It was the summer of 1993, and I was following my dream of a career in retail (something I tend to consider a youthful indiscretion that turned into some Godfather like beast that wouldn't let me get away after realizing the terrible mistake I'd made) when I received my first management assignment in Bourbonnais, IL. That's about an hour south of Chicago, for those who don't know, which is pretty much anyone who has never been there. I will never forget that first weekend the company sent me up there to find a place to live. Ha! First of all, the gal in corporate in charge of travel arrangements had to rely pretty much on yellow pages for locating accommodations which landed me at the Holiday Inn on East Court Street in Kankakee. Trust me, if you knew the area at all, you would, at the very least be saying, "oh my, that sounds kind of dangerous". As for finding a place to live, welllll, that was going to be tricky. There were virtually no apartment complexes to be found, and the few rental type properties I was able to locate just by driving around randomly (remember, there was no internet) only had a sign with a phone number out front, which no one seemed available to answer on the weekends. Fabulous. As luck, or fortune, or God would have it, I opted to find a church to attend Sunday morning rather than continue this futile search. I was still a verrrry good evangelical Christian girl at this time. Picked one out of the yellow pages that sounded non-denominational enough and lo and behold discovered a good friend from college there. Here I was in her stomping grounds where she and her husband were in the process of building their own house, to which she, without hesitation, invited me to move in with them when it was finished. After making certain it was alright with her husband, my housing dilemma was solved. In the meantime, I lived with her folks in her old room. A little awkward, but it worked and it was CHEAP.
Have I mentioned that I LOVED my work? Well, I did. I was insane for it. I worked constantly and never, ever complained because I truly enjoyed it. Seriously. Open to close, 7 days a week, which during the holidays could easily add up to 80-90 hours a week. More than one comment was made to me that my social life was suffering and that I would never meet someone with whom to settle down. I usually responded that I had yet to meet anyone more interesting than my job, and that when I did I would gladly cut back on my work hours. Until then, this was my life. Little did I know that my future was right there working alongside me.
I will bypass all the gushy details, but about a year later an employee who had left and returned turned into a close friend and we proceeded to follow our own little "When Harry Met Sally" path from there. In January of '95, he professed his feeling for me shortly before moving back to Dallas, TX where he could live with his folks for awhile and save money while getting his Masters in Psychology at UNT. I think it was in March when I was offered a store in Wichita Falls, TX, about 2 hours NW of Dallas. And thus began a year of much mileage, mostly on his part, driving up after work on Friday, spending Saturdays in my little apartment or seeing all the wonderful sights of north Texas until I got off work in the evening. Sundays were similar and then he would drive back verry late that night. After a year of this, I realized that he really was serious about this and that I just might be serious, too. Also, I had quickly grown weary of Wichita Falls, and with no prospects with my own company in the Dallas area, I decided to step out of management and went to work for the first Nordstrom in the Lone Star State at the Dallas Galleria. Two years later we were married.
And he never did get that Psych degree.
Fast forward about 5 or 6 years and we are living contentedly in our nice suburban house, I'm working a nice 40 hour a week office job with a decent salary, and Erik is an associate pastor at our church where we are heavily involved. We have a 2 year old and a newborn. In the 5th week of my 6 week maternity leave I receive a phone call from my boss letting me know that I was not invited to return to my job. Let's just suffice it to say it was one of the most devastating and easily the most humiliating experiences of my life and move on. Nine months later I still had not found work when Erik comes home in the middle of the day furious because he had just been given an ultimatum that essentially led to him losing his job. In the midst of that pain we realized that there was no longer anything tying us to Texas, a place neither of us had ever really been that fond of, to be honest. Erik had begun his MA in Theology at SMU, but obviously had to stop when the jobs ran out. So we started looking for somewhere we could go to start fresh and finish the degree which is pretty much how we ended up in the breathtakingly beautiful Pacific NW. Portland, OR, the place where we began to heal.
It was in Portland that I began this blog, so I guess if you want to know what happened there, you can check the archives. Some of the high points include having another kid, Erik finally getting that graduate degree, and converting to Orthodox Christianity. You don't have to go too far back to see that after 4 years, our journey then took us to Canada. And there life got a little, ummmm, challenging. I don't know if I was too busy or too discouraged to blog, but I just lost all motivation to continue sharing. (Or maybe I just got too caught up in that cursed Facebook.) I hope to someday recount a few of my tales of woe and wonder in the great white muddy grey north, but that is for a later time. I'll just skip to the end of our time there. The part where the Canadian government said "Your adventure here is over. Go away." Excellent. That's just what we were hoping for; to shell out some cash we didn't have to move to who knows where and try to find work in a country that is experiencing record unemployment. Perfect.
This is when we were reminded once again that by the grace of God we have a truly amazing network of support. I believe our home parish in Portland would have orchestrated a military extraction were it in their power. My brother and brother-in-law in Arkansas were leaning more towards the Red Dawn/Rambo approach. What did happen was that we had 3 different people in 3 different states offer us a place to stay until we could get things in order again.
Which brings us back to where we are. Literally. Erik's parents had moved back to Bourbonnais, IL - the home of their alma mater where f-i-l was given a plum job offer - about 3 years ago. They had a finished basement that they were willing to convert into an apartment like living space for us. After exploring the various job markets and living expenses, etc. of the options we had, we landed here. Again.
So yes, nearly 20 years, 6 moves, 1 marriage, 3 children, 2 dogs, and 2 graduate degrees later, I am back where this all kind of started.
And I still don't have a place of my own.
