I think that sometimes, when people you care about aren’t happy, or aren’t healthy, or aren’t doing as well, you almost want to go back and be with them just so you can suffer as much as they are… maybe it’s just so you won’t feel guilty.

Whenever something bad starts happening back in South Dakota, conversation around our home inevitably turns (at least for a few minutes) to Moving.

You know. Back there, the better to ‘help out’.

Mostly, this is simple frustration, along the lines of ‘I just wish we weren’t so far away’ but it doesn’t really make me feel any better, since the conversation itself is frustrating rather than comforting.

Same for my family. My dad’s comment on the subject this weekend was that moving just because he was (or might be) sick would be ‘damn silly.’

For those of you keeping score, ‘silly’ enters his vocabulary about as much as ‘dude’ does — it’s apparently a nice way of saying ‘goddamn stupid’. (As he points out, it’d be easier for my folks to move nearer to Bonnie or me than vice versa, and it’s pointless in the extreme to ponder any sort of serious plans before they even know what the actual treatments are going to entail.)

He has a point, which is the same one Jackie or I always make sometime during the conversation: we have good lives here, a good home, good jobs, and most importantly, good friends.

Really, that’s all it ever comes down to: I make fun of South Dakota’s inaccessibility and nonexistent techie job market and harsh weather and so forth, but I really do love it back there, and I love seeing my family. If I had a life back there and not just memories, I’m sure I’d still be there.

See, for me Denver’s not about the weather; it’s not about the professional sports or the shopping or the concerts or even about the job market (although all those things are great), it’s about the people. My people; the ones I would not trade for any money.

It’s the same reason my sister, whom I’ve nagged on a hundred occaisions to move, will probably never come out here: home is where your life is. By all means, move if you don’t have one (or if it’s not limited by geography), but take careful and complete measure of what you stand to lose if that’s not the case.

I acknowledge you can have a good life anywhere, and I acknowledge that the place I moved to that really helped everything come together for me and my family is not the perfect solution for anyone else. (Heck, it’s not entirely perfect for us, since it means we don’t see our families as much as we’d like.)

But this is home. This is our life, and it’s a good one. To those of you that help make it so (which certainly includes our distant family as well as our friends here in Denver), thank you.

Yeah. I often say that the only place we'd ever move to would be back to SoCal, not because of the weather (bleah) or the environment (bleah), but 'cause that's where both sets of parents (not to mention brothers) are.

We've often jokingly noodged my folks to move out here. I think they'd love it here, all things being equal. But they aren't equal. They have lives there, too -- friends, activites, and family. It would be a huge wrenching change for them.

And it would take a huge wrenching change for us to leave here.

(Btw, the narrower "Fourth of July" center column was nice, since my usual window width cuts off the stuff on the right. Just a comment.)

*sniffle* We love you too man! *sniffle*

Seriously, if it wasn't for you and Jackie, I probably would have dropped out of the local convention/living greyhawk thing, which has become a big part of my life now days.

So here's a big thank you back atcha! :)

There was a time that were your family lived was your home, even if you moved away. And though we could acknowledge our friends and loved ones in other places, this could never be the home that was were our family was. I'm not necessarily endorsing this idea - but that's very much the way it was.
And with all that we gain through our highly independent lives, we also give up a lot of things - things that we don't often see unless the "light" changes.
Also, I believe some people (me being one of them) are happier surrounded by the geography that they know; that no new town could ever really become home the way that home was. It may be realated to the fact that I never moved as a child. And I have always felt that if I had to leave So Cal I would likely moved to either the Bay Area or Salt Lake City, both places where I have family.