New Beginnings

Friday morning I was sitting at a red light on the way to drop my kids off at school when something strange happened to me. I looked up and saw a semi tractor trailer with the name of a moving company on the side of it, and realized it was really going to happen. I knew where the truck was headed...to my beloved Kitty's house. And when it got there, it would load up her things and take them a thousand miles away to her new home in Florida.

When I first got wind this move may happen I wrote a journal entry about it. I've been searching for it all morning, but haven't found it yet. At that time, I wasn't at liberty to say what "it" was, I simply said I just didn't know if I could take it. I was devastated at the thought of my sister-in-law (God, I hate that term, Kitty is my sister and my dear friend!) moving away from me. Then it kind of went away. I was hoping the whole thing had fallen apart. But it didn't. And a few weeks ago I found out it was going to become a reality.

Kitty and I became friends long before I even met her brother, who would later become my husband. She was just a kid, who got hired on at work as part of co-op program at her high school. I was nine years her senior, and in the throws of a very miserable marriage. I wrote all about this in several entries during the Fall 2010.

Kitty has come a long way since those days. She is very well respected in her field. So highly respected that she was heavily recruited by this company in Florida. Which, as I may have mentioned, is a thousand miles away.

But the doom, and almost terror I felt when I first heard this news, has subsided now. I know how hard Kitty has worked for this, and for the first time in a long while, I see happiness in her eyes as she talks about the new life she's about to begin. I applaud her for having the nerve to walk away from a job that was quickly draining the life out of her, to see where this road might lead. Most of the rest of us only fantasize about doing something like that.

So when I saw that moving truck turn the corner and head towards her house, I felt a ping of excitement. Excitement for the new life she and her husband are about to begin. Excitement for a new place (5 blocks from the beach) to go visit. There is a fear that we will eventually drift apart, but we'll just have to work hard not to let that happen. I like that gleam of hope and happiness I see in Kitty's eyes again. And in the end that's all that really matters.

Good Luck Kitty. I'll miss having you right around the corner, but will always have you right here in my heart.