Vachon Imagined

Living in Costa Rica as an exchange student, I would awaken to birds every morning. Not the ones perched on a windowsill, thumping against the glass, or a rooster that couldn’t find the snooze button. These birds woke you by serenading you from inside your room—caged, yet still singing like clockwork.

My Costa Rican mother would sing back to them as though they shared a common language. It seemed strange to me. She would answer their songs with songs of her own, carrying on a conversation I could not hear. Yet beneath the oddity was a certain fragrance of connection. I could sense it, but I didn’t know how to trust it.

I arrived in Costa Rica carrying a nervous system trained for movement, for achievement, for vigilance. I woke up, brushed my teeth, did one hundred push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, and prayed. My life felt like a clock—a ticking time bomb of I must catch the worm before the worm catches me. Every morning was another race. Every day another opportunity to fall behind.

Like an engine trained to start before the race had even begun, my body operated in anticipation. I ran on a kind of invisible caffeine. I knew how to push. I knew how to endure. I knew how to accomplish. What I did not know was how to notice.

Meanwhile, the birds sang.

And my Costa Rican mother sang back.

She would ask me in the morning, ¿Cómo amaneció?—How did you sleep?

At the time, it felt like such a small question. Almost too small. I was concerned with bigger things: goals, performance, progress, becoming someone. But slowly, without my permission, Costa Rica began teaching me another language. Not Spanish. Something older than that.

The language of noticing.

The language of lingering.

The language of singing back.

The language of pura vida.

Years later, I understand that what unraveled in Costa Rica was not my discipline but my urgency. The tightly wound machinery of a nervous system that believed survival depended on staying one step ahead of itself. The constant bracing. The scanning. The readiness for a danger that was no longer there.

Little by little, the birds loosened something.

The question loosened something.

The tenderness loosened something.

I began to see that there are people who wake up and immediately begin chasing the day. And there are people who wake up and first listen for the birds.

People who notice.

People who ask how you slept and genuinely wait for the answer.

People who sing back.

Now, in the serenity of my body and the sanctity of my mind, I often return to those mornings. I think of the birds. I think of my Costa Rican mother. I think of the young exchange student who mistook urgency for purpose and vigilance for strength.

And I answer her at last.

I slept fine.

Thank you for asking.

Thank you for noticing.

Thank you for teaching me the kind of life that sings back.