Our Final Goodbye to Charleston

By February, I found full-time employment and as things thawed out a sense of normalcy returned to our lives.  When Dennis and I weren’t working we spent time driving around the county in search of our new home.  We soon found out that the district which we would ultimately choose would not make much of a difference.  Western Hanover did not have a large population and the multi-category special education programs were consolidated into just a few schools.  However, little did we know the decision we did finally make was a good one for another reason.  For years we had tried to give Ben a little brother or sister.  I had resigned myself to the fact that my crazy chromosomes were not going to allow me have another child.  As fate would have it, within a year I would find out that I was wrong.  The fact that we moved into a school district with the county’s very best elementary school did have an impact on our family’s future after all.

In April we received a call from our realtor in Charleston.  We finally had a contract on the house.  However, the buyers were very motivated to close as soon as possible.  Unfortunately, we had succumbed to financial pressure and a couple of months earlier had decided to rent the house.  The renters were not as motivated to move quickly.  There were several nasty conversations through our realtor with the renters which made an already difficult situation more stressful.  We still had a substantial amount of furniture in the house, so we had to coordinate getting the renters moved out, then getting us moved out, all so our closing date would conform with the buyers’ schedule.

Ben was such a little trooper during all of this.  The day we moved out was a very long one.  We found out shortly before we left for Charleston that the renters were still in the house and needed an extra day to get out.  It was too late to arrange an another place to stay that night so instead of spending the night our house, we had to stop off at my parents’ house in North Carolina.  The next morning we were forced to get up very early and when we arrived at the house, the renters were still there moving very slowly.  Because our closing was scheduled for early the next morning our only choice was to begin moving our belongings while they were still there.  As you can imagine it was quite uncomfortable.  We sat Ben down in front of a television in the living room and began to work.  Early that afternoon, I guess the stress and lack of sleep finally caught up with me.  Suddenly, I became very sick with severe flu-like symptoms and was down for the count.  Dennis had to call a friend to help him finish moving everything and they worked late into the night getting everything packed up.  The next day was one of happiness and relief, even though I was still very sick.  Once we finished closing we said our final goodbyes to some friends and set off for Richmond.  Dennis was driving the truck with all of our furniture and Ben and I were in our car packed to the hilt.  I ended up stopping at my parents’ house for a couple of days

.  Mom and Dad loved having Ben to themselves while I recovered.