Family Lobbyists

And the campaign begins…

I have been bracing for pressure when I go home to Massachusetts for friend Kim’s June wedding. My family doesn’t understand why I stay in Tennessee, unmarried, untethered. I don’t understand it either. Mostly I am just too lazy to move.

My adorable nieces work on me each year when I go home to visit, wanting to know when I’ll be back, why do I have to leave, why don’t I live near them anyway? My loneliness works on me the other 51 weeks of the year as I wander around Clarksville with no family nearby, missing out on the birthday gatherings, home and often alone on the holidays.

Tonight, my sister called to tell me about a sweet house that is for sale near hers. Obviously, she knows me well enough to know of my desire to be elsewhere combined with my laziness. And apparently, out of the blue, my oldest niece, age 11, (who they call “the visionary”) announced she dreamt I moved into the nice house near theirs with the pretty garden in the back.

I looked up the property on the realtor’s website. The listing is so new, there are no photos yet. But my sister and my mom think it’s perfect for me, and if anyone would know, they would.

While on the phone, Sis was mapping out my new life that she and Mom constructed … complete with a job at the hometown College from which I graduated, close enough to walk to work at the imaginary job I don’t have. I like the way it sounds. Maybe. I’m not sure. There are major doubts. Like the part where I move back to the town I spent 30 years dreaming of leaving. The operative word being ‘back.’ Triumphant return home? Or giant step backward?