A Change is Going to Come

It’s a scary thing, changing every aspect of your family’s life. Not scary – it’s terrifically terrifying. But we are going to do it anyway.

In just a few days, my family and I will be moving out of our large house in the suburbs of a big city (Atlanta) and will move into a yurt on an organic farm that rests in the beautiful mountains of TheMiddleOfNowhere, NC. I will also be trying to start the business of my dreams. And working full time. And we will be restoring our beloved Lucinda, a 1972 Airstream Argosy 24. And maybe buying a motorcycle (my wife has yet to sign off on this part). And… who knows what else. I’m sure craft beer will somehow be involved, though.

Is it forever? We don’t know. We bought our house when all four kids were still at home. Last week, the third of those four graduated from high school and is about to leave to go backpacking in Europe, so it is now just my wife and I and our nine year-old daughter, Annabel Lee, on a daily basis. We just don’t need this place anymore.

Yet we didn’t want to simply downgrade and continue to live the lives we always have. The daily grind catches up to all of us at some point, and I’m certainly not exempt from that statement. I’ve experienced burnout. We’ve lost jobs due to companies filing bankruptcy or downsizing. We’ve just come to realize that there must be more to life, that there must be ways to see more of the world and get as much out of life as we can during our brief time on this beautiful planet. We don’t know where it ends; however, we are certain that it begins on Idle Acres Farm.

The farm has been in my wife’s family for many years. A few years ago after their father Jim died, her brother Tim took over the farm and moved his family into the small yellow house that sits on a hill overlooking the five acres of blackberry trees and the larger field down below where their father routinely got his tractor stuck in the mud and, once, even submerged his Honda Ridgeline in the field causing the catalytic converter to catch fire and burn the truck from end to end. The firemen weren’t able to save the truck because, well, they knew their trucks would get stuck so they didn’t go down there. Jim once told me that was the best truck he ever had. Poor guy. Now, that field is home to two horses (the young Rio and the crotchety old man Nakoma), a few sheep, and the most beautiful turkeys I’ve ever seen. There is a pond, a garden, a field of bamboo. And dogs, of course. What is a farm without dogs? A creek runs along the edge of the field where, after having lost a bet to our soon-to-be backpacking son, Tim sat in his skivvies in the middle of the winter for a solid minute. He started out strong but by the end was shaking uncontrollably, yet his smile never faded.

“I can’t believe you held out the whole minute,” I said.

“Just trying to create memories for the kids,” he said.

And truthfully, that’s what this is all about. Creating memories. In the last seven years that we have lived in this house, we haven’t created nearly enough of them. Sure, we’ve had the graduation parties and Easter brunches and summer vacations to Indian Rocks Beach that have brought us an immense amount of pleasure, but after the parties end it’s once again the reality that there’s never enough money and that time leaks through the cracks in the mortality dam. I know we have wanted to escape this for a long time but have continued to delay it. I know it’s my fault, really. I’ve not wanted to sell this place because of a harvested anger from my youth that I don’t want to get into at the moment, so I’ve continued to delay what could be the rest of our lives and consequently have brought to a screeching halt our potential to create more memories. It is memories that tie our generations together. It is the memories that keep us telling stories and wanting to learn about the people of our past, the people who made us who we are. I know that. I’ve just been too stubborn to do something about it despite the pleas of my beautiful wife.

So, we are going to go for it. For the next year, we are going to homeschool Annabel and see where the universe takes us. I’m not scared anymore. Honestly. I know that as long as I have my wife by my side that we’re going to be ok. We’ve proven that to each other time and again, and I’m sure it will not be any different. I will report back from time to time on the various aforementioned changes to our lives, and maybe, just maybe, be able to relay some new memories we’ve created. There is no price tag for memories.

Until next time…