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Okay. Some of you have heard rumors of major life changes for us. Others may have just sensed that something was different. We’ve been keeping our plans mostly to ourselves, but I think we’re solid enough in our decisions now to go ahead and go public. So here’s the big announcement:

We’re moving back to Gainesville.

There’s no problem or emergency. No one is dying and we need to be close to them. I haven’t lost my job and I do actually like teaching here in Phoenix. So let me explain. It’s kind of a long story, so bear with me.

You may or may not remember the reason we moved to Phoenix. Cristina has been a stay-at-home mother for the past 11 years, and while she loves that job, she knows that our children will eventually grow up. She has had aspirations all along, interests she is passionate about, things she’d like to do professionally when the kids are all school age and she is ready to rejoin the school/career world. For many years her dream was to become a naturopathic doctor. There are only a handful of schools in the country that are accredited, highly reputable schools for naturopathic medicine. After researching the schools, she decided Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, Arizona was the best fit for her. She started working on her pre-requisites in Gainesville…and then we unexpectedly got pregnant. All schooling went on standby. Then my parents needed to sell the house we were living in, so we decided to take the plunge and go ahead and move to Phoenix. It was a smart move. It gave us a few years to get settled, figure out the kids’ schools, and establish a network of friends before she started the program. Plus, teacher salaries are better out here, so we were able to buy our first house.

Isabella is now 3, and next year she will begin pre-school. During the past 3 years though, Cristina has had a lot of time to think about her future and, more specifically, the trade-offs that will naturally occur when starting up full-time rigorous school again. She’s been nervous, and at times a bit depressed, at the thought of what going back to school and then working full-time would do to our family dynamics. The schooling is intense, basically like medical school. There are even statistics on the high percentage of divorces that occur during naturopathic medical school. Scary stuff. It’s not that we think our marriage may not make it through 4 years of medical school, but the writing is on the wall: it’s a huge lifestyle change that can have positive or negative repercussions.

Those of you who have kids may be thinking, “Well, my wife works and our family is fine. Cristina shouldn’t be afraid of what-ifs.” I hear you, but it’s not so much about being scared, as it is a preference or priority thing. And I can relate to it, because I’ve lived it. Why have I been a teacher for going on 12 years, instead of doing something in the TV/film industry, which is where my passions were in college? It’s quite simple, actually. I stick with teaching because I love the hours and what that affords me with my family. Of course it helps that I actually enjoy teaching (most of the time). Cristina and I have often discussed whether there’s a different career path I would like to pursue, and every other thing that interests me requires such a significant sacrifice of time that I’m not willing to do it…yet. Nothing is set in stone, but while the kids are still so young, I like having, essentially, the same hours they do.

This summer, when we traveled all over the country, I think it really hit Cristina that her heart and soul belong in the east. As her desires for Southwest College have waned, her desire to move back east has gotten stronger. (I’m just glad she came to these decisions before we got into more major student loan debt, since Southwest College tuition is about 20K a year!) I don’t mind what she does as long as she’s happy. We’ve survived for 12 years on one teacher salary. We can just keep the status quo until she figures out what she wants to do. I’m fine with that.

A few weeks ago, when everything seemed to be coming to a head, we had a long, heartfelt chat and we came to the tentative decision that Cristina would not be going to Southwest College. Not in the immediate future anyway (never say never). We sat on it for a few weeks to see if, given time, that decision felt right or wrong. So far, it has felt right. Cristina says it’s like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. I must admit, I kind of feel that too.

There are some other natural healing things that Cristina is very interested in getting trained to do, which don’t require the same type of commitment and sacrifice that Southwest College does, so she’s in the process of exploring some other options. She’s currently slotted to do training next year in Jin Shin Jyutsu, which is an ancient energy therapy. Stay tuned.

With Southwest College out of the picture, there is no compelling reason to stay in Arizona. Alex goes to a Waldorf charter school here, which we would have to give up if we went somewhere else, but other than that...we're ready to go back east. We hadn’t really come to any decisions about where we might move. With the housing market temporarily on the decline, we knew we’d need to stay in Phoenix a few more years until we could sell our house for a better price. Plus, the kids are in great schools and we don’t want to pull them out immediately. Our old master plan was that after Cristina finished naturopathic school, we’d move to Chapel Hill, NC. We like that area, it’s a small college town (our favorite type of town), just a few hours drive from most of my family, plus Cristina has extended family in the Raleigh area. So the natural conclusion would be to move to Chapel Hill.

Then I went to Gainesville last weekend with Alex. And I guess I had a kind of epiphany.

It didn’t really start until Sunday. I went to see Jim Owens, a teacher friend of mine from GHS, and a real kindred spirit. I meant to just pop in for an hour and say hello, catch up, that sort of thing. Nearly 4 hours later, I finally left and suddenly had this strong voice inside me saying that maybe we should come back to Gainesville. It’s not like Jim did a sales job on me…he just answered some questions I had about things like retirement (whether my years in Arizona could be applied to my Florida retirement), and what’s been going on with the TV Production program at GHS (it’s practically dead). We talked about all kinds of stuff, and while we talked, we walked from his house down to a little gyro restaurant near campus. Maybe it was a combination of the beautiful fall day, and the walk through the heart of Gainesville and campus, and imagining the really strange concept of returning to GHS to rebuild my program… But the more I thought about things, the more excited I got. Every angle that would have been a deterrent to coming back seemed to have a silver lining. For example, there’s no Waldorf high school in Gainesville, and Sofia is at a really good academic/fine arts 6-12 charter school now. But… what if she went to GHS? They now have the Cambridge Program, which is a magnet like the IB program. She could do that, get an excellent prep for college, and also have access to some things that her current school doesn’t offer, like sports and art and…TV Production. And it would be awesome for her to take Jim’s Humanities class. The thought of her going to the school that I teach at is appealing too. As you all know, I have some experience in this area, having gone to a high school that my own dad taught at. It can be handy at times (riding together), and at the very least, comforting to know that a close family member is right there, everyday.

Monday morning, before Alex and I flew home, I went by GHS to see a mural that one of Jim’s students had painted on his classroom wall. It was also a good excuse to see him one more time and say hi to anyone else there that remembered me. I hung out in Jim’s class for about 30 minutes while he was teaching. Just observing his class made me long for those kinds of students. Attentive, hard-working, obviously from well-educated families. Like I said, I like teaching in Phoenix, but it can be tiring to teach inner-city kids from low-income, immigrant families. I’ve never really thought of it as all that hard to do, but the fact is I just don’t connect with them as well. I don’t share their lives or have much in common with them. It was different at GHS. The kids I taught there were more like me. And that can be comforting and comfortable, if that makes sense.

On a whim, I popped in to see the principal. It’s the same principal who was there when I left, so he knew me (even remembered my first name after 3 years, which is always a good sign). I don’t know why, but a briefly spilled some of my thoughts and things that we’ve been going through in our plans. And he said if we come back to Gainesville to give him a call. A great sign.

There have been a lot of changes at GHS, many for the worse, and I doubt I’d get a full-time TV Production program again. At least not at first. After my replacement ran the program into the ground, the administration scaled it back to one class. The guy who teaches Web Design, a friend of mine, has been kind of stuck with it, though it’s not his baby and he’d be more than happy to give it to someone else. I imagine that I’d teach English at GHS and maybe 1 class of TV Production. I’d be fine with that. Sunday night, I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking of ways to build the program back up. I’ve done it once, and I’m totally comfortable and confident in doing it again. All I need is money, and I’ve got some ideas already on how to get that. But I digress…

Of course, in coming back to Gainesville, I could apply to any high school. Buchholz is the “nice” school in town. But I still have a lot of friends at GHS, and it has special meaning for me. I taught there for 7 years, and they were the best, happiest years of my teaching career. I can’t imagine moving back to Gainesville and not teaching at GHS. It just wouldn’t feel right. And, oh yeah, Cristina graduated from there. How cool would it be for Sofia to graduate from the same high school her mother did?

For the first time in years, maybe ever, I feel like Gainesville is where I want to raise my kids and live indefinitely. I know I’m not that old, but I feel comfortable with the notion of buying a house there and just settling in, not on the lookout for where we might be in a few years. And though it may seem trivial, these thoughts occurred to me too: though I like Chapel Hill, and I’m from North Carolina…I don’t want to go to Tarheel football games. I want to go to Gator games! If I’m going to live in a little college town, I want Gainesville and all that goes with it! If we moved to Chapel Hill, I know part of me would always be longing for Gainesville. So why not just give in and move there to begin with. Those that really know me know that it’s a fact: I’m nuts for my alma mater.

I didn’t used to think I liked Florida that much. But living somewhere for 23 years, the most formative years of your life, has an effect. Yes, the humidity is unpleasant. The bugs are annoying. The pay is low and people drive too slow. But it’s home. And after living in Phoenix for 3½ years, I realize that more than ever.

I’ll miss being just 5 minutes from a major airport, that’s for sure. I’ll miss good old Trader Joe’s. And I’ll miss the cool, sunny, crisp winters here. I won’t miss the 115 degree summers. I won’t miss the blazing sun with no rain in sight for months. I crave those Florida summers where it thunderstorms every afternoon. I love the idea of being a 30-minute ride from tubing down the Ichetucknee River. I look forward to being just a day-long road trip away from my family again. After driving 7000 miles this past summer, the thought of driving from Gainesville to Asheville seems like nothing. Living across the country can give you some perspective like that. And I know I can speak for Cristina on this one: I miss trees. I haven’t said that too much during the past 3 years, because I knew it would only make it worse for Cristina, but I do miss trees and greenery.

There are always trade-offs when you move somewhere, but sometimes being away for a while helps you appreciate things even more. To recycle a cliché, if you love something set it free, and if it comes back to you it was meant to be…well, Gainesville set us free for a few years and I realize my love now. I’m ready to come back.

So that brings us to present day. Here's the plan so far. I’ll teach here at South Mountain for the rest of this school year and the next. We are tentatively planning to move back to Gainesville summer of 2009. That gives us about 18 months to pay off some debt and allow the housing market to rebound some (hopefully). Even if the value of our house doesn’t get to where we want it by then, there is the possibility of renting it out when we move and then selling it later.

We also need those 18 months to pay off some debt. I’ll be taking a significant pay cut to come back to Florida, so we need to trim our expenses back to a minimum.

With a summer 2009 move, Sofia would be about to start 8th grade, Alex would be ready for 3rd grade, and Isabella would be ready for Kindergarten. I’m not sure where Sofia would go for 8th grade (P.K. Yonge is always a possibility, and there are other charter schools we might explore) but no matter where we live in Gainesville, she could come to GHS for 9th because I’d be teaching there (thus, a zoning exception). Plus, since the Cambridge program is a magnet, she’d have a zoning exception for that too. Alex and Isabella could go to Expressions Learning Arts Academy, where Sofia went for Kindergarten and 1st grade. It’s a good school.

Cristina will get some experience practicing Jin Shin Jyutsu while out here and can hopefully take that experience into the Gainesville market. Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioners typically earn $60 to $120 an hour, depending on the market. That would help balance the lower teacher pay, for sure. So there it is. Those are the updated, earth-shattering changes that have been coming for a few months now. If you’ve actually stuck with this lengthy blog to the end, you are either really vested in our lives, or you are really bored! Whatever the case may be, you may now comment at will.