Reinventing the Hickersons

After eight months of being apart, packing up the house we lived in for a dozen years and spending 20 hours in our not-so-big car with two not-so-well-behaved dogs, we have arrived in our new home near Charlotte, North Carolina. Minnesota was our second home for 24 years, but now we are finding a third home state where the weather might treat my husband Stan with a bit more kindness. We have loved pretty much everything about living in the Twin Cities, with an emphasis on the people there who have meant so much to each of us.

Now we are starting over in a sense, in a two bedroom rented apartment, and it feels pretty freeing. Our furniture has been delayed, so as we perched on our plastic lawn chairs purchased at the grocery store the first night here, Stan surveyed our empty apartment, spacious only due to the absence of our belongings and announced, “We are reinventing the Hickersons!” I’m kind of liking that notion. Hopefully, reinvention isn’t necessary (I am fairly certain we aren’t wanted by the law), but there is promise in that statement, and if moving isn’t about promise, it can only be about work and sweat and tears and shit like that.