I tried to organize my thoughts about this upcoming season of life into something as concise as an Instagram caption, but alas, it couldn't be done. Turns out I have a lot to say on the subject, so I've dusted off the old blog to try to make sense of things.
I keep making the mistake of thinking "this is it." I get into bad habits with my depression sometimes, and I let myself believe that a new job or place or thing or even person will fi everything and make me happy. And they usually do, for a time, and then that only familiar darkness starts to creep back in, or else outside circumstances take the new thing away before I'm prepared to be without it, and it becomes that much harder to pick up the pieces afterward.
We moved out here just over a year ago thinking everything was going to change for us. We had been struggling for several months, and feeling a little hopeless. My dad offered what we thought was the forever solution. My dad has enjoyed a successful career with the railroad. It took us out of near-poverty when we were kids, and it is a great job if everything falls into place in just the right way.
Which it did not, unfortunately.
Travis moved out here before we did to start training, staying in cheap (though they added up fast) motels and keeping his eye out for a place for all of us to live. I had to stay behind to let the boys finish school and until we could get our house rented. It was incredibly stressful, doing most of the packing on my own, trying to keep the house clean for showings while we were living in it with small children, keeping them out of the house when the landlady brought people by. When I was released from the hospital after Arlo's birth, I spent my first night at home with him alone, because it was a Sunday and Travis had to head back west. I never wanted to go through that again, but honestly, looking back, it was manageable. Arlo was an easy baby, Ryland was in school, Wilder had preschool two mornings a week, we lived walking distance to my mother's and within an easy driving distance of friends who would bring over dinner or their kids for play dates.
We finally moved out here, and planned to get ourselves out of debt and back on track. He was going to make good money with the railroad, and we were paying about half the amount in rent as we did with our old place. The duplex we live in out here is tiny, but it was just about the only thing available that would even remotely fit our family, and it was just enough space, no more and no less. But also no room to grow, and now that Willa is born and Ryland is out of school for the summer, and Arlo has joined the ranks of the mobile and the vocal, it's just not enough. Our little postage stamp of a yard feels positively claustrophobic now that the wasps are swarming and the mosquitoes are biting and the kids have more outdoor toys and bikes than ever. We usually end up out front where there's more room to move around, and then I get stressed out when Arlo makes a beeline for the alley or won't stop throwing his ball into the street. We don't have a driveway or a garage or even a shed in which to store our outdoor belongings. Our lawnmower is on its last leg. Even if we wanted to stay in North Platte, finding decent rentals is tricky, especially in a town where no one really utilizes the Internet like everywhere else in the free world. Seriously, everything is word-of-mouth or if you're lucky, Facebook. I think they must have just discovered Facebook pretty recently out here.
But back on the subject of huge life changes. We assumed the railroad would be it. We weren't careful about birth control because we weren't totally set against having another baby, and the railroad offers amazing benefits. But right at the same time we found out we were expecting Willa, we also got the news that Travis was another casualty of the railroad's massive layoffs. And we've been just barely keeping our heads above water since. We were both lucky to find pretty good jobs right away, but neither felt like the kind of jobs we wanted to make careers out of. We were also very fortunate that our schedules worked together perfectly. He only worked weekends and I was able to work the majority of my hours on the days he was home, and we just needed a babysitter to fill in on the one weekend a month I was required to pick up. We also had a little side business babysitting for our next door neighbors for several months, and in exchange, they were our once-a-month weekend sitters.
We were trying to tough it out until spring, because there were initially rumors that the railroad would be calling a lot of guys back around March or April. But then we would chat up the occasional local at work or out to dinner and learned that employees with over a decade of seniority had been laid off, and came to the grim realization that it could be years before he was called back, if ever. It was time to go back home. We decided to wait until after my maternity leave, since I had decided to get myself and the kids on my employer's health insurance.
Word of an opportunity reached our ears a couple of weeks ago, and the soonest he could get out there for an interview was last Tuesday afternoon. By the time I came home from work on Thursday afternoon, a glorious four-day weekend before me, he had received the news that they were offering him the position. We're putting in our 30 days notice at our tiny duplex that has been home for the past 13 months. I'll give two weeks notice when I go back into work on Tuesday, because he's heading out to Omaha before the rest of us once again and won't be here to watch the kids while I'm at work. He's staying with his parents while he looks for a place for us. I have a huge list of houses written out to compare their stats and find one with most of what we're looking for; four bedrooms, a garage, and hardwood floors would be ideal. Something roomy with good schools near by if we really want to get greedy. He'll come home to be with us on the weekends, and during the week I'll be, once again, a "single parent" for all intents and purposes. The three days a week he works now feel impossibly long, and we so look forward to him finally walking through the door at the end of those endless days. I don't even know how we're going to survive five days where he doesn't come home to us--well, alright, four days, technically. I guess if I'm being optimistic, it's only one more day than we're used to. And we've managed it before (although five kids feels like a hundred more than four). I'll be packing most of the boxes myself. Once again, we'll promise ourselves that this move will be different, more organized, that it will go more smoothly. That we won't have a sea of miscellaneous shit left haphazardly around the rooms as we're loading up the truck. That we won't have to make a million extra trips back like we did last time because we're such horrible procrastinators. I've been surveying the place, looking for things that we can live without for the next few weeks, trying to decide where to start packing first.
The past two years, particularly the first six months of this year, should have killed my optimism. Strangely though, they haven't. Last year got off to such a horrendous start that I thought for sure we would be rewarded with a great year in 2016. Unfortunately, this year started off worse than the last. Nothing has ever or will ever be as bad as losing my nephew. That is a nightmare we're still struggling to wake up from every single day. And it was a huge deciding factor in our rush to move back and be close to family again. Missing out on most of the first--and only--year of his life will haunt me until the end of time. It has also been extremely difficult being away from Ryland for the better part of an entire school year. On paper, it didn't seem like it would be so bad. Every month there was at least one long weekend for conferences or holidays, plus spring break and winter break, and we made frequent short trips out there throughout the year. But not being a part of his daily life and feeling so out of touch with things like his homework, even not being able to assign him chores around the house, it just felt like I wasn't really his mother. I never want to go through that again. The hardest part of it is that I thought we were doing it for the greater good. I thought we were making a sacrifice to get our family on the right track financially, to give our kids a better future. But we ultimately did it all for nothing, and now we're right back where we started. Or that's how it feels.
But enough of that. I'm elated that we're going back, but I'm cautious. I don't want to let myself think that this is it, that everything is going to be smooth sailing from here on out. I don't want to think that simply by going back, I will be happy forever. I'm pretty sure that I'll be happier than I've been out here, but I'm still me, and I still have my lows sometimes. It does feel, though, like we're getting a fresh start in the second half of this year. The first half was a miserable mess, but the second half might make up for it. And I'm going to let myself be excited about that.
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