Back to the Hometown
This is part 2 of a 4-part series! In case you missed part 1, you can check it out here.
Honorable Mentions
Before we get into part 2, I had a few memories crop up from Part 1 of our adventure that I forgot about! First, I found a photo of Kevin bringing me my daily Espresso House and I felt the need to share to counteract all of the current (and future) Kevin roasting.
Look at this guy!
Second, I completely forgot about our McDonald’s experience in Sweden! I am not a McDonald’s fan, not one bit — it’s the last place I’ll pick to eat out — but we ate at a McDonald’s in Sweden at least three times. The first time, we decided to eat outdoors and, after setting our food down on the table and then running back inside to grab some napkins, the seagulls descended on our food and a nearby patron shouted, “Welcome to Swedish restaurants!” I got a Biscoff McFlurry, which is not available in the U.S. and that probably made it all the more lucrative. I went back for two more McFlurrys before making my way back to The States.
Lastly, we jumped in the Baltic Sea! Well, Kevin and I did. The kids dipped their toes in at first and then we found a little spot we could walk on and waded in until we were waist deep. The walkway was a little slippery but thankfully had a hand rail. Kevin took a hilarious video of me carrying our son all the way down the dock so he could dip his toes in, while he is wearing a sherpa coat — it was a cold and windy day!
Kevin and I took turns videotaping each other running and jumping off a dock that was about ten feet above the water. Kevin screamed as though the water was so cold it was going to kill him, completely overdoing it and making me think it was frigid, so I was pleasantly surprised when I jumped in and it only faintly reminded me of the day our pool heater broke and our swim coaches still made us try swimming for about 25 minutes, until enough of us complained about the cold and the piercing headaches we were all experiencing.
Part 2: Back to the Hometown
Now, back to the start of Part 2. I’ve been writing with somewhat of a frantic energy this past week. I think something inside me has been unlocked now that I’ve started publishing my writing and it feels like I can’t stop and all of it must come out and get onto the page as quickly as possible. At first, this concerned me and I felt like I needed to rein it in and start editing my work more — then I remembered that I have three kids ages 5, 2 and 0. Time is precious and limited — I only have so much I can dedicate to my writing, mostly in fragments, in this season of my life, so what gets down on the page is what I’m shipping out.
Maybe these are a compilation of unedited first drafts that will eventually become my memoir. Maybe I will never stop having kids or never find a quiet, calm season of life, and these will be the unpolished final drafts, and my kids will read them and be glad I published the first drafts and spent the most time with them.
I read something recently about how you should make sure that your writing sounds like you — you should read it out loud and make sure it sounds like you’re having a conversation with a friend. I’m sure it’s great advice, but at this point in my life I can’t even complete a sentence, let alone carry on a coherent back-and-forth conversation, and I’m not complaining! I listen to my kids first, and everyone else second, and this means a lot of dropped conversations to wait for one of my kids to finish constructing their own sentence, which often takes a substantial amount of time and the adults lose the thread of their own conversation in the meantime.
So this probably isn’t the exact way I would tell this story to a friend, but at least here I get to finish the story and see it through to the end — and use extra words, frankly!
We left the end of part 1 with the news that my grandmother had just passed away and this really cemented the growing idea forming in my brain that the house and property we had purchased in New York was the worst decision we had ever made. It had taken time, money, and now, worst of all — it had taken us away from our family and now it was too late. I took it as a sign from the universe that selling our house was the right call. We’d put it on the market in March, and we were super confident it would sell that summer (spoiler alert: it didn’t and it hasn’t).
This was one of those times where you think you’re seeing signs everywhere when really you’re just seeking validation for the choices you’ve made in life, or the choices you’re actively making, because we had not prioritized seeing our extended family when we lived in Rochester, or when we lived in Utah (although this was geographically easier, because we could drive there). Our extended family also didn’t come visit us, except for my parents, my in-laws, my brothers and Kevin’s brothers. So it was a lot of blame to place on our little homestead.
If there’s one thing we excel at, it’s making spontaneous plans. If there’s one thing I excel at, it’s making spontaneous plans with excitement. I think they turn Kevin into a ball of stress but he follows my lead and says comforting, supportive things like, “Babe, just book the flight. You do your thing. Don’t tell me how much it costs.”
We had an eight-ish hour flight back to the states from Copenhagen, and then a few days later, Kevin was supposed to fly to Denver for a work trip, but now we all needed to be in Oregon the following week for my grandma’s funeral. It felt completely overwhelming. So I looked at Kevin and said, “Why don’t we just all go to Denver and then we’ll all go to Portland?”
It was a three hour drive back to our house, and we didn’t really need anything, so it didn’t make sense to go back just to turn around and head back to the airport.
So, naturally, we booked a hotel at JFK airport and got a flight for the next morning. Because I have limits to my insanity, we did not get on a same-day flight. That wouldn’t have been fun for anyone. We all needed a break from flying and a chance to stretch our legs and eat some real meals. The frugal part of me really wanted to loiter in the airport for 24 hours because there are some things where I think, “Wouldn’t it be absolutely insane if we did that, with our kids? What a memory they’ll have!”
And Kevin goes, “No, no way, babe.”
And I laugh and he says again, “No. Just no.”
We ended up at the coolest hotel that, under no circumstances would we have ever spent $600 to stay in, but now our kids have the bougie memory instead of the frugal sleeping-on-the-airport-floor memory, which was Kevin’s plan all along. We stayed at the TWA Hotel which is actually in the airport, so we didn’t have to shuttle out of the airport and back in. Because I was already forking out $600, I added $40 more to get us a room overlooking the runway so the kids could watch the planes.
Unbeknownst to us, there was also a rooftop pool overlooking the runway. Bougie as hell. It was a tiny pool made for adults to sit in and drink overpriced cocktails, but the kids had a blast and we only briefly commented on the weird fact that we were all sitting out there breathing in jet fuel which could not be healthy, but oh well.
Colorado
I had texted my aunt and asked if there was any way we could invade her home for a couple of days while Kevin went to his work trip in Denver, and she’d graciously accepted. We had not seen her in years, and this was such a special visit! It was a continuation of the relaxed feeling we’d found in Denmark and Sweden. My aunt lives in a wonderful little community with a pool and several parks within walking distance. The kids had a blast and I was able to check in and get some of my work done.
Looking back, it makes me so sad that I felt like I needed to jump back into work instead of taking all of my bereavement leave right away. It would have been totally reasonable, but I was worried how it would look since I had just been on a two week vacation (but then at a work offsite the third week). I’m so good at telling my team to take the time they need and put themselves and their family first and I need to get better at this myself.
Regardless, we had such a fun time with my aunt and my cousin, and because she is my mom’s sister, there’s just this familiar and comfortable feeling in her home that mirrors my childhood home. It says something like, “this house is lived in, there’s stuff, there’s some clutter, there’s also everything you could ever need, like a spare swimsuit and enough beds and bedding for your whole family to sleep and be cozy, there’s food in the fridge and coffee in a cute mug, and what can I order before you arrive so you’ll have your favorite coffee creamer and your favorite foods?”
We put Colorado on the list of potential places to move to next. Lots of local parks, the hot and dry summers — we were tired of the humidity in New York — and family close by!
Oregon
Kevin wrapped up his work trip and we hopped on yet another flight to Portland, where we were greeted in our terminal by my parents, who had flown in from Michigan at nearly the same time! It brought tears to my eyes to see my dad holding my kids and smiling and hugging them, knowing that we had just lost his mom. But there was still too much to do, too much to get through, so I held the tears back.
My mother-in-law and sister-in-law had also asked ahead and shopped for my coffee creamer and the kids’ favorite snacks. I’ll always cherish the memory of yelling at my father-in-law after a two and a half hour car ride through traffic, about the importance of wearing his seatbelt while my children are in the car. Possibly the last time we’ll ever share a vehicle — we’ll see! If we do travel in a car together again, I found a great kids song called “Buckle Up” by Gracie’s Corner (ft. Lil Jon), and boy, is it a banger. It’s queued up and ready on the kids’ playlist.
The kids had a great week playing outside, helping their grandma water the flowers, the lawn, and the patio. They also moved an assortment of rocks, pine needles and other treasures around the perimeter of the house in a classic red wagon.
We slept in the upstairs bedroom, which is set up for hosting grandkids — complete with a hidden “nook” with a bed in it that our daughter loves to sleep in, but only for part of the night. Kevin slept on the queen bed and I slept on a twin bed on the floor with my son next to me, since he was still breastfeeding several times a night. When my daughter would inevitably come out in the middle of the night searching for me, she’d curl up on the other side.
I’m embarrassed to say that it took until our next trip here for me to kick Kevin out of the bigger bed, but I was mostly worried about our son falling out of the bed. This problem was solved by sending Kevin to the twin bed on the floor and reasoning that, if our son did fall out of the bed, he’d land on top of Kevin instead of onto the hard floor.
The day of my grandma’s funeral service was an emotional one. I have two cousins who are older than me, and the rest of them are younger than me. My grandma was like the sun in our family, and we all orbited around her, so this loss was hard-hitting. She lived a long and wonderful life, but even almost 90 years is not enough.
I spoke at her funeral service and I want to memorialize that somewhere, so I’m going to share it here. I’ve been to over a dozen funerals and I’ve always admired the people who got up to speak, got everyone to laugh and remember the good times. My uncle had given an amazing and tearful eulogy, so my goal was to make even one person laugh.
Hi everyone! For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Grandma Barb’s third oldest grandchild, and the oldest of the second wave of grandkids, and I’m Nick and Barb’s daughter.
One of the silver linings when we lose a loved one is seeing our family come together to be there for each other. Grandma Barb has always been such a permanent fixture in our family that I kept having to remind myself that she wouldn’t be here. I am so grateful for the time that I was able to spend with her and I want to share some of my favorite childhood memories of her with you all.
She had a drawer of fig newtons in her kitchen that was at a grandkid-accessible level and my brothers and I would make a beeline for the fig newtons as soon as we arrived. We lived about an hour away from her growing up, so we were probably starving and complaining about the long car ride. It’s funny because now that I’m an adult, I don’t think I would have sought out a fig newton as the pinnacle of favorite snacks, but I’ve always loved them because they remind me of Grandma Barb’s house.
Grandma Barb also loved ice cream, which was also great for us as grandkids because what kid doesn’t love ice cream? She always had vanilla bean ice cream at her house, and to this day I believe vanilla bean is superior to all the other vanilla ice creams. She was always down to get a milkshake or an ice cream whether it was with lunch, dinner or even as a snack.
We spent one weekend at grandma Barb’s house every summer while my parents went on a weekend away to watch a Boston Red Sox game in Seattle. Grandma Barb walked with us to the nearby school so we could play at the park, and we played restaurant for hours. I’m sure she ordered a lot of milkshakes. We also didn’t have cable tv at home so when we arrived for the weekend, she’d show us the tv guide, which, for the younger generation, this was a printed tv guide from the newspaper. We would read the tv guide and plan out our entire weekend based on all the shows we wanted to watch and what time they’d be playing.
Even when we weren’t at Grandma Barb’s house, we were enjoying her strawberry jam at home. Whenever we ran out of jam and got to pick out a new one from the pantry, we always asked for grandma Barb’s jam because it was the best jam ever and way better than the jam my mom made. She said this was because grandma Barb used waaaay more sugar in her jam, and, well, you can’t argue with that. Sugar makes it taste better, sorry mom.
Not only has grandma Barb always been a permanent, unwavering presence at our family gatherings, she was also the one who kept things running smoothly at deer camp. We would joke that we never needed an alarm clock because grandma was up before the sun making the coffee and turning the heater on so we could get dressed in a warm camper on the cold mornings. We always wished she’d wait just a little bit longer to start banging the pots and pans around, but when she stopped going hunting, and when I became a parent, I realized that if you’re going to get everyone out the door for that morning hunt you’ve gotta get up before the sun and get the coffee going and turn the heater on.
Grandma Barb was always a bit of a subtle badass. She was never super outspoken about it, but she had been around deer hunting as long as anyone and she could do anything that the men were doing. She could also be pretty scary when she got upset, or when she had to call us out for misbehaving, which was funny to me as I got older and realized she was just the tiniest person. But when she told me and Alex that we needed to go into the woods to pick out a stick so that she could spank us with it, we were terrified. She never spanked us with our chosen sticks, but I hope at least that we behaved better after that.
I got some extra time with grandma Barb in high school at the Winterhawks games. Another example of her badassery. My brother mentioned to me that she taught us that sports fandom is for everyone and I think that’s so true. She loved watching hockey and baseball and she supported all of us grandkids in our sporting endeavors from t ball to hockey to swimming.
She never talked badly about anyone except for hockey players with bad sportsmanship who took cheap shots, and maybe president Obama a time or two. Thanks Obama.
She loved the grandkids and the great grandkids so much and she was as involved as she could possibly be in our lives, even if it meant a lot of driving to our house or various sporting events. And she was a great storyteller. She loved to tell the story about McKenna and the ice cream maker, which, in case you haven’t heard it, she told a young McKenna that she had an ice cream maker at her house, and McKenna thought for a moment and then said “Well, who are they?”
I hope collectively we can all take on that storyteller role and keep Grandma Barb alive through telling and retelling her stories around the campfire. She was an exceptional woman and she will be deeply missed by all of us as we go through milestones and everyday moments in our lives without her. I hope I’ve done her proud with this tribute. I love you, Grandma Barb. Thank you.
After the funeral service, we gathered at my aunt’s house and caught up with all of the family that we hadn’t seen in several years. Some of them had only met our daughter, when she was two, and some hadn’t met either of our kids. This has been the most difficult part of moving away from our hometown, is that our kids aren’t growing up with the same extended family dynamics that we had. We both have huge families with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins.
But, even if we were still living in our hometown, that family dynamic is changing with the next generation anyway. Not everyone is having kids (yet or at all) and life feels different than it did when we were growing up. All of the technology available to us makes it so much easier to connect with people from afar, and it has also made us lazy. I’ve slowly retreated from my use of social media, mostly because I don’t want to share my kids’ photos on social media, and I haven’t found an easy way to keep in touch with everyone.
We left the family gathering that night thinking, “We’re definitely moving back to Oregon. This is where we need to be.” My in-laws surprised me with vanilla bean ice cream with our dessert that week, a Grandma Barb specialty, and we finished our tour of the hometown with a few more visits with friends.
Kevin’s best friend Michael and his family came over for dinner one afternoon and our kids got to play together, which was so special because we have kids that are almost the same age. This was Kevin’s best attempt at getting me to agree to move back to Oregon. By the end of the evening, I was almost sold on the idea.
We also got to visit with one of my best friends, Stephanie, and her husband and kids. They live in the cutest area of North Portland and I was immediately on Zillow after our visit, looking at available homes nearby. Thinking of raising my kids alongside my bestie, whose kids are older than mine so she can help me prepare for the next phase as my kids grow up — my heart was full.
Our last family visit of the trip required a drive up to the Washington Coast. Thankfully, my in-laws let us borrow their car for the duration of our trip! We drove up to visit my grandparents at their beach house. It was emotional to think these were now my only living grandparents. The kids were right at home with many iconic toys from my childhood, a giant bathtub, a small pool out on the deck, tv trays for eating snacks in the living room, and a wagon for walks through the neighborhood and to the beach.
My grandma had also befriended several of the neighborhood cats and kittens, which was an added bonus for the kids. She claimed they were wild, outdoor cats, but had bought them a selection of furniture and toys for the times they ventured indoors for a rest and a warm meal.
Unfortunately, it seemed like the nomadic summer would have to come to an end. We needed to pick up our dog from the friend who had graciously offered to watch him during our original trip to Sweden, and continued watching him as our travel was extended. Another friend had been coming over to take care of our cats while we were away. We also needed to pick up our truck, which we’d left in long term parking at JFK airport.
I had begun hatching a plan to never go back to the house in New York. I was starting to think it was cursed and it was keeping me from my family and friends and from living my best life. So we decided Kevin would go back to New York by himself, to get the truck and the pets. The kids and I would stay an extra week at my grandma’s and then we’d rendezvous with Kevin at my parents’ house in Michigan for our annual “Christmas in July” celebration. Obviously.
It’s funny how fuzzy a lot of this seems now. I’ve been using my camera roll to keep me honest on the timeline of events, because I’ve forgotten how this all played out in real-time. I thought we flew from JFK to PDX, and completely forgot about the stop in Denver for Kevin’s work trip. I’m sure some of it is the emotions, the grief, and how quickly everything happened — but I think so much of it is also the short-term memory loss that comes with having young kids. Every day is so full of detail, your brain tries to categorize and archive it all, and then when you look back at the big picture a year later, you can hardly remember how you got from point A to point B. Maybe it’s just me, but I hope I’m not alone in this!
We left our little farmhouse in New York on June 4th, and we have now reached July 18th, when the kids and I braved two flights from Oregon to Michigan.
Tune in next week for Part 3: Christmas in July, and a Michigan Summer!
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