the hard part

One of my granddaughters came over last night.  She told me, and not for the first time, that she doesn’t want us to move.

Our daughter and her family live next door so the kids come over all the time.  Except for the first year and a half for the eldest of the four grandkids, they have lived next door to us their entire lives.  When they were babies and toddlers, while Sarah was being a stay at home mom, she would bring them over during the day.  We called it the Happy Baby Parade.  My grandson, always an early riser, would sneak out and come over early in the morning to visit while everyone else in his house was still asleep.  I would take them all for walks around the neighborhood or to the local plant place to buy flowers to put in the gardens.  They have always had this place to come to whenever they wanted some time and space away from their parents and siblings or want personal attention or are just bored and looking for something to do.

They are older now...the youngest 8, the twins 10 and the boy 12.  They have friends and social lives now and are often gone during the weekends or have friends over.  Even so, they are over here all during the week.  They still holler in the door for me to come out and play.

So this is the hard part.  I am so ready to leave this big city where I have lived all my life.  I am ready to leave the traffic, the pollution, the noise, the rudeness, the increasing density.  The diverse inner city working class neighborhood that I have lived in and loved for the past 34 years is already gone due to gentrification.  And I know that I will see them plenty, they will be coming out to the country house to stay for days at a time, in truth, they already do this.  But it will not be the same.  They won’t be popping over during the week to chat while we eat dinner and they pick the carrots and bell peppers out of my salad before I can eat it.  I won’t be here when their school project is due the next day and mom is too busy to help.  I won’t be here to hug and console when they are mad or unhappy and their parents are too busy or beleaguered to care.  

I am ready to leave Houston, but I am not ready to leave my family.