There And Gone Again

This summer is bringing big changes for my family. It's time to find home.

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As you were all already aware, I’ve been somewhat time-limited due to taking on extra work doing food deliveries, the upside of which is that I’ve gotten some really good writing out of it.

But now we’re onto the next phase.

My father in law passed last December. My oldest at-home child has now graduated high school from the same academy she’s attended since the 6th grade. Our business interests here are in a state of transition.

We still have friends here, but we see them very rarely, and as our kids have gotten older, there has been a divergence in interests and pursuits between most of the ones who are similar in age. Real estate here is insanely expensive, and our kids miss the woods and the trees and the autumn leaves and the winter snows.

Our ties to this place are quickly dissolving.

I have come to love Arizona in many respects, but the feeling that has been creeping over the family is that it’s time to go home. We left Virginia in 2016 to come here and attend to certain things, and we feel that the mission we embarked on has run its course and that it’s time to go home.

It’s a fraught decision. There are both good things and bad about it. I’m probably the least excited about this turn of events. Virginia has a lot of old baggage for me. Almost my entire extended family is there, including my parents — all still very Catholic, all unlikely to ever understand where I am with religion, and why. And frankly, none of them have asked, so there’s that. My entire social sphere there, in fact, was comprised of very-involved Catholics. So I’m going to a place where I know lots of people, but no longer share the most prominent thing we had in common.

A couple summers ago, while there working on an investment property, I just sat in the car in the rain and thought about how it felt so different, yet still the same.

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There’s been a ton of development since we left, but nothing that tells me it’ll be easier to find a place to finally settle down. It’s hard to know where we fit these days.

On the other hand, our oldest daughter also lives there. Our relationship with her went through some very rough waters since 2016. I won’t detail it all here, but it was harrowing at times, and it all began when I first came out here with the kids 8 years ago to get them started at their new school. I had just arrived in Phoenix and was in the school office finishing paperwork when I got the call from her mother, still at home on the East Coast, that our daughter had announced her pregnancy and taken off with her boyfriend. Things only got more complicated after that. There was a period of time where I didn’t know if we would ever be able to be in each others’ company again. But slowly, gradually, things have improved. She came out to visit last week with her two children (yes, I’m a grandfather, don’t make me think about it too much) and it was good to have her in the mix again. Our family dynamic is so different whenever someone leaves. She is married now and has settled down in Virginia, not far from where we used to live, and rebuilding that relationship and being in each other’s lives is a pretty significant reason to return.

Jamie and I have recently come to accept that while friends (and even relatives) come and go, our children are all we’ve got, and likely ever will have. We want to build a community around that. We want to be intentional about being in each others lives. There’s no saying how our kids will feel when they’re all grown, but we need to give it a shot. We need to be in the kind of place, too, where they’re more likely to stick around after they move out of our house. And we want a place that they can always come back to and feel that it’s home.

That’s the dream, anyway. A homestead. A legacy. A place that, at long last, can offer some permanent solace to this weary band of nomads.

Arizona doesn’t seem to be it. Too hot, too pricey, not enough diversity in the job market, no good place for kids to grow up playing outside in their own back yards. Lots of nature around here, but not the accessible kind. You can’t just send the ruffians out to the woods when they’re getting too rowdy.

It’s 104 degrees as I write this a little before 2PM, and that’s unseasonably cool for this time of year.

We had hoped New Hampshire was our escape back in 2021, but it was a bad fit; a decision made too hastily at a very tumultuous time in our lives. When we came back from New Hampshire to Arizona two years ago, we thought we were going to buy a house and just try to make it work. We thought the market would correct. We thought our businesses would take off. We thought the schools were going to work out better for all of our kids than they did.

None of it has gone to plan. It’s been a non-stop, drag-out struggle. We are paying over $5K/month in rent, for heaven’s sake, on a house that isn’t even big enough for us and all our stuff. We’ve been cooped up in this place for two years, waiting for a drop in real estate prices that just hasn’t come.

So now we’re looking at going back to the only place that ever came close to feeling like home, hoping, like an old shoe buried in the back of the closet, that it will still fit like a glove.

It’s still expensive in Virginia, but less so. You get more square footage for the dollar, both inside and outside, if you’re willing to live outside the Beltway. We’ll still likely have to rent for a while so we can re-establish ourselves there, but Jamie had a thriving real estate business before we left, and still has a lot of great contacts, and knows the market inside and out. It’ll be trickier for me, because I’m still trying to re-build a content-based business, but if I have to go get a normal 9 to 5 job, my prospects are infinitely better there than here. In Phoenix, if you’re not in sales, service, hospitality, retail, restaurant, or semiconductors, there’s not really any place for you. People retire from other, more expensive places, and then come here and want to do nothing but shop and eat and golf and go to resorts. Our economy is built around that.

Our lease is up at the end of July, so the clock is ticking. I spent the morning today dropping off trash and donations, and every day for the next few weeks we’ll be having to treat packing and moving like it’s our job.

I hope to make time to write — I had a piece I was working on over the weekend that I didn’t get to finish — but it might be spotty for the next month or two. I’ll do my best to try to drop at least one post a week, but don’t hold me to it. Some of this is going to be unpredictable.

This isn’t as sudden as it may seem. Jamie got a strong feeling of being “called home” last fall, and was forced to ignore it as much as she could so our Sophia could finish her senior year. But it kept coming in waves. Now, you know where I am as regards belief. But Jamie believes, and in the middle of an unbelievably stressful day about a week ago, where everything was going wrong and the financial noose was tightening around our necks, she said a prayer to God or the universe or whoever was listening, and said, “I know I’ve been undecided on whether or not to go home, but if you give me the money, I’ll take it as a sign and I promise I’ll go.”

A few minutes later, she received a phone call that a real estate investment we made several years ago was going to pay out early, and some money that wasn’t supposed to come until next summer would be arriving immediately. Not exactly “F You” money, but enough to pay some of the bills we’ve been behind on, and cover a cross-country move and allow us to get re-established.

We really weren’t supposed to see this money until 2025, so if that’s pure coincidence, it’s one of the craziest ones I’ve seen.

Frankly, I’ll take the push, wherever it’s coming from. Because we have spent six months trying (and failing) to decide what to do. We’ve moved so many times. We moved across country so many times. I’m so damn sick of it I can’t even describe it to you. We’re always just looking for the best opportunities for us and the kids, and a place we can finally call home. Some of the moves we’ve made have been mistakes. Most have taught us valuable lessons.

I’m not sure this is the answer we’re looking for, but maybe it gets us one step closer.

I first came to this city in 2001, 23 years ago this month. I first laid eyes on my wife on July 16 of the the same year. From the first moment we spent together, we’ve been inextricably intertwined. We’ve been together half our lives. And we’ve both been feeling, ever since her dad died, that Book I of our lives has come to a close.

I sense this in an almost visceral way as I drive around these days. Everything is so familiar. I’ve come to know this city better than any place I’ve lived. There’s so much about this place that’s great. But everywhere I go has begun to take on the feeling driving by an old house you used to live in. It used to be green, but now it’s painted white. They had to cut down the tree you always climbed in the front yard, and the barn out back got leveled because it was too dangerous to let stand. You wonder how you could race your bike on the little footpath around the perimeter of the house and have it feel like you were on a professional track. You look at the windows from the street and can’t see inside, but you recall what it was like when you used to live there. You know if you could walk inside, the shape of the floorplan would be weirdly familiar, but the textures and appliances and the overall experience would be nowhere near the same. You no longer belong in the place where you used to spend every waking moment. Where you laughed and cried and played and slept and ate and celebrated birthdays and Christmases and had chickenpox and climbed the walls and were scared of zombies coming out of your deep dark closet and where you fell down the stairs that one time because you were sleepwalking and where you learned to love football and Star Wars and watched historical events happen on live television right there in that living room…and now none of that is yours anymore.

I have come to love this city, this desert oasis, and the entire West Coast vibe like an adopted home. I love the mountains and the sunsets and the smell of creosote after the rain. I love the aroma of mesquite smoke on a cold night with the top open on the Jeep and the heaters on full blast under a blanket of Southern stars. I respect its hostility and austerity, I am enraptured by the power of its storms, I am captivated by its sense of majesty and mystery, and I have even come to appreciate the way the people here have playfully adapted to the furnace blast of summer heat. But it feels as though the whole thing is withdrawing from my embrace, like a lover who has realized before you have that whatever you had between the two of you is gone.

Maybe that’s just my imagination. Maybe it isn’t.

Either way, the time has come to move on.

Time to start a new adventure as we turn the page and start writing Book II.