What about Family?

It’s hard to believe our five little babies grew into the awesome adults in this picture taken at one son’s wedding in October of 2021. They started out so tiny, so needy. Of course they’ll always “need” us—to know they are loved, that we are proud of them, that we’d drop everything and fly across the world if they truly need us. Those five kids have multiplied, and more are to come! You can see from this picture below taken in June 2022 that we have a wonderfully large and growing family with busy lives of their own.

We love each and every one of them beyond words. We count them as friends as well as our kids. We are grateful to see the support network they’ve formed with each other. In fact, they’ve spent holidays together when we were out of the country.

Other than one half-joking initial reaction of “Well, don’t come to me for money when you run out,” before they really understood the budget, all of our kids have been supportive. We may worry a little that they’ll need us. But they worry more that we will need them!

We could see the sadness in their eyes and the “last goodbyes” were hard with each of them, but they are happy for us. And since we’ve been on the move, having a video call with each one at least every couple of weeks, things feel pretty normal. They want us to live a healthy, active retirement. That support means so much to us. We even feel like we have a real connection with our grandkids through the video calls. Even the infant clearly recognizes us and smiles, reaching toward us, and they like for us to “kiss them” or “bump heads” through the phone.

When we decided to sell our house and begin preparing for our nomad journey, only two of our five lived in our area and one of them was planning to move out of state soon after we left. It was no big deal for us to leave after we’d been left. But life changes, right? The oldest made a career move that put them (and our little grandson!) within an hour of us. Then just a few months before we left, our daughter and her husband announced they would be staying in the area for a while as they were now expecting a baby, our granddaughter, to arrive about a week after our ship set sail from Vancouver to Australia. Our tears of joy mingled with sorrow over all we would miss. (Thankfully the baby ended up being born early and we were able to meet our granddaughter while on a port stop in Los Angeles!).

That caused us to pause and re-evaluate our commitment to this change. We know the nomad path we’ve chosen is right for us, and even though they lived near us we didn’t see them often—not even on holidays, usually, because of the careers some have.

Thankfully, our youngest has thrived independently at college across the continent from us for years—and let’s be real, how much help are we from 3000 miles away? Other than our kids, we are not needed. All four of our parents have passed, and our last pet.

With the technology we have today, the physical distance is surmountable. Although FaceTime every couple of weeks keeps us close to our busy adult kids, it’s not enough for babies, or us grandparents who just want to throw the ball with them and snuggle their soft little head. We will visit when we can, hopefully every year or so. After living as nomads for several months, we learned another grandchild is on the way! We are so excited and will see him when he’s about 4 months old, but we know that with 5 kids this chain of births will continue for quite awhile! We can’t go home for every event, as much as we’d like to.

Every person who commits to travel the world full-time has to make hard, thoughtful decisions. We’re moving toward something wonderful, but it necessitates leaving behind those we love, who love and sometimes need us. That part of my momma heart that always feels inadequate will struggle with guilt, but I know we’re doing the right thing in modeling a meaningful life “outside the box.”