Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

So, we ended up telling the girls that we might be moving.

We didn't want to tell them until it was definite, which it still isn't, but the problem with having smart kids (which, by the way, is highly overrated) is that they hear all kinds of things that you think they can't hear. And naturally, the thought of uprooting our family has caused quite a bit of discussion around here, even though we've tried to be discreet. So Ana asked me point-blank if we were moving and I said that we were considering it and then she was so excited that she kept asking questions and then JANE picked up on it and then all horrible hell broke loose.

You know how I am having sort of a crisis of confidence about my ability to parent my kids in the best way to meet their needs and turn them into productive, happy members of society? You know...as opposed to living on the streets and panhandling to get the money to buy a new comic book and a bag of Hershey's kisses which they will eat for breakfast, despite my warnings of sugar crashes and cavities? (Sometimes I picture my children as the dregs of society and I think, "Dang, that was a lot of time wasted making them brush their teeth.")

Anyway, as further fodder to this idea that I know NOTHING about my kids, they reacted in the complete exact opposite ways in which I'd have guessed. Ana, who has tended to fight change and transition all of her life (like, she used to go upstairs and hide in her closet rather than say goodbye to a friend at the end of a play date), immediately began to make plans for living in a climate with a real winter. "Can we buy a sled, Mom? And can we paint my room the exact same way it's painted now? Can I take my door and just hang it on my wall in the new house?" (It's decorated with about four million stickers --which are going to be quite some chore to remove if we have to get this house ready to sell.) She was bouncing up and down. She couldn't wait to tell her friends and her first words to me this morning were, "Mom, I still can't believe we might be moving! I didn't just dream that, did I?"

But Jane -- my outgoing, gregarious Janie, who can make a life-long friend in the time it takes to go through the grocery checkout line-- cried (sobbed, really) for more than an hour. As is typical for my little extrovert, she was more concerned over never seeing her friends again than missing this house, etc. It was awful. It was very unexpected. It was heart-rending.

And it precipitated the worst fight Coop and I have ever had in eleven-plus years together. Because he thinks I betrayed our agreement to tell the kids when we were all together as a family and he thinks if he had been there when the news sunk in, Jane would not have been so upset. I, naturally, tried to put the discussion off until dinner but as Ana was asking questions, Jane picked up on it and I thought it would cause more anxiety and make it a bigger, scarier deal to defer the conversation until later. I feel like I made the best decision in that moment and Coop feels like I was absolutely in the wrong and he is angrier than I have ever seen him.

So, we've got that going for us.

Me? I'm excited about the possibility of moving, although it will be difficult to move so far away from my mom and I will hate to leave this house. But, as an Army brat, I've moved enough to know that there are some advantages to a fresh start in a new city, and also some heartbreak in all you leave behind. I contend that in today's day and age, when electronic communication is so cheap and easy, true friendship will not be thwarted by distance. I also know that home is not always where you live physically, but is almost always defined by where the people you love best are. I think it will be very good for my kids to move if we decide to go forward with it. I think it will build confidence and teach self reliance, which you only gain by overcoming adversity.

I guess if you want to know what Coop thinks about the possibility of moving, you'll have to ask him because we're still not speaking.