For many years, my wife's parents have lived in Lakeland, Florida. You probably don't know where that is, so here's a frame of reference: it's about 60 miles south of Orlando, a city which really ought to face facts and just rename itself Disneyville or Disneyopolis. Orlando is that place to which all currency and credit cards migrate at some point in their lives, and vacations are measured in terms of home equity rather than days. Florida (for those of you under retirement age) is a state in the lower southeast tip of our country. It's the state that always looks like someone left the sprinklers on all night.
But I digress. The point is that for years, Sue's folks (Bill and Elaine Curren) have lived in Florida while both of their kids and all five of their grandkids have lived in Southern California (home, by the way, to another Disney theme park; it's a mystery that the competing gravitational pulls of the two resorts hasn't torn the country apart). The three thousand mile gulf between the parents and the rest of the family has prevented anything more than infrequent visits, and for the last year or so, the California branch of the family has been toying with relocating the parents out here near the rest of us. The advantages would be many. We could drop by without going through metal detectors; the only baggage involved would be emotional; and the situation would more closely line up to the Walton-like family dynamic that I was raised with: that is, that family is the first line of support. This was a main tenet of the Thornton clan, and its wisdom wasn't questioned until I was born and a family council was convened to reconsider the concept. That jury's still out, but I've already been indoctrinated with the basic concept. And after all, as I recall, one of the Ten Commandments has something to do with parents. I'd quote the exact reference, but that part of the Bible always makes me uncomfortable.
At any rate, the only downside to the proposition of moving Sue's parents out to California was... well, the moving part. I'm sure very few of you readers out there are living in the house in which you were born, so you know that moving your belongings from one residence to another is basically a root canal that lasts days instead of hours. But as daunting as the cross-continent move might be, in the arena of plusses and minuses it was the one "minus" hurdle that had to be jumped to get to all the plusses waiting at the finish line. Reducing the apprehension was the fact that Sue and I wouldn't be moving ourselves; we were just arranging and coordinating the relocation of her parents. And we were going to use movers.
In our over three decades of marriage, Sue and I have moved more often than Richard Kimble. Sometimes it was because my retail jobs demanded frequent transfers. Other times, it was because companies couldn't seem to survive the trauma of hiring me, and we had to relocate to a job market where my reputation as an albatross hadn't preceded me. For none of those moves did we hire professionals to pack, load, and transport our belongings. Instead we rented a truck, invited some friends and family over for dinner, and then advised them that the house had to be emptied before we'd crack open the bucket of chicken. As often as we engaged in this activity, we never got better at it; each time seemed more difficult and exhausting than the one before. Our last move, into a 2-story dwelling, almost killed us, and we're grateful that it looks like we'll be able to stay here till they find our skeletons on the La-Z-Boys.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton