Trade-offs

 

SF Bay Area traffic last night.

This weekend my hubby and I are back in the SF Bay Area to celebrate our youngest grandgirl's birthday, as well as partake of some early familial Christmastime shenanigans. It's nice to reconnect with beloveds at this time of year, even if only for a few days. Makes all the difference in the world when we go our separate ways, as we all invariably do.

When we left Silicon Valley for Humboldt County, there was a compromise. The traffic pictured above was happily jettisoned for California's quiet North Coast. For a small town vibe amid several not tiny enclaves that make up the Fortuna/Eureka/Arcata/McKinleyville corridor along U.S. Route 101. That's where we call home, a Redwood tree-lined mish-mash of locales and folks, banana slugs and brown slugs, deer and other critters. We've lived there now for three years and I LOVE IT. I really do. I also adore my children and grandkids, and none of them live anywhere remotely close. Remote is what we are along the North Coast, nothing like last night's travel on Interstate 280, OMG that was a slog/nightmare/reality for many Bay Area residents. Not Humboldt Bay Area, ahem, but the San Francisco arena that other than our kids and grandgirls, WE DO NOT MISS IN THE LEAST. That's the trade-off I'm talking about, because previously we lived twenty minutes from our eldest daughter's family. We drove maybe two miles in twenty minutes last night, inching along the choked section of freeway between San Francisco and San Jose. Yet we arrived safely to enjoy a delicious meal with those dear relatives, then later I played a Lego Advent dreidel game with the granddaughters and reveled in their holiday joy.

I was the Moana game piece. Didn't win, but that's never the point for me, lol.

A sacrifice within my head and heart, my soul too. Choosing to leave family for retirement.... It was hard, but not so difficult that we remained in Silicon Valley. Yet I miss being around my kids, their lives, their thrills. I miss watching the grandgirls grow up, and my grandsons too. They reside in the Sacramento Valley, and we don't see them as much as before because it's hard to travel westward across the state, especially in winter. I'm grateful we're all gathering this weekend, and I accept responsibility for not being an abuela in either of those families' back yards. Sometimes that's how it goes.

I didn't think it would occur this way, my husband's retirement earlier than we originally envisioned. I am SO THANKFUL for it, don't misconstrue, so is he. It's just that I spent a lot of time with the grandkids when they were tiny, driving between the SF Bay Area and northern California. I was so much younger then, lol, or how it feels now. And then Covid.... Covid blew a hole in everyone's life, but those few months/years of necessary isolation seemed to invite a further separation, which led to us upping sticks for the North Coast. I accept all this, reasons adding up to moving away from family, young families. I accept it, but still it rankles within me.

Instead of this being a weekend visit, what if we still lived here? What if my husband still worked at a job that had been grating on his nerves since 2018. What if, what if, what if.... I don't have answers to that query or questions, or theoretical posturing. Because WHAT IS is we moved away to have a retirement life we find exemplary, such a blessing to even have that choice. And within one day (sometimes longer than other days) we can drive to hang out with our wonderful family! And they come to visit us, and we'll trade-off these familial sojourns until, well, we don't.

Because those days are coming too.

After my parents were both dead, I flinched at accepting the matriarchal mantle; I didn't want to be that old, responsible, in charge. Was leaving the family base a reaction to that? Hmmm, never considered it. Huh. Perhaps. I'll give myself that suddenly realized benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, we moved away while still young enough to do so, young enough to brave terrible traffic to return or long drives over mountain passes. We had kids, raised them, helped raise wee descendants, then started a new chapter of our lives. Yup, that's what we did.

Maybe this post comes off as an apology to my children and grandchildren. Maybe it stinks of elitism in that we have the means to enjoy retirement and family. I don't know, other than I needed to write it, maybe if only to chew on the nugget raised in the previous paragraph. My sister-in-law didn't get a choice when her husband died suddenly of cancer; some life decisions are thrust upon us in miserable waves. All we can do is go forward, trusting in where we are being led. Because if I know ANYTHING in this life, moving from one bay area to another was entirely an act of good and graced faith. And the beauty of acting in good and graced faith is believing all will be good and gracious at the end of even the longest day spent in cruddy traffic. And in all the other days too.