A SCHEME REVISITED

         If my life becomes “stagnant”, I may get an inkling to freshen it up.  Perhaps the grandest scheme and dream upon which I embarked was our move to New Mexico after my husband retired in 1994.  Our youngest son, Jeff, had graduated high school, and I (erroneously) decided that all our children were now securely “in place” with their lives.

        So we could therefore drastically change our lives, and their lives would fall happily into place.....

....NOT.....

                                     

         Even now, almost twenty-four years later, I am still sorting out the reasons I so wanted this move, a decision that I came to regret within the first year after we moved.

         Milder weather was one factor….we had experienced some typically cold and snowy Midwest winters, and I was usually crazed by February with all the ice and cold and cloudy days.

         A chance for a “fresh” start with a pretty newly built home, in a place that we didn’t know at all….I suppose even that had its appeal.  I had tired of all the social situations where I had “forced” my husband to attend, which he increasingly merely tolerated in his typical stoic fashion.  Of course, this fresh start meant that all my family and friends were no longer a few miles away from me….since I never stopped loving all those same social situations which he dreaded!

         So we moved, with two out of our three young adult children moving with us, to start college at the University of New Mexico near our pretty new home in a suburb of Albuquerque.   Within one year, our youngest son Jeff had to move back to the Chicago area, because he missed his friends.  Our daughter Niki was still fine in New Mexico, because she (like her Dad) really welcomed the complete change.

         Our oldest son Matt came to grieve our move, but never could articulate this grief, except to painfully avoid talking to me for some time after the move.  He had stayed behind, making his way through his college days in the Chicago area, eventually moving in with my widowed mother…as did my youngest Jeff!

         I began visiting my “sweet home Chicago” within six months of our move; by two years out, I knew that I regretted the decision.  What surprised me, besides missing my access to a bounty of family and friends, was being "attached" to Chicago.  I grew up there, and it was an anchor which I just took for granted....until it was replaced by (nice-enough but unremarkable) city like Albuquerque (I mean, who can even spell it?).

         I really never developed any special friendships in New Mexico, despite the part-time jobs which Dave and I took up.  Neighbor attachments also eluded me.   I see now that my lifelong friends in the Chicago area, were often school chums, and in a few cases, work chums….as well as my beloved siblings and their families.  And I had so many years of closeness with them, which was always just, well, THERE 

         One of my friends who had to relocate early in her marriage (and never moved back) had warned me that you can never replace your oldest dearest friends....at best, you will substitute newer, but different ones. Now I know what she meant! 

         My “baby” sister married, and then became pregnant while I was away---and that sealed it for me.  I HAD to be with her when she had her baby, which was three years after our move.

         One year later, and four years after our move, we returned to the Chicago area.  And we were once again saddled with a mortgage, which we had escaped when we purchased our pretty Southwestern home.  Mortgages would continue to weigh me down, up to the last mortgage too many, in 2009, when I was widowed and retired myself…..and had to “walk out” of my condo home because I could not get the too-high mortgage refinanced.  

         My husband would have stayed contentedly in New Mexico.  He never required close friends; I suppose he thought that my “friendship” was enough.  

         But I moved back, and they followed.  And I am all these years later, indeed an amazing twenty years later, still sorting out this huge decision and all the false dreams upon which I based this decision.

         I regret mostly the loss of money which we could have giving our children to help them with college funds.  They all had to take out student loans because we were too “selfish” to stay put and help them out.  I will NEVER stop regretting this sternest repercussion resulting from our move.

         My husband David loved his retirement life in New Mexico—his part-time job was at a model railroad store in Albuquerque.  He had adored model trains throughout his life, and always had a detailed layout wherever we lived.  When we moved back to the Midwest, he “exploited” his other expertise when he went to work for Ace Hardware part-time.  He was the handiest of handy men, and so was also perfect for that job too.  He never complained to me about our about-face moving back.  It was not in him to complain or delve into his psyche, or confide those feelings he MUST  have had about all this moving about. 

I’ll never know—I couldn’t ask him and he couldn’t tell me.