Thinking About Major Changes

Ray and I have been thinking about making some major changes. A change in location, a change in our family situation, a change of job for Ray, and a major lifestyle change for me. We are thinking of relocating from North to South.
We've been down south for numerous vacations and we've always enjoyed it. I have some family and friends that live in the south. And so many family and friends vacation there too.
We are very interested in a specific area, and a home built by a specific builder. We are getting tired of bitter cold, icy, snowy winters, and we'd very much enjoy a milder climate. Ray would also like to scale back on his commute to work and the 'rat race' that is the New York City rush hour. We'd also like to ease up on our financial commitments and a move out of New York City could do that for us. These are all the positives entailed in moving.

The negatives would be losing the daily connection of cherished family and friends. The BIG negative would be the miles between us and the kids and grandkids. I love that the kids can drop in anytime for a visit, to do a load of laundry, to ask us to babysit, to watch a football game with Ray, and I love the family 'get-togethers' for parties and holidays. I always knew that the close daily contact/relationship that I have with my grandson Jayden would eventually have to change, but this move would hasten that change in an abrupt manner. Not a situation that I think either Ray or I are looking forward to with relish, and not something that would be very welcome to Jayden at first either. This is the only home he's known.
Kids are resilient though, and Jayden always talks with a lot of excitement when he's going to be staying at his Daddy's house, so I think he will fare much better in the upheaval than Ray or I will when it comes to changing these living arrangements.

Another big negative for me would be leaving the home I grew up in. Well, to be fair, it was not the home I was born to, that was a tiny little semi-attached house that also held a lot of nice memories and I survived that move. This house was my home for ten years before I got married (we moved here when I was nine and then I was married and moved out at nineteen), and then it was my home again when I moved my own family in twenty-nine years ago this June. So I have a lot of wonderful memories and a great attachment to this home we live in, but I also realize that a home is more than walls, doors, floors, and windows. I love this house and all the memories it holds for me, but I can love another home too, and the wonderful thing about memories is that you can move them with you.

What I really would love is to be able to pick up everything and everyone (family, friends, the house I grew up in) and relocate it all.
Impossible.
So the next year will be spent weighing pros and cons.
Once these changes are made there will be no turning back. And I don't want to be like other couples who have so many regrets after retiring and/or relocating. Ray and I were actually in that regretful relocation boat once before many years ago. We moved from New York to Minnesota when our oldest son, Brian, was only five months old. Our son, Erik, was born there, and when he was five months old we moved back 'home' to New York. I think maybe if the boys had been older, maybe school age, and I had met other mothers, things may have been different. But I felt so isolated, and both Ray and I are so 'family oriented', and we both come from big families, so even though we are both homebodies, it was a very lonely life for me.
Ray always says he would be happy on a deserted island with just he and I, but I think he would feel just as sad leaving the grandchildren behind. And now we have little Sophie making her entrance into our world next month too.
So, we have some very tough decisions ahead of us in thinking about major changes.