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This is the first in at three part series chronicling the relocation of my family from a small town in North East South Dakota to Las Vegas. Due to the surrounding circumstances, what I've written is intensely personal and often emotional.
Thank you for reading and please, as always, leave copious feedback.
We were able to bump up the closing on our house to the 27th, which was also our departure date. We intended on loading a moving truck starting Wednesday the 25th, then shoving off late Friday after our daughter, Ava's, preschool graduation. We'd then leave Ava behind with Amber's parents for a week (she had two dance recitals and we really did not want to make the25 hour drive with a 4-year old). Once we got moved in to our place, I was going to fly back, spend a week in South Dakota and finally end the process by flying to Vegas, Ava in tow. During all of this, my stress level was such that I was having intermittent chest pains for most of the 9th and 10th. As the job thing was being settled and the reality of it all set in, I amazed myself and was somehow able to function well enough to get things handled. Plane tickets were purchased, a route plotted, and a 24-foot behemoth of a moving truck rented. All we really needed a place to live. I starting digging a bit, finding a number of apartment complexes in the area. We pursued one in particular, which is where we ended up. Of course we didn't have it locked up until May 23rd, four days before we were set to leave. If it had fallen through, I likely would have been sleeping at Texas Station for a week... It is nice enough in our new place. We have two bedrooms, a patio, granite counters, stainless steel appliances and in-unit laundry. The grounds are nice, with a pool, hot tub, gym, and a good amount of space to walk the dogs throughout the gated community. People seem mostly friendly and the noise level is perfectly acceptable. Our lease is six months in length, but will likely end up being a full twelve by the time we are ready to buy a house. The move itself was an abject disaster. We were in a 2400 square foot house with four bedrooms and a two stall garage. I like to fix/build things, so I had a ton of tools and related equipment. Despite selling $2000 worth of clothes, furniture, etc., we ended up with way more than the moving truck, or our apartment, would fit. I ended up giving away my awesome, massive work bench to my dad. We also threw away the racing seat/stand/steering wheel setup for Gran Turismo 5 and a host of other things. Even having done so, I was forced to rent a 5x8 UHaul trailer for nearly $600, or about half what I paid for our moving truck (do the math on that). We FINALLY got everything loaded at 3pm on the 27th, two hours AFTER closing on the house (thanks to the Malsam's for allowing that to happen!). After a 16 day sprint from the day she accepted the job to the day we left, we were at a point of exhaustion we'd never experienced before. I cannot impress to you enough how difficult this all was. It was legitimately the toughest stretch of my life. My wife and I looked a teach other several times and thought, "What the fuck are we doing this for?" If not for each other, our family, and our friends, who were largely amazing in the lead up to the move, there is no way this could have happened. To wit, if I had to do this over again, I'd sell almost all our stuff. We would have been much better prepared and much less stressed. It would have made things soooooooo much easier that I cannot even begin to imagine... Here we were, on the 27th, at the end of my daughter's pre-school graduation party. We loaded her up, went to my in-law's, kissed her goodbye, and took off on a 300 mile drive at 9pm. My dad drove the moving truck, I had my Tahoe with the trailer and my mom and wife were in her Venza. Let me tell you something about being alone in a car for six hours after leaving the only place you'd called home for 32 years: You think. A lot. I thought about the idea of moving from a town of 25k to one of 2 million. I thought about my job security. I thought about my family and friends and how much I'd miss them. But mostly I thought about my daughter. For 1500 miles, 25 hours, I spent almost all of my time thinking about Ava. I thought about how we were taking her away from everything she knew - her grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, home, back yard, grass........all of it. I thought about how she was being moved to an entirely new area, where she could not play in the front yard unattended, where she'd have no yard at all for at least six months, where she'd not get to grow up seeing her grandparents all the time, where schools were worse, where it would be only her, me, and her mother. I felt bad. I felt guilty. I felt like turning around. Never mind the deterioration of our situation in South Dakota, for the first time in my life, I felt like I'd put myself and what I wanted in front of what I perceived to be best for her. As a parent, your job is simple: - shower you child with love
- keep them safe at any cost
- prepare them for the rest of their lives
The first will never change, no matter where we live. But the other two, I felt like I had jeopardized to a degree. Sure, a ton of people grow up in urban areas and turn out to be wonderful people. But taking that into consideration at the time was difficult. I've not told anybody this, not even Amber, but I cried. Sitting in my Tahoe all alone, I cried for miles and miles. I thought, and I cried. I am still not sure how I feel about what we are doing to our kid, especially now that we found out open-enrollment is closed for the public school system, putting her in a much less than desirable kindergarten class (the school is safe, but it is old, in a not amazing neighborhood, and has a long history of underperforming test scores). But the fact is, she is MUCH more resilient than Amber or I, and, at least so far, seems to be as happy here as anywhere else.
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