Getting Off the Fence
Ok, I have an emotional grip now I think. Gary and I have decided to mix things up a bit and relocate ourselves in the Ithaca, NY area for a while. We made the decision way back in January when we were on the long drive home from our visit over the holidays. Believe me it was discussed thoroughly as we had hours to spend on the topic while watching the yellow stripes pass by. I felt good about it for a while but I will admit that once I got home I found myself getting back up on the fence and avoiding the topic. I was finding that for every good reason to go to NY there was and equally good and opposite reason to stay. Family and friends being the best example of this. My heart aches when I approach the subject with my Mom or when our friends say how much they will miss us. Then I hear the excitement in Gary’s parents voices when we talk about the real estate we have been looking at and I get goose bumps over the prospects of being close to his family and discovering a new place. (emotional grip is lost as I have a big lump in my throat now) So we had another long talk the other night and we realized that we should do this. We are in a unique situation with Gary’s job (he works from home) and we should be taking advantage of the freedom it allows us to choose where we want to be and we should be doing it while Ellie is young. So who knows maybe in another three years I will be writing about our next big move to the coast of Oregon or the mountains of Montana or the beaches of the Great Lakes. The future is wide open…
11 comments
It just gives me an excuse to come to NY to visit!
Oh my goodness! That’s such a big decision – Oh man, that’s so hard! Wow. We’re going to miss having you near – even though we don’t see each other much – it’s fun to know you are just up the canyon from us! We are really going to miss you – but thank heaven’s for blog’s to keep everyone in touch!!! Ü This will be a fun adventure for you and Ithaca, NY is lucky to get you!!!
OH Dannette!
Your Mom must be so sad to see you and that darling baby leave.
But, you are right…you have your whole future ahead of you.
I wish you well and your Mom will just have to save her airmiles to travel ALOT!!!!!
Good Luck and God Bless you guys!
I, for one, can say that I’m VERY excited for you guys to move! I know it must be extremely difficult leaving everything you know, not to mention your family and friends. But it will give us out here in NY a chance to get to know Ellie and spend some precious time with her while she’s young. Kevin is totally excited to have another cousin close by. And it will give me a chance to really get to know you, Danette, which I am very excited about!!
Jill said it! It goes for me too Danette. Seems like Gary moved away forever ago and none of us Marcoccia’s are good with the phone (except your mother in law :)) so we didn’t talk much. So not only will we get the chance to know “the real you” better, we’ll get to see the fun new things Ellie will do and we will be able to get close with Gary again. It will be hard for you Danette and we understand that – but you’re our family too so when/if you are having a bad day and missing everyone there…we will be doing all we can here to keep you smiling!
That will be one of the hardest decisions of your life, it was for me. It is really hard to leave the comfortable place that you have known all your life, especially leaving family. I cried my eyes out the day we drove out of the valley and every time since. It’s hard hearing about family events and not being a part of it. I hate that my kids don’t go down to Grandma’s house on the weekends like we did as kids. But since Mark and I have become “gypsies” we have really learned to love the lifestyle, then when friends and family come to visit we can give them new experiences too. It is easier to keep in touch nowadays but the physical closeness can never be replaced. When you do go, my advice is to fully embrace it! No regrets, make sure you make the most of the experience. During our moves I have spent a good amount of time mourning my losses, which is necessary, but then it really effects my family. Learning to focus on the positive and not the negative, once the decision is made, is the best advice I can give. What a ride you are getting on!
Well I wasn’t going to comment on this post but now I will!
Do you remember Gary when you came to ask for Danette’s hand in marriage you said to Paul & I you can rest assured I have no intentions of going back to the East, I love the West & the Mnts.
Well we both giggled under our breath wishing we could believe you but knowing how strong family bonds are. And how things change, when we started out we announced we were buying a trailer house to start out in & Grandpa Mckenney called your dad a A@# & said man you will never get it paid for. When we bought a home & Truck , we might have just put his first foot in the grave. But now our kids say they are moving cross country & overseas & all we can do is say WHAT!! I will say I don’t like it but you do what you have to & look at all the experiences that you will have and the only conciliation is that I will come visit so be ready for the in laws!!
I am also so very thankful for Gary’s family & how they do love Danette. It is a good time if there is a good time & you need to make the most of it , but you need to BOTH be sensitive to each others needs as you make these decisions togeather.
LOVE YOU ALL, CAN’T WAIT FOR OUR GIRLS WEEKEND ,MOM
That’s a very nice comment Grandma Mckenney. Well one thing is for sure my love for the west and the mountains and you guys certainly hasn’t changed, and it never will. And I hope it brings you comfort to know that considering we have families we’re both close with here and in central NY, I plan to create a life for us in BOTH places. That’s really how it has to be and I won’t be denied. We don’t in any way think of this as a permanent move. Danette’s old boss Steve at DV asked us why and my answer mainly was “because we can”. That’s really the bottom line. How many people can move across the country and not have to worry about finding a new job when they get there? ..among some other things that are very important to me, this is the main reason why I embrace this very big change. Either way we have to get out of Timberlakes, and for a number of reasons we’ve decided Heber is not the place.
I’ll add, too, that we have to sell our house first! Which may be harder than we think what with this ill conceived, ridiculous war & out of control spending damaging our economy and all (but all that’s for another discussion, so I’ll stop there!). So who knows you might be stuck with us for a while more if we can’t unload this place in TL 🙂
BTW we expect that Paul will take a least one week off, for one August, so we can all go to race at Watkins Glen. Who knows, we could be living within hearing distance of the track!
Danette, I know what you mean. It’s not easy. But I am with Leslie —
Enjoy where you are at the moment. To this day I say with EACH move (single or married), “I can sink or swim.” Most of the time I’ve dog – paddled, but it has been great! Remember how you feel in your heart. If your head agrees, you’re on your way!
Gary, I want to let you know what happened when I moved your wife’s older sister from her hometown to Tennessee. Paul helped us drive the moving truck from Smithfield to Bear Lake and then we parted ways. I knew it would be difficult for Leslie, but little did I know… She cried for about an hour and a half; and it wasn’t just a “sniff, sniff I’m a little sad” cry, it was a heavy sobbing and not able to settle down cry. I thought for sure I had made a huge mistake and I even considered not showing up for my job due to my wife’s mental breakdown in an east-bound Ryder truck. I tried talking to her, but my efforts were futile. Eventually she did calm down and we talked and enjoyed the rest of our three day drive. I’m not saying this will happen to you, but I would advise having a mild sedative on hand and lots of love and patience for your sweet wife. Good luck with selling the house, although the comments from the blog make it sound like you guys are already gone… We are anxiously awaiting your arrival in Duetschland so we can set out for exotic European locations with our kinder. Prague looks like a beautiful city and we can’t wait to visit with you guys!
Leslie has great advice! In our moves there has been so much growth in each place and lifelong friends made. There is no doubt going to be “homesick” days. I seem to have them more frequently being in the East even though we probably see the family the same as when we lived in Oregon. For some reason it just seems so far away. I have loved living here though and wouldn’t trade it for anything. My family always says that they wouldn’t travel as much and see new sites if we didn’t move around.
Hopefully you guys will have some good fortune in selling your house like we did. In OR we got on at 10:30 at night and posted it on craigslist and a guy was on our porch the next morning 7am wanting to pay cash. I know CRAZY! That just made us even more sure that the move was right.
I hope we get to see you before we decide to go on our next adventure back West!