Next week we start moving Mom and Dad to Michigan. This is a piece I wrote about our family and moving for a writing class during Spring semester. Gonna miss you, Mom and Dad!

Our last name is Winters. In fun sometimes people ask if we change our name with the seasons. Mom has a “Winter Wall” in her house. It’s filled with cross stitched and embroidered scenes of winter–snowflakes and snowmen. Nearest to the door to Dad’s office is one that I did. It’s a snowman couple, the husband in a top hat and the wife in a hat with holly on it. There’s a single red berry in the holly. To the left of the husband I’d embroidered “30 years of Winters…” for their 30th anniversary.

Kitty-corner to my embroidery is a quilt wall-hanging Mom made. It’s redwork embroidery–one little snowman in each square, sashed and bordered with red fabric and snowman beads. It was her first go at quilting, something that I had been doing for four years. Now we go shopping together, take classes together, and sew together.

When I was 12 Mom and Dad came into my bedroom and told me that we were moving to Minnesota. Dad had accepted a position at a college in Minnesota. I cried a little, then asked whether I could have a room without green carpet. There was green carpet everywhere upstairs. “We will find a house without green carpet,” Dad said.

A few weeks later, the first weekend in May, we drove our Dodge minivan to Minnesota. I stayed with my brothers Ben and Jon while mom and dad looked for a place. When Mom and Dad took us to see the house they’d chosen, my bedroom had a shag carpet from the 70’s. Mom and Dad promised to replace it with whatever I’d like. I told them I liked pink. The pictures Mom took of the house show a dusting of snow on the ground. It was a great topic of discussion. “Are you sure you want to move somewhere that snows the first weekend of May?” their friends would ask. Mom and Dad were sure.

After I graduated from high school and went off to college, Dad went back to Northwestern University to get his PhD. I joined them in the Chicago area two years later. While working on his PhD, Dad accepted a part-time position as the director of a learning center that offered free tutoring to children with dyslexia, his specialty. When his PhD was completed, the organization offered him a position as the Executive Director of Clinical Affairs for the entire organization. The position was in Massachusetts.

Dad was more unsure about this move than any other they had made. They had spent their lives in the Midwest and both of their families were in the Midwest. He brought Mom to Massachusetts to see the Lexington office where he would be working, to see the area, and to look for a house. They found a brick colonial in what used to be Fort Devens, and they fell in love with it. And then it snowed. It was the third weekend in May.

By then I had a job as a marketing assistant at a commercial real estate firm in downtown Chicago, and I had started taking evening classes at the DuPage Community College. I was enjoying my writing classes with Thomas Montgomery-Fate. When I told him that my parents were moving to Massachusetts, he suggested I go with them because Boston has so many great universities. I dismissed the thought.

My roommate moved back home to go to cosmetology school, and I wasn’t having any luck replacing her. The washing machine plumbing went kaplooey, and I was going to have to move to another apartment while they fixed it. When Mom came over to help pack up my kitchen she asked, “Why don’t you move to Massachusetts with us?” They’d bought this big house, and there would be plenty of room for my Cairn Terrier Toto and me. I could save some money and go back to school.

I agreed. Thanks to the plumbing issue, I could break my lease. That weekend we packed up my apartment. The movers came on Sunday, moved my stuff to Mom and Dad’s, and stacked it all in their living room. The couch was on its side. The living room was open with a cathedral ceiling and the boxes were stacked past the landing of the second floor.

We’ve been here for almost seven years. At the end of January, Dad found a posting for a position in academia, his dream since he got his PhD. He thought he’d worked himself into a niche, thought he had little chance, but he applied, hoping for at least a phone interview. He got that phone interview and then flew to Michigan for a face-to-face interview. He was offered the job as Department Head for the Special Education Department and Eastern Michigan University.

Dad wouldn’t accept the job without letting Mom see the area. The Wednesday before they left, Dad checked the weather. He called Mom and told her, “There’s no snow forecast.”

The day before they left, Mom called me. “It’s going to snow when Dad and I are in Michigan this weekend.”

“You’re kidding me!” I exclaimed. “Well, that’s it then. It’s settled. You guys are moving to Michigan.

Ypsilanti got four inches of snow that weekend. It was the first weekend in April. Mom says the new house will have a Winter room, not just a wall. I call dibs on that room, as long as there’s no green carpet.

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