Sweet Home Indiana

I recently received word that my mother has accepted a job in the Southwest.

Talking to her over the phone I asked "How exciting?!" followed by a swift and obviously tardy "Congratulations!"

Moving along she filled me in on all the details. I was unusually silent through the entire conversation.

I am very happy for her. She is a wonderful person, who has always put her family first. She has been pursuing an opportunity to move to the Grand Canyon State for quite some time. She recently retired from her job with full intentions of departing for Arizona to head for a sunshine filled, semi-employed stage of life.

The next part may sound selfish, but it is what happend and I want to be completely honest about it.

Towards the end of the phone conversation I felt a slight change internally. Externally, I couldn't be happier for my mother. However, a cold finality was setting inside of me that brought tears to a grown man's eyes.

This journey for my mother siginifies the end of an era. An era that started in the early 1970's in my hometown and has lasted for three and one half decades.

My parents first moved to Columbus Indiana from Northeastern Ohio arond 1974. With them they brought my older sister and their dog to build a house from the ground up while also managing to raise a family. A few years later I was born the first native Hoosier of the family. A couple years after that my younger sister followed in my young footsteps. Our mother's parents were also there too and they provided a great deal of the memories that serve to remind me of a blessed childhood.

Outside a quick stint in the Peach State our family was half Buckeye and half Hoosier, but has maintained a connection to my hometown in some form for the past 35 years. When my mother and father divorced my father spent some time in Columbus, but soon after moved around Indiana and is now settled on the Indianapolis southside. After school my older sister, Wendy, went to college and ventured up the East Coast and recently made a move similar to my mother's and is now in the Southwest. My younger sister, Lesley, also left for college after school and also went to grad school. She still lives in Indiana, but no longer in Columbus. In late 2002 I accepted a job in Providence and moved during the dawning winter hours of a snow flurried January day to the Ocean State. Of the three children in the family, I had remained in Columbus the longest after school which made the move personally very difficult for me.

Unlike my sisters, I did not leave for college. I went to work full time right away and remained close to my friends and my mother and grandparents. For eight years after school, Columbus remained my home. Small town life was comforting. I lived it according to the text book that could be entitled Small Town Life. I was a regular at the 4th Street Bar, literally where everyone knew my name. My friends (mostly working factory jobs) always knew where to find me and I knew how to find them. I worked mostly as the token "banker" of the group of friends. We played in basketball leagues together, partied together, went to weddings together, etc etc. Mom and I would dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's on Sunday evenings, occasionally joined by Lesley when she could make it home from college.

In late 2001, my Grandfather, James, passed in the days immediately after tragic world events had taken place. I cannot explain in any number of words the amount of goodness that he put into my life. I was his "one and only Grandson." Not only was he a great husband, and father, and grandfather, but during World War 2 he served in the United States Navy. He served in several capacities most notably the Pacific Theater and New Guinea. The stories he told were always relayed to me in such a modest and sincere manner that I could tell that how he told it, is how it was.

After he passed I decided that I wanted to join the millitary. In a brash move, I resigned my position with the bank while in the middle of the recruitment process. I had filled out all of the paperwork. I went through a day of prodding and poking at the recruit evaluation center in Indianapolis. To conclude the day and directly before signing on the dotted line, my name was called at the wrong end of the building. The doctor on duty wished to review my medical information bureau with me.

"You were treated for attention deficit with Ritalin?" he asked.

"Yes, I was. It was more than ten years ago, I did not think..."

He interrupted, "You did not think what? Why didn't you disclose this information?"

At this point I wasn't even getting the evil eye from the man. He called in my recruiter representative and advised him of the situation. My local recruiter had been on medical leave, so I was now dealing with a higher ranking officer in his place. Needless to say he was not happy. He tried to convince me that I would still be able to join, but in somewhat less capacity than I had orginally qualified. I immediately felt outcast for merely forgetting to disclose an obsolete medical condition that hadn't been treated in a decade. On the spot I told them this wasn't for me. They hustled me home and only followed up with a single phone call months later. They were trying to save my recruitment before my next birthday disqualified me for standard enlistment by age. It did not take and so I was left without a job, without any guarantees for what was next, and with the knowledge that had my grandfather been alive, he would have been proud of me for trying.

After this ordeal, I was left to bounce between odd jobs in Columbus. My departure from the bank was unsettling at best after my recruitment fell through. The country's economy was in a shambles and that was only magnified in a town of 42,000 people. I had a handful of references to work with, white collar experience in a blue collar town, and just about all the time in the world to stew. Eventually the job I have now brought me to Providence.

In the days prior to my departure my emotional state was a series of peaks and valleys. I was leaving so much behind, yet so much more lay ahead on the horizons.

A few of my very good friends came to me and asked about my move. Alex, Josh, (friends since elementary school) and Dave (a friend to all of us since high school) approached me about how the move was going down.

I told them "Me, a truck, and a car tow."

Josh told me "No way we'd let that happen. I'm callin road trip."

And they're only intention for the conversation was to aid my move. I believe to this day, it was the best and only way to say goodbye to my very closest friends. (I have to tell you I nearly cried. And before it was over I did.)

In the hours prior to my departure, I was alone with my mother and my grandmother. I had said goodbye to my father the night before. I don't remember the last time I saw Lesley before the move, but we did at some point meet to say goodbye. Wendy was pearched high up on the East Coast in Boston waiting 45 minutes from my destination, ready to meet me with support if needed. My friends had yet to arrive to get the journey underway.

Mom, Grandma, and I had been anticipating this moment for nearly a month. We knew it was coming and we knew it wouldn't be easy. Grandma had suggested tea to help settle everyone's emotions. Making mostly small talk, the tears started to pour. Grandma held composure the best of the three.

All the normal "I'll miss you's" and "we love you's" were in order.

And then in the midst of one of many silences my mother said, "You can always come home."

Reassured by this, I agreed.

Shortly after 6 a.m. there was a soft knock at the door. My friends had arrived. We shoved off around 6:30 and drove for 16 straight hours. In the back of my mind I had contemplated turning the caravan around at least a dozen times deciding to take my mother up on her final advice.

But it would never happen... And with mom's words "I'm moving to Arizona" I know I never will be "home again in Indiana". Columbus is now and will always just be the place where I grew up. And aside from the brief spat of tears that snuck up on me while talking with mom about her news, I'm ok with that.