A Little Background

Two and a half years ago I moved across the United States back to the town I had grown up in and where my mom still lived. I packed up my belongings, put my house on the rental market, loaded up the Penske big rig (with car in-tow) and headed back home. I had been away for over fifteen years.

A year and a half earlier my dad had died unexpectedly in an accident, at what was, for him, the young age of seventy-five. And although my mom seemed to be managing as well as could be expected on her own, I thought that it might be the right time for me to try a "new" location for my own health and happiness.

I had that "been-there-done-that" feeling from where I had been living for the past nine years. And being single and childless which puts me in the wonderfully-sounding "foot-loose-and -fancy-free" category I decided to shake things up and "get the hell out of Dodge" at least for the time being.

When people asked me what my plans were, all I felt I knew at the time was that I would definitely be living back home with my mom for the next year. But I also told them I could be there for the next fifty years. I just didn't know. My vision only went as far as the 365 days ahead of me. And in actuality if I had anywhere else to go that could have given me what I was looking for: companionship and a financial reprieve, I would have been there instead. I had moved away from my hometown those many years ago for a reason and that reason still existed: it wasn't somewhere else.

As I mentioned there were a few different reasons why I made the move. Probably the biggest was that I was tired of being alone. I had been waking up and coming home to an empty house for, what was for me, far too many years. I was ready to meet my mornings with chirpy knowledge imparted by someone other than Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson or the Today Show's Meredith Vieira.

Nearly equally as important, I felt I needed a reprieve from the everyday burdens of life. I had been on my own, making my way in the world, for over twenty years and I was ready to have a shoulder to lean on. I had lived most of those years very far away, 4000 miles, for six years, and only slightly closer, 1500 miles, for the past nine.

I was blessed in that time to know good people and have valued friends, but they had there own lives to live, and sometimes it was just frustrating to have to ask for help from people who seemed overly burdened themselves. Maybe it's simply because having never envisioned my life being lived without a husband, I didn't prepare myself properly for that eventuality, and the resultant sole decision-making and full "weight of the world" on my shoulders moments.

One more reason I wanted the safe haven of home was because I wanted to "find" myself. I was tired of working one job after another purely to pay my bills, but without much reference to any sense of personal fulfillment. If I wasn't going to have my heart's passion and desire: a husband and children of my own, at the very minimum, I wanted to have a job that made me happy to be doing it. I wanted at least this one area of my life, one that was within my realm of control, to provide as much passion and joy that I could find in it. And I felt that being unburdened of my financial responsibilities would allow me the chance of finding out and following through on whatever that career ideal might be.

Some people have that inner-fortitude that allows them to press on through thick and thin, good and bad, rain or shine. I felt like I had it for twenty years. And then I didn't. And many people, when faced with life's more trying times don't have the luxury of a safe haven. I did. And although my mother seemed to care about the stigma of a forty-three year old daughter moving back in with her I just felt blessed to have the option.