Wanna know a secret?
Of course you do.
In the history of that question, there’s only been a handful of people who’ve said no, and we both know they were lying.
If you’ve been reading my words for longer than a year, know me in real life, or have ever exchanged an email with me, then this secret is no surprise to you.
Cindy and I don’t have a son and daughter named Max and Mia – our matching set of mini-me’s are actually named Ethan and Haley.
Pen names are masks that make it easy to unmask our true selves, and back when I first started writing online I wanted one for each of us. I was Writer Dad, Cindy was Daisy, and Ethan and Haley were Max and Mia.
Yet there came a time in my writing when referring to Cindy as Daisy no longer felt honest, as though I was keeping truth at an arm’s length for no apparent reason. Two years after my first post, the pen names of my children seem like old clothes, threadbare and out of style.
We are opening new doors daily, but the excitement of this new life doesn’t match the old names, so I will leave them back in California and remember them fondly.
Ethan and Haley started school this week.
Though the academic calendar doesn’t begin until after Labor Day in Long Beach, neither child felt shortchanged by the brevity of their summer – both leapt up the stairs to their classrooms on the first day like true believers on Christmas morning.
They are eager, excited, and well deserving of the new environment that will feed their hungry minds and germinate their blooming brains.
Like Ethan and Haley, Cindy and I feel instantly at home, though 2,350 miles removed from the roots of our previous life. The natural transition is quite amazing, considering the immediacy of our move.
But Ohio isn’t a temporary harbor. It is our new home, and I feel my happy spirit now dangling its legs at the lip of a deep contentment that was previously just a pipe dream.
I feel overwhelming gratitude for this chapter in our family’s history, and since being grateful and keeping the feeling inside is a lot like wrapping a present and keeping it hidden on the top shelf of the closet, I want to give heartfelt thanks to every person who has helped our family along the way, championed our good fortune, or wished us well in our travels. Without you this would have been difficult, with you it’s been wonderful.
But I do miss home.
Which gives Writer Dad a perfect new identity. This site is now the bridge between our old life and the new one; my words the planks of thought that will remind me where we were and lay the days of where we’re going.
So now you know my secret. It isn’t a big one, but it is the final barrier between us. And we both know a well built bridge has no barricades to impede the crossing.
