Last Normal Night

These are our last few hours as residents of Normal, Illinois.  As of 10:30 tomorrow morning, we will be homeless and heading toward Missouri in a cram-packed U-Haul van.  We will be leaving Hannah here and Jim will be at school in the middle of the Iowa corn fields.

Jim.  Jim has been my rock this summer.  With John in St. Louis during the week and Hannah at camp for most of the summer, all my crazy fell on him.  I hope and pray it only came in waves and his last summer at home was tolerable. But he worked hard at the radio station, worked hard at home, loved the pugs as much as he could and was an all around pleasure to be with this summer.  I could not have made it through this summer without him, and I know we would have never gotten the house packed without his effort and brawn.

I took the pugs to a friend's house for a few days before he got up this morning and he didn't get to say goodbye to them.  Then he helped so long packing our U-Haul that he was late leaving for school.   And then it was not him and John, but Hannah and John who got the last photo in the house together.  Not fair to Jim, and I am truly sorry the day turned out that way.

Do kids ever know how much you really, truly love them?  I don't think they do - until they have kids of their own.  So I hope Jim has kids, and I hope they are soft hearted, kind, witty, intelligent, talented boys like him.  And then I hope he will know how we love him.

And I hope they like dinosaurs, sharks, planets, and Star Wars, (and in that order) because they will have Jim's old toys to play with when they visit Grandma and Grandpa.