Mothers are a girl’s best friend (Part 2)

This time it was my turn to visit my mom. With my dad’s recent employment and relocation to Wilmington, NC, I was tempted to take a quick drive (6 hours) from Athens to go and check it out. My mother still resides in St. Louis as we’re in the process of selling our house, so she flew in and we all met up. Even though my mother and I had just seen each other the previous weekend, we were happy to have more playtime together.

To continue our underwater sea theme, we took a trip to Carolina Beach, which turned out to be only 5 miles from their new residence in Wilmington. The beach is quite a detour away from the four-seasons (especially winter!) of the Midwest, but my guess is that it’s not going to take my parents too long to adjust.

We strolled up and down the sandbars aimlessly chatting of where our lives seem to have taken us, with my mother confessing she would never had projected in a million years that she would spend her life gradually moving east. She grew up and lived in California for 28 years, moved to the middle of the country in Missouri where she’s spent 24 years, and now will move to the easternmost coast for the rest of her life. This intrigued me to really appreciate the spontaneity of life. Whether we’re in limbo right now or not, it is a comfort to know that our lives are forever changing and everything will work out…even if it is the most opposite direction than we could have ever imagined.

Destination: Limbo

You’re hired! The words I anxiously await to hear someday. But not quite yet. It’s not my turn, my father has the new job. Even though I’ve known that he’s been in the job searching process for a while now, I never thought his relocation would coincide DIRECTLY with my upcoming location uncertainty. Graduation peril is upon me.

I am scheduled to graduate in August 2008, so I have one last summer to reside in my college five bedroom house with my four wonderful roommates. However, my lease is up when my college career is up: August 1st. I will officially be in “limbo” after this date.

Since my father’s selection as the new Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Wilmington, North Carolina, I will officially be in a completely unknown housing mishap. The date that my family has projected as their “move in time” just so happens to be the month of August. Perfect. I will be without a lease in Athens, without a home in St. Louis (where I’ve lived for the past 20 years) and without a clue what to do.

I know no one in Wilmington. Zilch. Nada. No connections, no job waiting for me. All this “nothing” adds up to a whole lot of stress. I cannot impose upon my family right smack in the middle of their transition into their new home in North Carolina, life after college is chaotic enough and to combine that with the perils and stress of my parents…I don’t think that’s a road I want to go down. However, moving back in with my parents seems as the most logical option because I don’t have a job waiting for me after I graduate. I hope to move to Spain in November (but where would I find a four month lease?) and I need to save as much money as possible (without the added expenses of rent, food, etc.) for the big move to Europe. I am always open to new opportunities and spontaneity, so these are just minor setbacks in the whole scheme of my unknown life path.

Nevertheless, this is one obstacle that I have yet to find an answer for. Let’s just hope this detour will turn out to be a stress-free, positive, and easy one. Yeah right.