Goodbye and Hello

“Bye Dad.” I said. “I’ll miss you.”   “I will miss you too, son.” He said. In all the time I had known him, I had never seen tears in his eyes until that night. He was flying out very early the next morning to start his new job in California. The evening’s preparations for his flight and our indefinite separation kept us busy and the sadness at bay.

Me and my dad.

            The days following my dad’s departure to California weren’t too bad, although I never got used to him not walking through the door around 5 o’clock for supper.  I missed my dad. He was my best friend and playmate, he was my teacher and he was fun to be around. Friends from church invited us over and some of the neighborhood kids came almost daily to play with us, not knowing when our last Lego battle or Nerf war would be. I did not want to believe that leaving was real.  I didn’t want to go to a strange, new place and then be expected to live there and enjoy it. If I thought ahead to the day when I had to say good-bye to my companions, I would get very sad.  I played ultimate Frisbee and attended Wednesday night youth group and hung out with my neighborhood buddies as usual to keep things feeling the same. Surrounding myself with my friends and my family made me feel happy, but when I was alone, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What will that day be like when we have to leave?” Keeping busy kept the feelings of denial and sadness from creeping in.

We were also busy repairing the house to make it look nice so we could sell it and move out to be with my dad.  The house was about as clean and neat as it could be considering that the floor of the entry way and most of the hallway had been ripped up, and the whole house smelled of plaster and paint with buckets stacked up and put out of the way. Bare cement sat there, cold and hard and uneven, with no carpet over it, but it was always swept and tidy. That was a skill my mom had. Even when we made a huge mess with putty on the floor, or dust from taking apart the frames of the doors, she always managed to clean it up so things wouldn’t look as cluttered. There was so much to do, too much for my Mom to do alone. Some men at our church, called the Barnabas Builders, found out that my family would be moving to California soon and that our house needed to get finished before we could move. For the next 6 weeks they came over on the weekends and replaced doors, painted cabinets, put in a new bathtub, sink and toilet in one bathroom, laid new tile in the shower and on the floor and fixed all of the kitchen drawers. The work crew also removed the ugliest cooking stove hood in the world! A man from the crew took it and said “This is exactly what I need! This would make the best solar oven!” So he took it home, and I never saw it again and my mom was very relieved that it was gone for good. My dad came and visited a couple of times and he would paint day and night to help get the house ready to sell and to hasten his family’s relocation to California.

            After six weeks of work, the house that I had been in since I was 3 looked brand new. It had new carpet, new texture on all of the walls and ceiling and new paint. A wood floor covered the cement slab from the front door, through the kitchen and all the way to back door.  The room that I shared with my two younger brothers finally had a door on it. I could not believe how much the house changed in 6 weeks.

Soon after we had gotten our carpet put in, our 16 year old cat had to be put down. He had failing kidneys and would not have made the trip. I was sad because I was beginning to say goodbye to my friends. I still wanted him to stick around since he could still jump and play and run pretty well for a three legged cat. He was such a sweet cat and a regular part of my life. Our two other younger cats would make the trip just fine and provide comic relief in the days to come.

By mid-September, our house was on the market.  We would get calls right in the middle of meals sometimes about someone wanting to take a look at the house. One day the call came that started the dominoes falling towards our moving out of the house and leaving the great state of Texas and all that I had ever known.

My dad came and helped take things apart in preparation for the move. When the movers came, they took all of our belongings, including our 65 VW beetle. The house I had known for most of my life was empty. I got a strange feeling every time I went into the house after that. I felt like it should still be ours, and yet it felt as though I was intruding or it wasn’t part of my life any more. It was like saying goodbye to another one of my familiar friends.

Many of our friends in Texas helped us pass the time.

In the nine days that followed, we lived in a hotel room and it was very boring.   I got a cold and felt terrible.  Friends invited us over one last time to say goodbye, but I couldn’t go. I didn’t want to miss my last night of AWANA or my last time at Wednesday night youth group. I recovered just in time for our flight on November 16.  Along with my mom, my brothers and my 2 cats, I boarded an MD-80 bound for Sacramento and I said goodbye to a city that I called home my whole life.  I was sad, but I couldn’t help but laugh when my cat started yowling loud enough to be heard over the jet’s engines. I saw Lake Tahoe for the first time and my mom said that we wouldn’t be living that far from it. I started to hope that I would like California after all. When we landed, I felt like everything was too bright for one o’clock in the afternoon, but then I remembered that we were on Pacific Standard Time now, so I was so tired the first day.

We stayed in another hotel room for two days while we waited for our stuff to arrive. The house we were going to stay in was a two story house, so I was pretty excited since I had never lived in a house with stairs. Our cats enjoyed

Hot cocoa after snow tubing

chasing each other through the house, upstairs and down, and we called the racket they made, “Cat Thunder.” When our belongings arrived, it took some time to unpack it all. We spent the whole next day cutting open boxes and putting their contents away. When we were done, there was the biggest pile of paper I had ever seen in our living room. A pile so big, it was taller than Joshua!  We didn’t know how to get rid of it all, but some friends from our new church came and helped us fold all of those sheets of paper so we could take it to a recycling center.

We finally started to settle in, but I couldn’t help but feel like it wouldn’t be the same. I enjoyed the nicer weather in California more than the unstable climate in Texas, but I missed my friends and my favorite activities and places to be. Then we started to explore places that we had only read about. We went up into the Sierra’s the first weekend we were in California, and we enjoyed being in the fresh, cold mountain air. My hopes increased that I might really like living in a new place.

I quickly started doing activities that I enjoyed in Texas, such as biking and

Belt promotion in Karate

playing sports at the park. I have some new favorite past-times too such as karate and yo-yo club. I miss my friends very much, but I also enjoy being with my new friends here in California. I have learned how to make friends with new people and to cope with different situations.  Adjustments have become easier than when I first moved to California. Hope has ignited where doubt once ruled. Now my home is here in California. We enjoy being so close to the mountains and the endless recreation they offer during every season.  This move has changed me for the good. It will never be exactly the same when I visit Texas and I still feel a tug to go back and visit my friends, but California is my home and I look forward to growing up here.

--Jonathan Todd