The Littlest Nomads

I'm beginning to think that God gave us children who are just as nomadic as we are. This was especially merciful of Him, because we've moved four times since the girls were born, and they have never once cried or complained about it. They might even enjoy it.

A few months before we moved here, Anna and Sarah started asking, "When are we going to get a new house?"

They couldn't possibly be talking about moving, I thought, only a year after we came to Ojai from Texas. I asked a few more questions to figure out what they meant.

"I mean, when are we going to leave the apartment and go to a new city to live there?" Anna explained.

As it turned out, we moved to the mountains the following fall. And today, six months after we arrived here, they're getting restless again.

Anna was digging in the backyard, and suddenly said, "When we get a new house, can we take this dirt with us?"

"Yeah!" said Sarah.

"Why would we get a new house?" I said. "We just got here!"

Anna ignored my objections completely. "When we move to a new house, this time can we live in the shed?"

(We have a big shed.)

I suppose this means we will never see our grandchildren. They will surely be scattered about on various continents, and we will have to chase them around, blowing all our retirement funds on exorbitant airfare. It's a sad form of poetic justice for what we did to our parents. We still want to live in China.