We moved from that house when I was seven, just in time for second grade. My parents bought in Madison, where I went to school through eighth grade. But we moved within town a couple times—once only two years after we moved to the first house, for reasons I never knew, and then again when my parents separated. My father moved in with his brother, my mother moved in with her new boyfriend, and I moved back in with my grandparents, who had by that time also moved to the shoreline. I only stayed with them till my mother remarried and I moved into my step-father's duplex. They took the downstairs apartment and made a room for the new baby that was on the way. (That baby is now in the PhD aktivitas in Math at UConn and has dinner with us every Tuesday night!). I moved into the upstairs apartment and lived like a virtual emancipated minor. I spent one evening a week at my father and step-mother's and Sundays with the grandparents. My first semester of college, my mother and step-father moved again. So for me, that was seven or eight houses before I was twenty, and the longest I spent in any one home was six years.
Amy had a similarly peripatetic upbringing, moving from Dubuque, Iowa to Vernon, Connecticut when she was four, and then to Simsbury when she was seven, and then within Simsbury once before her parents divorced and so began a similar dual home existence. And she also never lived in any one place more than six years.
We just sold our house. It was our first home, and we lived there for twelve and a half years. Our kids, who are eight and five, have only known that house. Elsa is in a private pre-school, so she will stay put, but Cormac began a new elementary school this past Monday, and so today completes his first week in the new school. We're only renting for the time being, and likely will be for at least another year, but we plan to remain in Storrs, and hopefully can keep the kids in the same school till middle school begins, which in Mansfield is in fifth grade. I especially want Cormac to be able to stay in the same school next year and not have to change again. Elsa is more flexible, both because she's younger as well as because she's just that way constitutionally. She's happy and optimistic in some deep, genetic way, whereas Cormac is profoundly pensive and sensitive.
I joke that the next house we buy is the one I want to die in, and I say that because I just don't want to move again. Travel is nice, but moving is awful in almost every way. I want to buy a home that our kids can grow up in and know intimately, where there will be childhood friends, childhood memories, and eternally familiar streets.
So far, the transition has gone well. Cormac has been surprisingly adaptive, making new friends quickly. It helps that he likes his new teacher (especially since the one he left was awesome, and the first he liked in three years at his old school). And quite simply, he's getting more opportunities at his new school. He has regular art and music classes, and daily Spanish lessons. I asked him if he had learned any words in Spanish that he didn't already know, and he said no, but that he was learning to write in Spanish, which is new for him. Amy has spoken almost exclusively in Spanish to him since he was born, but we have only read to him a little in Spanish, and not required him to write at all.
Elsa, well, she can't wait till next year, but for her it's mostly because she wants to ride the bus. Actually, I think she wants to drive the bus, but that will have to wait.
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