My parents are here for the holidays. This is a good thing. I have a very low-stress family. They will be moving to the area in January. They will live about fifteen minutes away. For the first time in six years, they will be within driving distance. This is a good thing.
This is why I moved to North Carolina. The one and only reason. They lived in Mississippi and I lived in Philadelphia and I didn’t want to move to Mississippi and they didn’t want to move (back) to Philadelphia, and I got this brilliant crazy wacky idea that we could split the difference and both live in North Carolina.
I asked D to move in with me and she said yes. I asked her to move to North Carolina with me and she said yes. We went down to North Carolina one weekend. I was so sick I couldn’t even navigate, much less drive. We looked at apartments, because we thought we were going to rent an apartment; it never occurred to us we could afford a house. We finally looked at a low-end townhouse and the guy ran the numbers and told us how much we would have to make to afford it, and we were like, Wow, maybe we could actually afford a real house.
The next weekend, we were scheduled to visit my parents in Mississippi anyway, to go to the Jazzfest in New Orleans. We did this every year. Perfectly routine. And instead we arrived with all these brochures, and just dumped them out onto the living room floor and announced that we were moving to North Carolina, buying a house, and moving in together. And then we asked them to join us.
It was the biggest craziest grandest plan I’ve ever had, and it worked. I kept telling D it’s all going to work
. I told her that for a year and a half, and here we are on the other end of it, and it all worked. It all fucking worked.
I am blessed. I just can’t even tell you. Family: it’s the best present ever. Merry Christmas.
Update: Christmas eve pictures.
