Thank you to all of you who have been so kind and supportive throughout the last few posts. I have read all of your comments, and your feedback has been very meaningful and helpful to me- more than I can express to you (part of the reason that I’m not going to try; I don’t want to attempt to say something and botch it…).

As the summer drags on, our family will be going through a number of transitions, all of them good for the family as a whole, and all of them profoundly sad for me as a person.

Oldest son and his wife will have some changes that will be keeping them in the Midwest for the forseeable future. My next two daughters will be moving out to the Midwest at the end of the summer, and one of my sons will be going away to school in a place far from Seattle, most likely on the opposite coast. All of these moves are to their benefit, but for a mom who would ideally like her family to live in an old farm house with room for extended family and grandchildren to gather at the same dining table, this is kind of a bitter pill to swallow. I joke that I would be willing to build a guest cottage in our back yard for the married kids to take turns living in, but in truth it’s no joke; I would like nothing more than to have all my chickadees roost at home and I would have no problem funding that endeavor.

But for practical reasons, that can’t happen right now.

So, we are in Seattle and most of our family is flying the coop.

I think in most families there is an expectation that children will get to a certain age and move on from their families of origin. They go off to college and get jobs and live in whatever city they find jobs and it’s good-bye mom and dad, hello independence. But that has never been our vision and that has never been the goal we raised our children toward. We wanted all of the siblings to be the closest friends, and it was a greater hope that they would stay close geographically than that they would land high-power jobs or take over the world.

The places they are moving will allow them greater opportunities for growth, and for that I am grateful, but on a personal level, I am just so sad that they will be so far away from us. I am trying to focus on being happy for them, and trying to just not think about what it will be like here with them gone, but it’s rough. It’s one more thing about life in Seattle that’s just.. just… hard to put into words…

So, that’s about it. That’s the latest news from the Bass ranch. Happy summer.