The Beginning of the Beginning

Trey — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:48:00 GMT

A huge week for us here. The kids, Ava and Chet finally came home! I missed them terribly. I hadn't seen them in two weeks. They're sleeping now. I worked them to the bone and they start school in two days poor things. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A and I have been working at least twelve hours a day moving her stuff. Half of it goes to my place, the other half to Boston where she will be getting her Ph.D. in sociology three days a week. She'll be making the four hour drive twice a week to see us and to teach a college writing course. I know it sounds nuts but if anybody can pull it off she can. She's amazing.

So the crazy week last week began with us packing up her apartment. Then on Thursday night I moved the car for street cleaning around one in the morning. I had TiVod the Obama acceptance speech and was very fired up and also very tired. Anyway that's my excuse for having parked her car in a tow-away zone. The next day I picked up the UHaul while A taught back to back classes and then while I was moving her (with two paid helpers) she was racing around town on the eve of the Labor Day Weekend desperately trying to liberate her car. If she hadn't needed me to move her I think she would have chopped my head off.

I started loading the truck around 1pm, unloaded the stuff for our New York apartment around six pm and then A and I returned to her old place and finished moving the last little pieces around 1am. Then we were up again at 7:30 to drive to Boston through all the holiday traffic. She drove her car with baby M. I drove the 14' UHaul.

It was a thrill to see where she grew up; the sprawling house where she and her brothers were raised in an idyllic little semi rural town between Boston and Cape Cod. Her family took me candlepin bowling and we ate amazing fried chicken from the poultry farm just down the road. Then this morning I caught a 9am train back to Newark airport to pick up the kids coming from Atlanta. Before we got home I braced them for the huge mess and then bribed them with the promise of ice cream if they helped me put everything away. I would have loved to have waited for A and M on Thursday, to feather our nest together, but A will be so tired I think she'll appreciate that we've done most of the work without her.

I so want her, and little M, to truly feel that this is their home too.

Here is what the living room and kitchen look like now, thanks to my wonderful kids:

It was so lovely putting them to bed. I offered to sing them one of the songs I used to sing them when they were a little younger and they eagerly said yes. I can't tell you how grateful I am that they still wanted to hear me butcher James Taylor:

Father of the Year : moving

The Beginning of the Beginning