Yeah, yeah. I know. It's about time. Well, here it is, a year late.
***
Once upon
a time, we realized that something my mother-in-law said decades ago was coming
true for us.
Let me
back up. (Insert record scratch *freeze-frame, back-up* sound effect here)
I LOVED
being a mom. Still do. Especially, well, maybe not especially, but most
chaotically, when the kids were little. This period, in a mother’s warped sense
of time, goes from pregnancy until they moved out. It's been my primary
existence, superseding even that of wife. No offense to Dave, of course. I’ve
love him with all my heart. I couldn’t possibly love him more. I’ve loved him
long before I started loving our kids. I still love him with the entirety of my
being. And yet, since they each chose us and decided to change our future by
joining it, my heart has fully encompassed that love, too.
It's the Grinch Effect. #iykyk
Fast
forward about 10 years to Thanksgiving. We were at my in-laws’ house. It
was tradition. She asked for Thanksgiving, and we could spend Christmas with
“Us”, or “Them”. So, it was a BIG to-do. Everyone came in. Flew or drove from
wherever they were. The numbers grew as our families did. Food. So much food.
Children running amuck. And, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to “kick off the
holiday season.”
One
Thanksgiving, in a moment of reflection during an otherwise immemorable
conversation, she mentioned that her family was changing. She was no longer at
the center of her children's circle of influence. They had their own families,
and those families came with other families, and there were now others
competing for her children's time. She was seeing us less and less and, while
she understood what was happening, it made her sad. She was thinking forward to
a time when she and dad would be back to just “Us”.
That’s
what happens to all parents when their littles become bigs.
The
circle of life of a family, Venn Diagram-style (I am a teacher, after all),
goes something like this.
We are distinct individuals that show ourselves to each other with
unabashed pride. We are unedited. We are young individuals. Free of responsibility and devoted
to one another.
We are hopelessly in
love and decide that nothing in life can make us happier than each other.Me and
Him become hardly recognizable. I know that’s bad grammar,
but I’m sticking with my diagram labels.
We grow,
change, become, as one unit. Differences become commonalities. We morph. While
we still maintain some sense of our individuality - hobbies, tempers, levels of
sarcasm - Me and Him are now just Us. We make decisions based on what matters
to Us. Our circle of influence merges into the center of that new, overlapped
entity.
At some
point we decide, what? That Us/We aren’t enough? That We need something? That
We need someone else to love? Or maybe it is something else. The proverbial
clock setting a timer on our biology. Systems kicking into gear that we don’t
know are there. New desires rearing their heads. Who knows?
But,
whatever happens, Me and Him come back, not quite the same as we once were, not
the way we want to be, necessarily. Not really Us, anymore, but not really Me and
Him, either. And squished between, a new element is added. Suddenly things
don’t align as well. Or maybe they do. Either way, little beings come into our
life bringing joy and pain and chaos and questions and triumphs and lessons and
shortcomings and arguments and love.
Over
time, sometimes a short time, sometimes a long time, sometimes a timeline
that waxes and wanes, we form into a new, different, bigger unit. We are
young marrieds, full of responsibility, devoted to each other and to these little
creatures.
And then
they grow up. And the circle of influence changes again.
We hope
for this. A differently shaped Us with little edges of...well, us. A big,
amalgamated, rainbow overlap of Us. Of course, it's not realistic. But it's my
blog.
But we
ended up with this. Or, at least, it feels like that. I'm sure it was somewhere
in the middle.
They have their own
circles that sometimes line up with ours but rarely overlap each
other’s and even more rarely still all overlap at once.
Those
little creatures who were the center of your circle become distinct individuals
who are young individuals, free of responsibility, developing around their own center.
They find
their someone and become devoted to one another. They are hopelessly in
love and decide that nothing in life can make them happier than each other.
This
dynamic is the ideal. It’s what I hope we gave our parents, but probably
didn’t, and what we hope our children give us, but probably won’t.
But,
somehow, in different ways, small or large, waxing and waning over time, we
learn to share the most precious element of ourselves. The product of Us. The
loves of our lives.
And we
get this. And we live for the overlaps.
And it’s hard.And don't even get me started on this.
And even
though we know what’s happening, it makes us sad.
The
overlaps become smaller as more circles are added to the mix. It’s
harder to find time. Time is spent in other ways.
And we
realize that Mom was right.
Our kids’
circles of influence were shifting. We realized that our kids were going to
live their lives wherever and however and with whomever they wanted, and we
would likely have little influence in those decisions. And that was okay. That
was a good thing. It meant we’d done our job as parents. We’d raised
independently-thinking, self-sufficient, intelligent, capable, and lovely
people who are entitled to have their own circle, separate from but
intrinsically intertwined with ours, even if from a distance.
So, our
circle shifted, too. It was time to start making decisions based on what
matters to Us. Again. We’d come full circle (no pun intended, you know,
with the Venns and whatnot), just like our parents had, and their parents
before them, and, someday, our kids.
So, we
began to ask ourselves and each other, “What did ‘We’ want to do, and where did
‘We’ want to do it?”
We were
getting closer to retirement. Dave was 9-ish years away. Did we want to retire
where in Utah? In the snow? Nope.
But our
kids are in Utah! We can’t leave our kids!
But our
kids are independent, and living their own lives, with their own circles of
influence, and they’re going to go where they want or need to be, likely
without Us factoring into that decision.
It was
time to start making decisions based on what matters to Us. We had to keep
reminding ourselves of this whenever the ‘But our kids are in Utah’ factor
kept, well, factoring in.
Okay. Now
let me go back to where the story started. (Insert record scratch
*freeze-frame, back-up* sound effect here.) I guess, in that way, this post is
like a recipe blog.
I had felt pulled to Texas for years. I have no idea why. Some
cosmic, or psychic, or illusionary thing was directing my path to Texas. It was
where I needed to be. Maybe not end up, but be. Who knew? I certainly didn’t.
How was I expected to think about where I would be for 9-ish years, let alone
forever?
At that point in my life, I was making decisions for the short
term. But that’s another post.
Dave’s job is one that requires him to travel. He is the Western
Region Director for a wholesale tire distributor called “Friend Tire”. He
covers a four-state area, including Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
That’s convenient.
Over the past several years, before he moved into the Director
position and when he was the manager of the Salt Lake location, he had been
offered the Belton, TX, “branch” two or three different times, along with
several other locations – Shreveport, LA, Davenport, FL, Oklahoma City, OK, but
we’d turned them down for numerous and differing reasons. Turning down Belton
seemed like the wrong decision to us every time, but circumstances kept us
where we were. The kids were still at home, and we couldn’t rip them from their
lives. Our parents were in Utah and aging, and we wanted to be near them. The
kids moved out, and we couldn’t abandon them. As I said, circumstances kept us
where we were.
And then the circles started to shift.
Once we decided we were going to move out of Utah, which was no
small feat in and of itself due to aforementioned factors, I tagged along with
him on his travels. But it snowed in every location except Texas, and that was
our main driving factor. So, there we were. We were moving to Texas.
The first step was to sell our house in Herriman. I hadn’t ever
developed a tie to that house. It was a great house – don’t get me wrong – that
we had literally built from the walls in. What could have our own touch, did.
And it had served us well for the reasons we’d chosen it (I should say “he’d
chosen it”, as I was in no place to make decisions of any kind) – good schools,
safe neighborhood, similar style to what we’d had in Colorado, ‘diamond in the
rough’, blah, blah, blah. I’m sure there were other reasons, but I wasn’t in
any place to do listening of any kind, either.
We used the same realtor, and now a friend, who had helped us buy
the house in the first place. It was the peak of a crazy sellers-market in
2021. You can read about it if you weren’t around or involved in it at the
time. The offer we took came in on the second day it was listed for a
ridiculous amount over asking and a very nice profit, which put a dent in the
retirement we lost in Colorado.
30 days later, we were in a one-year rental, a duplex, which was
centrally located, close to the kids, a perfect floorplan for my now
work-from-home existence, and door-dashable (or so we thought). That will
definitely have to be another post because that year was as good as fiction. I
literally could not make up the things we experienced there.
The move itself was cleansing and cathartic. As I’d said, I hadn’t
ever developed a tie to that house. So, leaving it felt like the closing of a
dark chapter. Finally.
I took that 30 days to go through everything, and I mean
everything in our basement, which frankly looked like our prior moving truck
had just opened up the window and dumped everything in years before. I created
zones…
- Trash
- Giveaways
- Sell
- Furniture
- Off-season
clothes
- Memorabilia,
including scrapbooks, pictures, baby clothes, my high school science
folder (I’m sentimental that way), which took up a good half
- Books, which
took up a good third of the other half (I know. I'm obsessed. Don't
judge.)
…boxed and labeled what was coming with us…and called a
1-800-COME-GET-MY-CRAP type company to get rid of the trash. (No, this is not a
sponsored blog, so I won't be giving out the actual name. However, they did do
a phenomenal job so, if you want a private reference, you got my digits.)
I reached out to a local church that was having a yard sale to
benefit their women’s program and offered them the giveaway pile. After not
selling most of the sell pile, I sent that all with them, too. It filled our
single-car garage. One older couple showed up with their truck and minivan and
Beverly Hillbillied it all on out of there. No tie downs. No tarps. “We’ll
drive slow”, she said. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The rest came with us and went straight into the basement of our
rental. And then got purged and repacked and relabeled again after nine months
of rental hell. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I’m not a renter. I’m a
good renter, but I’m not a renter. Way too independent and capable to be
dependent on someone else who really couldn’t care less about any issues we
were having. Again, that will be another post.
Anyway, about 4 months into living there, we realized there was no
way in hell we were going to renew our lease and we would need to move by the
following May. Was that timing right to leave? Did we want to go into a
different rental? Some of the factors previously keeping us there had shifted
again. Dave’s mom had died. My dad had died. Both kids had moved out and
started their own circles.
In September 2021, I traveled with Dave to see the Belton, Texas,
area and immediately felt like I was home. I absolutely loved it. It was SO
green! It was warm and humid – my happy place. People were insanely friendly.
Things were cheap. It wasn’t crowded. There was no inversion.
I was sold.
Dave wasn’t.
We went back home and vacillated (well, he vacillated; I was
resolute). After weeks of talking about moving to Belton, he finally admitted
to me that he was just heartbroken over leaving the kids. It kind of broke him.
So, I caved and said, “Let’s just stay.” We looked at rentals, but I’m not a
renter. We looked at purchases, but the market was still crazy, and we would
have to pay more than we made on our Herriman house to get something that was
way less, well, less everything – less space, less yard, less privacy. That
clearly wasn’t the best use of our newly reinstated retirement funds.
Then we took ourselves on a walk down memory lane, back about
25ish years or so, and talked about the shifting circles of influence.
We contracted with a realtor in Texas shortly thereafter, still
heartbroken, but resigned. In January 2022, we went to Texas twice to do home
tours. We drove around endlessly. We fell in love with a couple of homes and
walked into others immediately shaking our heads. One was so amazing that we
were ready to make an offer sight unseen, but lost the opportunity when the
sellers accepted an offer on day one of the listing. The market was crazy in
Texas, too.
A week or so later, our agent emailed us information on a home
that was going to be listed by another agent in his same office the following
day. We couldn't afford to hesitate hopped on a red eye that night and were the
first people to walk through it. There were actually two right next door to one
another, and they weren’t even finished yet. When we walked into the second
one, I told Dave, “This is it.” It was where I needed to be. Maybe
not end up, but be.
We made an offer on the spot, and the builder accepted it before
we got back on the plane. It would be ours on March 1, 2022.
I took
the next couple of months going through everything, and I mean everything, in
our basement, which was a lot more organized than the last one as per
aforementioned purge/pack/label process. But, now that we knew what we were
moving into, and that we wouldn’t have a basement anymore (it’s a Texas thing –
something to do with the water table?), I had to put a lot more thought into
the purging part.
Every
single scrapbook box was opened and sorted. I scanned and emailed and then
threw away photos of others. I disassembled yearbooks, keeping only the pages
with our faces on them. I took pictures of baby clothes and then put the actual
clothes in the giveaway pile. I evaluated furniture, out of season
clothing, dishes, exercise equipment, things I could get rid of now and then
rebuy later rather than moving them. Like our boat. :( I
wish we’d kept that, actually. Did you know there are a LOT of lakes in
Texas? Like A WHOLE LOT.
When
moving day finally came, a Saturday, I think, the semi-trailer we had rented
after a very long and arduous comparison - U-Haul vs Pods vs
Full-Service vs vs vs vs - decision-making process about how to get the
remaining stuff to Texas, arrived. We hired several people to bring all of
Mom’s stuff from her place to ours, and then pack it all into the trailer. And
ran out of space. We had to get a drivable U-Haul truck at the literal last
minute – like hours before we were leaving – and shift drivers to accommodate
the extra vehicle.
The next
morning, we pulled out, cautiously hoping that the hired driver would show up
at some point to hook up our semi-trailer. Dave drove the U-Haul and towed a
flatbed trailer holding his hot rod. I drove Dave’s truck with the dogs as my
passengers. Sarah and Brian took turns driving my car with mom as company in
the passenger seat, and mom’s car with music and Audible and silence. We
stopped halfway, in Albuquerque, then rolled in to our new hometown on Monday.
The house
was done, as promised, with a few quality-control issues that we navigated for
the first, oh, let’s see, we’re in month 10 and still working through them. We
stayed in a hotel the first night (the girls and dogs in one, and the boys in
another – can’t remember the reasoning behind that, but it probably isn’t
integral to the story), as we didn’t arrive until very late. Dave was a genius
and packed our beds in the little truck he drove. Good thing since said hired
driver did show up but took a couple of more days to catch up. Our first
morning, he and Brian got to the house early to unpack the little truck, get
the beds set up, and put what limited things we had into either the house or a
storage unit we’d rented ahead of time.
We only
had the kids for a couple of days before they flew home, and we didn’t have
much stuff to unpack yet, so we ended up with some time to tour around, eat
out, and enjoy each other’s company. Our favorite Venn.
They
headed back home Thursday, and I took them to the airport in Austin while Dave
stayed at the house with the dogs and met the semi and the laborers we hired on
this end (definitely the best money we spent throughout the entire process, the
loaders and unloaders). When I got back, unpacking began. We were able to get
mostly done by the following Sunday, believe it or not. Good thing, since Dave
had to get back to his normal travel routine of 3 weeks away, 1 week at home.
Now, it’s
December. We’re 10 months in and one year and a day since we made our offer.
Today was in the low 70s and it will climb to the low 80s tomorrow. In
December. With no snow. Mission accomplished.
After
staying with us for the first six months, mom is now settled in her own place
and loving it. Sarah has since moved here as well, and bought a home with her
boyfriend, Bryson, in a neighboring town. The three little households are all
about 15 minutes from one another. Brian is still in Utah, and we’re hoping he
and his girlfriend, Riley, find their forever home once their lives settle down
a bit. And we hope it increases the overlaps of our circles.
So, our
circles shift again, and go on shifting and shifting, forever. The circles get
closer, then farther apart, but never separate. No matter how far apart we are
or how long in between hugs, we are never separate.
We just
keep living for those rainbow overlaps.
