1st Movement

The first day of spring came through Sacramento like a freight train yesterday, dumping rain and hail, along with thunder and lightning, all on my daughter's moving day!!

But, some days ya just get lucky, and we got lucky.

I met up with my daughter while they were loading up the U-Haul truck over at her roommate’s mother's house. The girls carried all the boxes and bookshelves themselves, and I organized the mess in the back of the U-Haul truck. It was raining pretty well at this point, and they got a little bit wet, but they're tough little ladies, and they survived.

Then we headed over to my x-wife's house to get my daughter's stuff. Here's where the luck starts coming in. When we arrived at my x-'s house, the rain stopped. Still cloudy, but the rain just plain stopped. So we took advantage of the respite, and quickly loaded my daughter's stuff into the U-Haul. It didn't take very long - there really wasn't that much stuff.

Which made me kind of sad, but I digress.

As we pulled away from my x-wife's place, fortune would have it that the rain started again. Pouring buckets!! I made my way slowly but steadily, driving the U-Haul over to their new apartment near Country Club Center, and pulled into the parking lot.

Again, fortune was watching over us, and the rain stopped. Just plain stopped.

We hopped out, and the girls happily showed me their new apartment. It's actually a pretty nice place: 2 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, nice large living room with vaulted ceiling and a sky-light, dining room, new paint, new carpet. It's an older complex, and you could tell it was an older apartment, but it was just right for a coupla kids starting out.

So, we went back down to the U-Haul and started to unpack. I’ll say this once, moving into a 3rd storey apartment isn’t fun. There was at least one time I thought I would die after carrying a box up the stairs. The girls weren’t quite as badly winded as I was, so they did a lot of the lifting themselves. As we finished unloading the truck, taking the very last item (a couch) across the threshold into the apartment, what do you think happened?

The skies began to rain. No, the skies opened up and began to pour. No, wait… let’s say, the skies cracked open and all the rivers of heaven seemed to flow through to our little part of town for a few minutes. It began to hail, leaving a layer of little pellets looking almost like snow. Thunder clapped. Water ran in small torrents to the drains, looking like little creeks gone awry. I took 5 minutes and walked the moving dolly back over to the manager’s office and came back thoroughly and completely wet.

But it was worth it. My daughter is “on her own now”, or at least as on her own as a 19-year old can be. She’s scared, a little nervous, nearly broke, and they have almost no food in their apartment, but that’s as it should be, in a way, and usually is, whenever a young person starts out. It’s the struggle that makes the achievement worth anything, and I know these two are going to struggle a bit. But when they look back in a few months, and have made for themselves a place to live and enjoy, they will be proud of themselves and one step further along the road to their degree in Life.

I just hope they both finish school, at whatever campus they wind up attending.