Five Years Later - The Move
Looking back on the move that changed so many things
It truly was one of my worst days as a parent, at least up until that point.
We had put it off. In three weeks’ time, my husband and I had gone from “maybe we should move back to Indiana in the next year” to “what if you look for a job?” to “I’ve found a job, so I guess we’re moving.”
Five months earlier, as we told our kids that I had lost my job and we didn’t know what the future held, I had tried to avoid promising them that this didn’t mean we would have to move. “I hope not,” was all I could manage. And I meant it. I didn’t want to move. I loved our house. I loved our neighbors. We still had friends that we didn’t want to leave. We had spent five years building a life away from the support of any of our family members. Our chosen family was small, but still dependable. I wanted to believe I could make it work, that I could look past the hurt and keep life as normal as possible for my children.
My desires were driven by my own childhood experiences. By the time we told our kids we were moving, they were ten and twelve. I had moved when I was nine, eleven, and sixteen. I knew how much it would hurt them. I knew because I had been there. When I became a parent, I swore I would never do that to my kids. I would give them the childhood I never had. They would get to graduate with the same people they went to elementary school with.
And now I was breaking that promise to myself.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks going back through old pictures to print and put into photo albums. After several years of staying on top of photo books for our whole family, I fell off the wagon in 2018. I’m finally in 2020, finding photos of our resurfaced pool, gatherings with friends for Easter and birthdays, and renovations we did to our house in the early months of COVID isolation. It’s brought back a lot of emotions, feelings of regret and loss, as I remember the good things we left behind when we decided to move back to Indiana from Texas. The people who became family, the house that was my favorite home, the state parks that taught my kids to love the outdoors, the state that I couldn’t get enough of. It has been quite the walk down memory lane.
Shortly after we moved back, I passionately wrote about all the ways moving sucks, but for our family, the move five years ago took on its own form of awful. In two months time, I found a job, we told our kids after getting home from my cousin’s wedding,1 we still went on a vacation out east and it became our worst family vacation to date, we packed up all of our belongings and sold some things we still wanted to bring with us, we trusted my sister and brother-in-law to find us a house and put an offer on it without seeing it with our own eyes, we sold the house we loved, and we lived in a run-down campground for a week while we waited for the transition to our new home.
We had to wade through a lot of awful before we were finally able to see the other side.
Our kids hated us and didn’t have any problems sharing their displeasure for the first six months after our move. I hated my new job and ended up finding another teaching job within three months of moving. Jeff started traveling more. Our daughter was so unhappy at the school we hoped would be a safe landing spot that we moved her to public schools the following year. Our house is far from perfect, but we continue to work to make it our home.2
But we did eventually make it to the other side. We’re close enough to Michigan to visit grandparents at least once a year, and grandparents can come down to watch our kids perform in their chosen activities. We can go up to Michigan for football games, and my husband has finally fulfilled his dream of season tickets. We have renewed relationships with one sister and our nieces and nephew. Our kids are thriving in their environments, thriving in ways I cannot imagine would be possible had we stayed in Texas, no matter the circumstances.
I’ve learned to love living in a small town with easy access to the big city. I enjoy being a public school teacher and have a renewed passion for education and my profession. I have grown as a writer and found a local group that is incredibly supportive of my work and efforts. I’ve found the freedom to rethink and rediscover my faith, and the courage to walk away and find a different path forward.
Five years later, I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have moved. Five years later, I can miss the life we left behind while loving the life that we found on the other side. Five years later, I can see God’s hand gently nudging us to think differently about the life we thought we were going to have.
Five years of healing from unimaginable grief have brought us more than we ever thought possible. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Stephen Colbert’s words still ring true. I love the thing I most wish hadn’t happened to me.
It taught us to adapt and put us right where we belong, for now.
The future is still unwritten, but five years later, I know we can get through it because we’ve done it before.
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And our kids decided they were never going to another wedding for one of my cousins ever again.
I mean, no one is going to give up the interest rate that they got in 2021. We would have to be crazy to try to move, so instead we make the best of it.
When you talk about moving with young kids, I understand. We did something similar. Moved to another province when the kids were eight and ten. The older one understood the reasons but hated it. The younger one didn't understand and she cried everyday from the time we told them 'til the day we moved. Once we got there, I purposely did not work for six months to try to settle them. Yes, they adjusted somewhat but it became clear this was only a temporary stop. We spent five years trying to fit into the community and five years trying to leave. The kids—they do not think about those ten years. And neither do we. All that to say that sometimes moving for the right reasons may not be the right reason or the right place in the end. We have been ten years in our new city and enjoy it. Kids are on their own now and the boy is moving to New Zealand in the fall. In spite of the distance, I am looking forward to a global family.