Dirty Little Secret # 17

I fear our lives will change.

Next Friday, my children and I will board a plane bound for Upstate New York. Dirk departs a day earlier, loaded into the station wagon with the dog, the cat, and the desert tortoise. We are leaving Minnesota, with all of Dirk’s medical training finally behind us. We have been waiting for this moment for a long time.

And I’m not so sure any more that I want it to come.

After writing that last sentence, I found myself sitting, with fingers idly tapping my keyboard. After all, we have been waiting for this moment for a long time. With it comes great achievement; Dirk is ready to start a career helping cancer-stricken families learn to deal with their disease with dignity. It is a moment eleven years in the making, and he has proven himself amongst some of the most knowledgeable physicians in the world. I am immeasurably proud of him.

With it comes security. After sixteen combined years of college, graduate school, medical school, residency, and fellowship, we are ready for Dirk’s first real job. We will no longer struggle to stretch $100 through the ten days until the next paycheck. We will no longer be forced to shop at Walmart. We will be able to plan for our children’s future.

With it comes family. After ten years of living apart from beloved family and friends, we are landing in a lovely home a full mile away from my children’s grandmother, my mother. After my sister moves to Illinois, she will often be there with us for extended visits with Emmie. There are friends from high school. Cape Cod is no longer $1,000 in place tickets, but $100 in gas money. I am going home.

Ten years ago, when I left home, I might have called you crazy to imagine I would ever deign to return to live in such a place. Five years ago - after my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer, after I became pregnant with Liz after eleven months of marriage, and after two planes tore my adopted city to shreds - I decided that home didn’t look so bad anymore. Dirk agreed. We re-ordered our priorities to plan for a stellar fellowship in the Midwest that would lead us to a stellar career in a private practice in my hometown. Where we had family. Where we had a reasonable cost of living. Where we could raise our children without fear of their becoming precocious sophisticates, yet still be close enough to our favorite cities to make a day trip for good sushi not unreasonable.

So far, so good. We sit on the cusp of realizing all of those plans. Schooling? Finished. Midwest? Tolerated. Job in private practice? Awarded with ease. Fabulously large one hundred year old home bought for the price of 1000 square in Westchester? Purchased.

But before we all get excited that we have so neatly shot down all of our ducks in a row, let’s talk about what’s missing.

Well, my Daddy, for one thing. I envisioned that he would conquer colon cancer, and after having been scared into the realization that life is short we would all then enjoy each other at close proximity for years to come. But he died one year into our three year stint in Minnesota.

And oddly enough, Minnesota will be missing.

I’ve written here before about how I loved Manhattan. But it was the city itself that lived and breathed for me. I fell in love with the place. It was HARD when we came here in 2003. There were many days when nineteen-month-old Lizzy and I sat on the couch in our new-to-us 1988 split-level and stared out at the cloudless sky and near treeless landscape. Where before we peered down from the height of the nineteenth floor onto cabs and cars and buses and bikes and trucks and more people than exist in this entire state, now we blankly gazed out on nothing. An empty cul-de-sac. Lizzy, my tiny city girl, struggled to understand the car, the enormous grocery store, and that damned itchy green stuff that relentlessly covered the pavement she had grown to love.

Those first few months I joined a few activities sponsored by the wives’ club associated with Dirk’s fellowship program. Yeah. It’s called the “Families Connection,” but when all the women introduce themselves as “Hi, I’m so-and-so and my husband is an anesthesiology resident,” it makes me nervous. It made them nervous when I left out Dirk’s stats and started asking if any of the doctors at this very famous hospital had husbands involved in the Families Connection.

The check-out clerks and hair stylists didn’t seem to understand my jokes, either, so I styled myself as a fish out of water. As my dad got sicker and my mother got more fragile and I struggled through my pregnancy with Teddy that first year, I became determined that this place would simply be a way station. Through illness and grief, I held myself apart from what was really waiting here for me. When I lived in New York City, I fell in love with the place. Here, out in the wilds of Minnesota where good Italian food is to be had at the Olive Garden, I have fallen in love with the people.

After my dad died, and I was learning to be free from the burden of his illness and its subsequent ravages of our family life, that empty cul-de-sac began to fill with people. Our second summer here we discovered that a companion for Lizzy lived across the street, two doors down. She learned to walk on grass, sometimes even with bare feet. The pre-teen boy at the other end of the street discovered that Dirk was a decent role-model and I was a good cook. They learned that we were a little quirky and we learned that they were all far from bland Swedes. We found a wonderful pre-school that insists on parental involvement. We made the 1988 split into a cozy home that welcomes all thirty-three neighbors, sometimes all at the same time. We became masters at blocking off the circle so the kids could ride their bikes in the early evenings. We learned that our Evangelical neighbors weren’t space aliens, but were people who were open to discourse and with whom we shared values. We conquered our goal of never, ever stepping foot in the Mall of the Americas. We discovered that 32 degrees means no hats and mittens. We saw Garrison Keillor live. We specialize in the impromptu potluck.

We found a sweetly simple life that I greatly fear will change.

Our ship has finally come in, and we trade 1800 square feet for 3600. We trade a family of four on less than $50,000 a year for much, much more. We trade friends for family. I worry that we will become complacent about our financial good fortune, that my children will grow to be entitled. I worry that we will retreat to the bosom of our families and old friends to the exclusion of making new friends. I worry that we will lose the independence that 1500 miles inevitably brings. We’ve never had the luxury of a built-in baby-sitter. We’ve never had family popping in for a visit. While I have often envied my sister’s lunches and dinners with my mother and my father, when he was alive, I have instead had my own schedule. We are free, out here, to do as we please. The realities of our everyday life are unknown to the family and friends who believe that they know me best. I have grown to like it that way.

A week from today, the packers will arrive. My children will be bewildered as their lives are carefully packed away. The girl who had such a hard time adjusting to life outside the city no longer remembers it. As far as Lizzy knows, this is her only home. Teddy is a native Minnesotan. But the objects that define their lives will be loaded onto a truck and driven across the country. After two weeks at the beach, they will not return home. We will learn to live amongst our familiar objects in an unfamiliar place.

It will be become their home. Teddy, at two, will not likely remember Minnesota. At four and a half, Lizzy may have more concrete memories. They will fade pleasantly. We will make new friends. We will struggle to keep ourselves in check, to be thankful for the opportunities and good fortune granted us. It will be alright. The changes ahead are certain. I will learn to welcome them.