Change is Afoot

This one might be a little rambly.


A completely unedited picture of the view from my parents' current living room window - donkey pen and barn to the left.

What I didn't tell you when I wrote about home two and a half weeks ago, was that, while I was there, my family told me that they are thinking about moving again.
Well, right before Thanksgiving (just accidentally wrote Christmas...?  Don't rush the holidays too much, Esther), they told me they're definitely moving.

Which was really no shock to me, considering our nomadic tendencies.

Long Sidenote: Honestly, I'm quite okay with our nomadic tendencies.  It's amazing how much junk you can accumulate after living in the same place for more than a few years and, considering the amount of junk I have right now anyway, I probably would have been a worthy candidate for Hoarders if my family had lived in the same house all the time I was growing up.

Home is not the only thing that's changing lately:

Baby sister, who used to sit on french fries in her car-seat "to cool them off," is now learning to drive a car.  She got behind the wheel twice in the time that I was at home.

I don't really know why it's so hard to accept, but I always have trouble with little-sister-milestones like 16th birthdays and 18th birthdays and high school graduations and 21st birthdays and college graduations and DRIVERS' LICENSES!
That basically means the powers-that-be think she's old enough to wield a deadly weapon.  I just don't know what to think about it at all.

Also, my Dad, who has had the same profession since before I was born, is changing careers.

He worked for a sign business for many years, and I remember going into the breakroom and watching movies on the tiny, probably 10 inch, TV (most notably, Care Bears, which gave me nightmares, and Black Beauty, which firmly convinced me I didn't want a horse) from time to time.  Also, I remember my fascination with the Coke machine, which distributed glass bottles, and his boss's office, which was filled with the heads of exotic animals - trophies from far-away hunting trips, I suppose.

Then, Dad decided to start his own business.  I vividly remember the time he told us girls for the first time.  I remember we were on the way to Arkansas to visit my grandparents - a long drive which holds many memories for me.  He was driving, so he asked Mom to show us the logo he had designed, and he explained to us why he had chosen the name of his business and even the colors and font for the logo.

The thing I remember most about that trip?
Fear, bunching tighter and tighter in the pit of my stomach as he explained everything to us.
Clearly, he was thrilled to be setting out on a new adventure.  I was terrified because I knew this meant our life would change.

Maybe it was just the thought of no more glass-bottled Cokes or exotic animal heads or movies in the break-room that scared me.  I'll never know what it was, and neither will anyone else, because I kept that fear to myself and let it grow and grow and grow.

Our life did change drastically during that time - we were still adjusting to Baby Sister, we started being home-schooled, we moved for the first time.
Eventually, though, life settled down and the fear loosened it's hold on me.  I don't know that it ever completely left, but I did come to a point where I was fiercely proud of my Dad and the fact that he kept a small business running for more than 10 years.

I wish I could say that fear was unfounded, but it wasn't.  My family has been through some incredibly tough times with the business (in fact, I'm scoffing right now at the words "incredibly tough," because they seem so completely inadequate), but, not for a million dollars, would I go back to that ride to Arkansas and scream and cry at Dad not to do it like I so desperately wanted to at the time.

The one thing I know for sure is that, if we hadn't gone through this chapter of our lives, we would not be the family that we are today.
We are so far from perfect, but I love who we are right now.
And?  I am not afraid of the future.  I know, now, that we can make it through anything.