One last move

I should be preparing for our epic, holy-crap-I-can’t-believe-this-is-real move from Minnesota to Virginia right now, but I decided to start a blog instead.  This move has been such a long time coming, I just don’t know what to do with myself.  The kids and I leave on Monday, and my mind is a-jumble.  This will be our second cross-country move (we saved the cross-country moves for when we had kids – we’re smart like that), our fifth state-to-state move, and our ninth dwelling-to-dwelling move in 15 years.  The difference with this one is that it should be our last.

With every move up to this one, my husband and I have known we would probably move again.  One of us was finishing a degree and then we’d move on, or “if we don’t like it here” we could always move on, or the job is temporary and then we have to move on.  That next move was always on the horizon, and it was fun and adventurous and so full of possibilities when we were DINKs (double income, no kids).  But now that we have children, the not-knowing has been soul-eating.  Will we have to take another temporary position?  Will we have to move someplace god-awful in order to get a permanent tenure track position?  How will the kids handle the move(s)?  What will the schools be like?  When can we invest in friends that we don’t have to leave?  Will we ever be able to pay off these student loans we took on when we decided, “Let’s add people to our family and then eliminate both incomes so Andrea can stay home with the kids while Brian goes back to school full time!”?  (I told you we were smart like that.)

But with this move – with this move everything is different.  With this move, we are going to a place we can finally put down roots and call home.  We know the landscape, we know the culture, we know the food, the accent, the climate.  It’s familiar.  With this move, Brian has been offered an Assistant Professor position – the career goal we have been working toward  all these years.  Not only is it tenure track, but it’s at a highly esteemed, land-grant university in a beautiful place, near the Appalachian mountains where Brian and I began our courtship.  With this move we might actually begin to pay down debt instead of accruing more of it.  The kids can start friendships in elementary school that have the potential to last more than two grade years (gasp!)  We can plant trees and watch them grow from sapling to full maturity.  Maybe even live in a house that our kids will one day call “the house I grew up in.”

With this move, maybe we won’t have to say goodbye again.