Texas. Utah. Home.

My wife, Muri and I moved here to Utah late in 2019. We had found a beautiful house we could buy outright in the community of Daybreak but the real incentive was the presence of our Grandkids a few miles away. We had lived in Orange County California for over fifty years in a beautiful house in the hills that I thought we’d never leave. Especially for Utah. The first year was a nightmare … COVID descended upon us and my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. I don’t know if we’d have made it without family close by. By the end of 2020, cancer treatment was successful, and vaccines had brought the pandemic under control. We set to enjoying having our grandkids nearby and getting to know the people in our over-55 community. And we began to enjoy the natural beauty around us. Still, every once in a while, we’d look at each other and say, Really? Utah?

In July of 2022, our daughter, Amy, told us that her husband had received a very lucrative offer from a company he used to work for. In Texas. They suggested that we move with them, that there were many reasonably priced over-55 communities in McKinney. I said, Really, Texas? I hoped against hope that they’d stay but Muri knew … they were going. She took it with grace, as she does with most things. I didn’t. I was furious. It was my recollection that they had told us when we moved here that they would be here in Utah until the kids all graduated from high school. After a while I told then I thought it was a good move for them but inside, I was still angry and hurt. They made one more pitch for us to move, too, but we declined.  For quite a while I was losing sleep about it.

Well, they have been living in Texas for 3 months now, and this week, we finally went to visit.  My anger has pretty much dissipated, but I can still work up a good pout about them leaving.   I wondered what my emotions would be like visiting them in (Really?) Texas.   I’m happy to report that I was overjoyed to see everyone.   Their new home is beautiful … what my brother-in-law, Norm, would have called a McMansion.  We got to see each of the kids in their activities … Savy cheerleading, Maddux playing soccer as a goalkeeper and Reed swimming.  We tried some local restaurants, toured the area and spent a lot of time just hanging out together.   Oh, yes … we met our newest granddog, Lester, who took to me right away.   The best outing was a trip JFK Museum, which is housed on the sixth floor of the Book Depository where Lee Harvey Onswald fired the shots that killed the president.  It was sobering to stand practically in the spot where the shots were fired or to walk along the route the presidential limousine travelled.

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Sunday morning, we boarded an Amercian Airlines Airbus for the flight back to Salt Lake City.   It was a good flight.  But after many years flying into Salt Lake to visit our grandkids it felt odd to fly back Salt Lake after visiting them in Texas.  Back in Utah.  Home, I guess.

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Tags: family, feeling older, grandkids, home, moving

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