Like many families in the 80s, our family was faced with some grim financial choices in a very turbulent economy. There was a deep recession, Interest rates were sky high and if you had a job you had best keep it.
Rumors whiz around like ping pong balls were my husband worked. As part of the AT&T divestiture his company would be included in the divisions being split off from the main company and no one really had any idea of what would happen. There was talk of transfers to California, Arizona and Chicago. There was talk of shutting down their operation all together.
There was also an opening for an instructor at a Bell Systems training center in Dublin Ohio. It was a move from a blue to a white collar job in a stable part of the company and they had offered the job to him and even said they would pay for the move. We talked and debated and pretended we had options but knew moving to Ohio was the best of the disheartening alternatives open to us. So, we moved.
Moving away from your “home” from your family and loved ones can be daunting. It is being uprooted, like transplanted flowers. At first we wilted, unable to accept the oddness, to understand the differences in this new landscape. We missed our families, felt alienated and alone. Time passed and we did learn to understand, even appreciate our new environment. During our time in Ohio we have had a range of life altering events, countless joys and many sorrows. The tender shoots planted here so long ago have grown, flourished and died back as life has dictated. Our once fragile roots have grown strong and are now deeply buried here. Yet a part of us longs to return back to our origin, back to our family.
For us the time has come for us to go home, to be with our family again. Like the first move, the choice to move wasn’t made lightly or without pain but also like the first, inevitable. We are joyful about what we are moving to but also saddened by what we leave behind. It is my hope that we are running towards something, not running away. That we are moving forward by moving back.
We now sit at the pinnacle, at the top of this high mountain. We can see where we have been as well as where we are going. The trip here has been long and arduous and the remainder of the trip will have its own difficulty. My throat tightens as I look down the mountain and see the obstacles lying in our path. I know we must meet and overcome each one in its turn and again this is daunting.
Memories surface, tugging me back to the past while optimism for the future fights for a stronger foothold in my heart and I know this is the right thing for us. Not the easiest thing but it is the right thing.