Home

What is home? Or a home? It is more than the house we live in, but it can be and is also that. It has something to do with the people we are around, even if they aren’t ones that live in our house. After we moved out to Arizona, I was confused about where “home” was. This weird mars-like habitation wasn’t home – I didn’t know anyone, and I didn’t even know where I was going half the time. I still mostly thought of my parent’s house as “home,” although I hadn’t lived there in years. Slowly, over many years, Arizona has become home. It became a place full of community: church, school, work, friends who connect you people that eventually become your friends. It took time to make those connections, to build relationships, and frankly, to get used to the extreme weather before I started to think of Phoenix as home.

But now, it is time to return to our original home. Living 1800 miles away from family can be difficult, and with two little ones, it is even harder. We want them to grow up near their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. So we have decided it is time to uproot again – or rather to reroot ourselves back where we started. We are looking to move at the end of May, so that means this will be my last year at Archway Veritas. Actually, it will be my last year teaching for a while. I will be taking some time to be a Stay-At-Home Mom (uhm hellz yeah, I capitalized that title because it is legit job as well as a vocation), a task I am nervous about, but also so so so excited for. We are so happy to be moving closer to our community of family.

But like all things of this nature, it is also sad. I am sad to leave a place that I have come, through time, to find enchanting and beautiful. But more so, I am sad to leave my job at Archway because it is full of people and ideas that I love and cherish. My co-workers are not just my colleagues, they are my friends. Our work environment is built on real mutual respect and appreciation for each other. It is unlike any place I have ever worked, and probably ever will. It is a place that has helped me grow up, gain confidence, gain compassion, and like any place that truly impacts us, to lose a little bit of my heart to it along the way. I can only hope I will find even a semblance of this wonderful group of people when we move back to Chicago. Thank you, to all of my friends who work at and have worked at Archway Veritas. I truly cannot put into words how I feel at losing the ability to just be around you each day. I am also sad that Charlotte and Britton will not get to learn at this school, and be taught by those that have taught me so much. Thank you for what you have given me.

P.S. (because my junior high self would die if I didn’t): Dean has not officially transferred with State Farm, so the details of when and where we are moving haven’t been settled yet