The Fourth of July

When I reminded the kids that today was July 4th, a holiday in the States, Micaela responded, "Oh, yeah. July 4th. That's the day you told us that we were moving to Germany." Really? She remembered the date we told them? "Of course! You told us and that night I was crying in my room, thinking, "I can't believe they told us that we're moving to Germany on July 4th -- America's birthday!" Oops. Didn't think about that at the time.

So, we are now beginning to commemorate our having survived the first year here. We informed the kids that we were moving only a few days after we found out for sure. Over the space of a week, the chances of us moving went from 0% to 10% to 25% to 80% and then to 99%. It all happened very quickly and David reminds me that right at about 80%, he looked to me for a definitive answer that I was on board. My response was no. Why move? We were living a charmed life in an Atlanta suburb -- our kids were happy, the schools were good, we had great friends, the convenience factor of where we lived was very high...etc. Why disrupt all of this? David's response was, "Well, I wish you had told me this when we were at 10%."

By the next evening, I had changed my mind, albeit reluctantly. This opportunity was something David had been hoping for for years and he had always talked about wishing the kids could have the experience of living in Germany. He would often visit his good friend Dina and her kids in Frankfurt and came home with lots of details of their great life in Germany. I realized that if I said no now, we would probably never get another chance and would always wonder what might have been. And this wasn't a permanent move, right? We would at some point move back to the U.S., right?

We needed to tell the kids right away. After all, we would only have six weeks before we were to fly to Germany and there was a lot to do. The kids were understandably upset, but by the end of the evening of July 4th, we could see them pulling themselves up by their boot straps and vowing that they would do their best to see this move as a big adventure. It didn't hurt that we promised them that we would be able to make trips back to visit their friends at least once a year and they would have their own e-mail addresses to keep in touch.

But my mind is still reeling with the thought that we have been here almost an entire year.