We even bought a dream house - 4,200 square feet for our family of four - in an idyllic neighborhood in the same city where I came from. It really was like a dream! Coming from our tiny apartment in tiny Bermuda, we felt like we had accomplished exactly what we had always wanted.
And yet, it wasn't perfect like we had imagined. While we loved the fact that we had huge, separate spaces for all the various aspects of our family life - a school room, a play room, a sewing room, separate bedrooms for the kids, a guest room, a work-out room, lots of storage, etc. - we started to see the disadvantages. We didn't like how physically spread apart our family was in the huge space. While our son was down in the basement play room, my husband was in the kitchen on the first floor, my toddler napped in his second floor bedroom, and I worked in the school room on the third floor. We often fondly remembered the closeness we shared in our small Bermuda apartment; we were never far from one another. Now, in our huge house, we could hardly even find each other.
A large house also subliminally causes you to want more things. So many rooms to fill, and not enough stuff. I don't like empty rooms, so I constantly focused on filling them with furniture, and not just any furniture - with the right furniture. I kept thinking I'd be satisfied, but then another home catalog would show up in the mail and I'd realize I needed another lamp or chair or vase or whatever. I found myself mentally decorating various rooms in my house while lying in bed at night, trying to fall asleep. It was ridiculous.
Another seemingly positive aspect of living in the United States is the convenience of everything. Restaurants are open 24 hours. Amazon delivers orders to my door within two days, sometimes less. If I need something - anything - I can probably find it within a 10 mile radius of my house.
Unfortunately this causes a major problem - coming to expect immediate gratification. Suddenly I don't appreciate my things as much because I can get them almost instantly. When we lived in Bermuda, it took weeks, sometimes months, to receive something I had bought online or had ordered through a local shop. When you're forced to wait for things, you tend to think them through a little more carefully: Do I really need this? Do I want this thing so badly that I'm happy to wait a month or more to enjoy it? Will I even remember I wanted it by the time it arrives on the island?
There are also the technological conveniences we have in the U.S. that we do not have in Bermuda. My kids have become accustomed to our "On Demand" television. No matter what they want to see, they can watch it instantly. TV itself isn't enough. Instead, the kids sit down and ask for specific episodes of a show (which are always available, if you have subscribed to a certain tier of television programming). If, somehow, that specific show is unavailable, they must "settle" on one of the other hundreds - maybe even thousands - of options.
Now, I realize that we were not forced to take part in any of the luxuries I just described. We could easily have bought a small house and not subscribe to cable TV. But that's part of the problem: when all that is available to you, it's really, really hard to say 'no' to it, especially when it's relatively inexpensive and easy to get. Since a lot of these things are simply not available on an island 700 miles out from the nearest mainland, it's a lot easier to do without. You just have to.
For us, Bermuda equals simplification. We will be downsizing to a house less than half the size of our current American home. We will be paring down our material possessions. I'm excited about that. But what I'm really excited about is what we're trading them for.
We're trading square-footage for palm trees and pink sand and mild weather and a simpler lifestyle in which grocery stores don't carry 10 different brands of every item, where our church is 5 minutes from our house, where the beaches are beautiful and free and also 5 minutes from home, where everyone lives within a compact 22 square miles in the middle of the warm, turquoise ocean. We're trading endless television channels for playing outside all year 'round.
We are trading quantity for quality.
I'll always be American and I'll always love America. In fact, I have found William Shenstone's famous words to ring true: "The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one." And yet I also see the value in exploring a different place and living a different lifestyle. I see the value in living in a community made up of many different nationalities. I see the value in a more laid-back, diverse, yet simple way of life.
So, we bid a fond farewell to all those we love here in the States. We plan to visit as often as we can, and we hope you will do the same!
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