MoQevSpeaks?

I suppose it is now official. I am the only remaining member of my immediate family still residing in Minnesota. My parents moved to Arizona this week. Luckily, I am about to have in-laws in this state, and they are the best in-laws a man like me could hope for. It is still strange, though, to know that I can’t just hop on over to the parents’ house for dinner or whatnot. And I can’t help thinking, “That’s my job; I’m supposed to be the one who moves away.” I’m supposed to be the one who goes away to school and stays there, finding a job with whomever will take me and leaving my parents behind in this place they’ve made their own. Like my sister did. However, they beat me to the punch, and as soon as I bought a house they unloaded all of their accumulated crap on me and took off. The only sollace to be found in this situation is that it is the same kind of dirty, underhanded shit I would pull on my own children when they come along. “Sorry, Billy, but daddy’s going far away - and leaving you with his six crates of identical allen wrenches! Ha ha!”
Not that I fault them in any way. If I had the means to go somewhere warm and not work I would. But I don’t, so I stay here and try to make my mortgage payments while my mother is lounging by the pool in Green Valley. Green Valley. Who came up with that? A city in a desert state named after a color that does not occur in the natural habitat.
Perhaps I’m a tad bitter. Perhaps I haven’t yet had a chance to truly meditate on the gravity of the situation. I’m getting married in eight months, and will at some point be fathering children. Those children’s paternal grandparents will be two days’ drive away from them. My own grandparents were three hours away by car, and that was bad enough. I love my parents. They are fantastic people (hell, they came up with me, didn’t they?). I guess what I’m saying is that I miss them already, as does my own future family, and I hope that the two thousand miles between us doesn’t have any effect on the bond that has been forged over years of (sometimes undeserved) love and patience and understanding. Sorry to get mushy, but Nancy and the Don, you’ve given me all that I have, and don’t think for a second that I don’t appreciate it. But seriously - enjoy yourselves, for Christ’s sake. You’ve earned it.