Travel, it's written!

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I spent fourteen very solid travel-free years between my childhood and early teens. Before that, my parents had been married for a year. In which time, they moved across three states. When Dad finally left to go overseas, he assumed that it would be for two or three years. Only, Mom and I joined him. And for my parents, two or three years magically transformed into thirty full, happy years outside their home country. When I left at sixteen, I wondered if there would be a measure of stability at some point. I suppose that I still wonder about it.

I stayed in Place A for two years, Place B for four years, married Him, arrived in California and walked the piers of Redondo Beach for exactly four months before I moved again.

"You see," said Mom, reflecting on Him's wanderlust and my own fortune, "It's the way your horoscope's laid out."

"Ah. That." I said, gulping down the chocolate cake that she still baked for me, obliterating thought.

"Yes. Neither of you will ever put down roots.Or that's what this astrologer told me. You're going to keep moving nearly all your lives." It didn't seem to bother her, sitting in her kitchen of twenty years.

I don't like to stagnate in any way. But I do believe in that proverb "A rolling stone gathers no moss". Not that I need a moss coat, in addition to other questionable characteristics. But I certainly don't want to waste my life rolling away. Umm...that could sound wrong, no? I'll leave it be though. It's how I feel.

After Redondo, we lived in Walnut Creek for another five blessed months before moving to Hermosa Beach. A year in one apartment later, Mini-Him was born and we promptly moved to another one. Eight months later, it was Newport Beach where Mini-Him's loud giggles and cries gave our quiet neighbors sleepless nights. We must have been the only stressed people in that quiet community. Mini-Him's vocals sounded like a war cry.

By this time, I had serious issues with gathering no moss.

"Why can't we stay in one place?" I asked him, faking calm unconcern.

"I have to go where work takes me," he said, truly unconcerned.

"Well, how come everyone stays put and still moves ahead?" I asked, calm disappearing.

Him looked up from his computer, miracle!, but only briefly. "We're not like everyone," he declared.

That much I knew. By now. As I stomped off to clean another Mini-Him generated mess, my mother's words resounded again.

"My mom said that this would happen." I told him, when I returned, flinging stuff around just so I could keep my voice level.

"How does she know?" he asked, "no...wait...those horror-scopes?" he laughed. Him can laugh with such enjoyment, that it's seriously insulting when you're mad. How could anyone possibly have a good time then?

"Yes. The same so called horror-scopes that you can't resist asking about every time you talk to her. Stop making fun of my mother!" I said, flinging folded clothes into the closet, undoing some good, neat work.

"I'm not making fun of her. She's a good woman," he said, revealing yet another fact that I had always known.
"She did say though, that it's in BOTH of our horoscopes. That the most we'll ever stay in one place is for about five years."

That, I didn't know and was shocked to find, five years later, that it was true. Because not long after that conversation, we bought a house, for the dumbest reason on the planet. Mini-Him created such a racket in the Newport apartment, that our neighbor told me that she was considering calling child services.  We 'bought' a house, not 'rented' one, because we assumed that everyone would think the same. And that he needed a house to run around and scream as much as he wanted to. We bought a house and, oh! boy! what a house! Anyway, musty carpet, searing heat and hopeless roof aside, Mini-Him spent many happy, ear drum shattering, noisy days there. And we stayed for exactly five interminable years.

It must have been part of my horoscope to yearn to move out and move on too, because by then, I couldn't stand being in that house.

We're in Panama now and Him wonders about what's around the corner. Daily. I can see the fidget in his bones. He has that look on his face again, like he's expecting a magic portal to zoom us, and our belongings into yet another unfamiliar landscape.

In all of this, I never mentioned the many visits to the home country, my beloved Dubai and other mini trips.
Mini-Him also developed an overt fondness for the emergency room. That's his 'go to' spot, I suppose, to get in touch with his wild side.

Over a breakfast chat with Mom the other day, I asked, past static-y crackling, "So what's next?"

"I met this astrologer the other day," she said, as my antennae vibrated enough to knock themselves out, "he thinks that you're moving soon."

"To where?" I wailed.

"Oh, I don't know, he said ..." and she listed out places that made our old house seem want-able.

"Do they never talk about anything else?" I asked, bitterly, "like if I'll ever be a millionaire, if Mini-Him is going to do something great, or if maybe I'll have six more children?!"

"Three," she said, calmly, "he said you'll have three children."

"That CAN'T be!!!," I gasped in shock.

"It's all there," she said, potential for grandmotherly bliss making her smile, no doubt, "It's all there in your horoscope."

I stayed silent.

"It's all written down," she said, confident and peaceful.

I still said nothing. The visions of moving around with more Mini-Hims/Hers who have affinities for emergency rooms made my head spin very fast.

But, then, what do I have to worry about?

It's all written anyway.

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