We moved a few miles but all within the same school district; The Others moved their families out of the Oklahoma City area and across the United States.
We raised our children only a few miles from where my husband went to elementary school; most of The Others moved elsewhere and those with children put them in schools outside of their hometowns.
The Others came to visit for the holidays and stayed with the parents, we lived across town so we went home after these family gatherings.
The Others came for summer visits, we arranged our schedules so that we would be in town for their visits.
The Others made long distance calls back home to stay in touch with the parents, we made frequent week night visits and lunch plans every Sunday after church.
I always envied The Others being able to come and go, their exciting life of travel and venturing out beyond the familiarity of home and hearth. But I loved the fact that we lived our life so close to “home” knowing we were making our foundation for our children right there in our home town.
Then after almost 30 years of marriage in a matter of weeks we made a decision to move to Germany. In the course of 2 months we joined "the others" category.
We no longer have children in school but we will be the ones coming home for Christmas this year, we might even be staying at the parents over the holidays. Better yet in just a couple of weeks we will be the ones coming home for vacation...
And this vacation will be ever so special we are going to home to meet our newest granddaughter!
For this particular trip we won’t care that The Others will not be around to spend time with us. We will relish the short time we have; splitting this time between our sons and their families and our parents. We will be on a leisure schedule all the while loving being with granddaughters Ryan and Isabella!
I have experienced The Other side and it is something I think everyone should get a chance to enjoy. I have not yet seen all I want to see during my time as an Other but I can tell you one thing when this stint is over I am going to enjoy once again being the hometown sibling~
No comments:
Post a Comment