Iowa, B.C., Texas and the Kingdom of Saud

When we were back in Iowa visiting with my family a few weeks back, we spent an afternoon out in the rural area that my dad’s family helped settle well over a hundred years ago. The old homestead is the house I remember from my childhood and visiting my Grandma and Uncle Jimmy, who was farming it at the time. It was a house that my great-grandfather built and all but his oldest son was born there. In fact the trees that run along the driveway were planted the day my grandmother was born back in March of 1894. The house is still livable but no one has lived there for several years and it shows. One of the McCarthy boys, Phil, owns it now. He is my third cousin on my grandmother’s side. At least I think that is the degree of our relationship. I have trouble with the whole cousin rating system once I am past second cousins. Phil’s great-grandmother and my great-grandfather were siblings is all I know. And even that might not be entirely accurate. Phil wants to sell the acreage the homestead is on, preferably to family. My sister and her husband looked at the place over the summer but decided against it as the house needs too much work. After we visited the place with my dad and Katy and my nephew, Luke, Rob surprised me by commenting that he could see himself living on a place like that in future and that he found my hometown a fairly nice area to live. Interestingly, I had thought about buying the homestead on different occasions in my live but it was never for sale until recently.

I bring this up only because Rob and I have been talking about where we want to retire. A bit premature you say? Well, not really. We are both of the mindset that “retirement” in its current form is a fantasy for the majority of people our age (40’s). The social structure will be bent to the breaking point by the older boomers and won’t exist in its present form for us. Unless we win the lottery (and apparently you have to play in order to win) or I really do write that Oprah Book Club masterpiece some day soon, we are going to be working in some form or another all of our lives. What we need to do is settle upon careers that we enjoy and that can be done anywhere. And we need an anywhere to do it.

So, now we have one possible anywhere. My family’s homestead. Next week we are heading to B.C. (British Columbia) to visit Rob’s mom in her new digs. It’s in the mountain valley area and it’s apparently very beautiful there. That might end up being another “where” possibility.

Rob mentioned the Iowa retirement option to both his daughters in an email he sent to them recently updating them on things going on around here, not the least of which is a possible job offer that could take us back to the states very soon. Jordan, the younger, thought that Iowa was about me and my wanting to be close to my family. Rob asked me about that too when we were discussing it. Probably because when we first met, I was under some pressure from my mother and sister to move back to my hometown and I was resisting it. My reasons then where that though it would be good for Katy in some ways to be nearer my family; it would not have been good for me. Not then with my life being what it was. I told Rob that now was different simply because I am different. My circumstances are different. Things do change. Iowa would still be good for Katy because she would grow up around extended family and as an only child with older parents, it would be good for her to have connections beyond us. It would be okay for me too now because I wouldn’t be in danger of being sucked into some of my family’s dysfunctional ways the way I would have been had it been just Katy and I.

However, for the immediate future there is what a move to Houston and then quite probably Saudi Arabia would mean for all us. Iowa or B.C. is food for thought and a later date to ponder and act upon.