A new chapter
posted in Alaska, New Mexico, News, OmegaDotter, Parenting, Politics, Pop Culture, The Move 2, Weather, Winter |New Mexico, here we come!
OmegaDad accepted a position in Big City, NM, yesterday. The job starts in about 8 weeks. We took OmegaDotter out to dinner after her team gymnastics for the day and told her…
She cried.
Sigh. I remember what it was like for her when we moved here to Suburban Alaska, those first few weeks when she didn’t know anyone at all, and I spent time cuddling her every day after school for a week while she processed being away from her One And Only True Love and her friends from Arizona.
Now she has to go through that again.
Oh, I know quite well that within a year, she’ll have new buddies galore, and thanks to the Miracles Of Modern Technology she will be able to keep in touch with her old buddies. But for a few months, it will be very difficult for her.
In the meantime, I have been struck—quite unexpectedly!—by sadness at leaving Alaska. While I will never, EVER miss the long, cold, dark dark dark winters, which leave me dull and depressed and miserable, I will miss the mountains, the long summer days, the fun of having daylight change so rapidly from short to long to short again. I will miss the chance to see the northern lights. (Alas, last night, when the latest wowza geomagnetic storm hit, it was overcast here and the almost-full-moon was shining behind the overcast. So we got a lovely pearlescent sky, but none of it was the northern lights, wah!). I will miss having actual seasons. I will miss the thick, sweet, peaty smell of the wet boreal woods, which is so different from the light, dusty, vanilla scent of dry ponderosa forests.
I will also miss that odd plus to living in Alaska, the yearly PFD check. While we should have banked it, we used it for such things as flying down to…the Southwest!…right around Christmas, or, last year, out to the Southeast. Those trips were something that kept me sane during the darkest days near winter solstice.
I don’t have many friends here, myself; we managed to deposit ourselves squarely into the Bible Belt of Alaska, filled with conservatives. I remember during the last presidential campaign arriving at the dotter’s gymnastics facility to be greeted with a bleacher full of women wearing “Prayer Warrior for Sarah!” pins. On the other hand, our next door neighbor is a lovely liberal lady with her equally liberal female partner (who has had to deal with some really ugly experiences as a result); I will miss her and her family dearly. Also, the family of OmegaDotter’s dearest friend are liberal and laidback; I’ll miss them too.
But it’s a new adventure! Onwards!
