I was thinking why it is that I say I lead a small but valuable life. A small life in my opinion does not imply anything negative at all. I live in a small town, I grew up in a small town, and in a small town I suppose one could live larger than life but I think it's much more comforting to live a calm and somewhat simple life.
I have to admit that I've had a taste of the "bigger than life, life" in some regards. First when I moved to Grand Rapids. I love Grand Rapids, I love that we Michiganders call it GR, and I love the fact that it was only 50 minutes away from home in Big Rapids. Going to Grand Rapids was such a treat. I'm sure most from Big Rapids would agree. Never in my life did I think I would venture out further than Michigan to live my life but I did. I moved to Atlanta GA to be with Chad and spent four years living and working there. While at first it was very intimidating, over time learning your way around from Marietta where Chad and I lived to Buckhead, Midtown, Downtown, out the the Airport, Dunwoody, Alpharetta, etc. etc. you found some major confidence kick in. It became liberating for me and it gave me a ton of strength as a woman. Moving away from GA was easy and hard. It was wonderful to imagine spending time with family now that Chad and I had a daughter. It was a relief to think in the summers we'd be able to go outside and not be cooped up in air conditioned homes, cars, stores, and everywhere in between. But it was hard because I loved our friends in GA. I loved the fun nights out on the town, the beautifully landscaped city streets, the tall buildings and the fancy malls. I loved that I could get a Pedi and a Mani for only $20.00 a week. You wear a lot of opened toe shoes in a such a warm climate like that of GA. It was hard leaving my job that I had transferred into from back in Grand Rapids, and It was hard leaving the place I had my first baby, the house, the pediatrician, the community I lived in.
However, now, I live here in Michigan again where I have spent all of my 38 years accept that 4 year stint in GA. I'm in Northern Michigan which is beautiful but kinda cold if I'm being honest. I'm in this small town where over the years I've realized you are really only once removed from knowing everyone. We found Petoskey on the internet while living in GA. I had never been to Petoskey. It's true. It may sound like I'm lying but my family's cottage over on Higgins Lake required you to drive as far as Cadillac and then jump across on highway 55 to I-75 if ever we were going to Mackinaw or somewhere in the UP we always took that route keeping me away from this neck of the woods. Chad and I decided that if we were going to consider moving back to Michigan we'd like to live near Lake Michigan. It's funny because being a Big Rapids Girl I grew up going over on 19 mile road to Ludington and Pentwater so I am a Lake Michigan Girl. My mother on the other hand grew up in Lansing and she'd go over to the thumb area and spend time on Lake Huron in Bay City or Saginaw, making her a Lake Huron Girl. Chad and I were both more fond of the Lake Michigan side and the sunsets as opposed to the sunrise. We took trips through the internet to each and every harbor town on Lake Michigan and I don't know why but we found the website for Petoskey to be just the place we had imagined in our minds. So, I called up to Petoskey to see if they had any jobs open at Wells Fargo Bank where both Chad and I were currently working and to our amazement, they did. In fact, the manager at the Wells Fargo Bank/Mortgage Company said come on up, your hired. We were thrilled to hear the news. We than read through the Petoskey News Review classified ads to find a place to rent. We of course were too far away to look at anything personally so we sent my sister and brother-in-law Bob.
Chad and I had found one listing we were very interested in. A log cabin made of real logs up in the woods in Petoskey. While we new the dimensions were small including the square footage we were still intrigued. My sister called to tell us that it was very nice and true enough up in the woods on this make-shift two track type of road. For whatever reason all that was being described sounded perfect. Hilarious now though as I look back, what were we thinking? First our home in GA was 3000 square feet with a 2 car garage attached and then a separate building right next to the house with another two car garage and huge attic/storage room above it. My house was lovely, and here we were thrilled to be putting our home up for sale so we could move to Petoskey, Michigan a place I'd never even been to, into a log cabin that was 1/4th the size of my home in GA. Believe me we sold a lot of stuff in our moving sale. Plenty of furniture. We thought we'd be good with the HUGE U haul and with one smaller one but I'll never forget the words Chad said to me as we're packing the U haul. "You better start being selective, cause it's not all gonna fit." I remember saying, what do you mean it's not all gonna fit. If I haven't given it away, thrown it away or sold it, it's because I want it and it better fit. In the end, it didn't all fit, and Chad and I ended up calling close friends so they could pick and choose what they wanted. All was taken by someone. :(
So up to Michigan we drove with a 6 month old in the back seat Chad drove one vehicle, Ben drove a vehicle with trailer attached, Jason Daday drove the BIG U haul, and I drove my Blanche, my Avalanche. We were a caravan on the move. As we approached Petoskey the man who we had agreed to rent from brought us in a weird back way. It ended up that we never saw Petoskey on the drive in and me not being at all familiar with this area of Northern Michigan thought I was officially moving to the sticks. What had I done, or chosen to do. This seemed crazy. As I'm thinking these thoughts my brother-in-law Ben calls me from his cell phone to my cell phone and all he says is, "Where is the town, where are you moving? Out in the middle of NO WHERE!!" I said I didn't know but they said there was a town. We finally come to this two track up into the woods and realize this isn't the perfect road for this Huge U haul we're driving. The two track was deep with sand but somehow we managed to make it to the top of this hill deep into the woods to find this cute log cabin. Okay, yes, it sounds like I was happy now right? WRONG, I was on the verge of an instant panic attack. I mean, here I am out in the middle of the woods, no other houses around what-so-ever, up a two track in a place where there isn't even a gas station let alone a town. I called my dad on my cell phone and said, this is crazy, I just moved from one of the biggest and busiest cities in America to this log cabin in the woods in the middle of NO WHERE what the hell were we thinking.
My dad was awesome. At that moment he said, "Sarah, calm down. You can live anywhere for a month can't you, than figure out what you want to do and where you want to go." I thought, sure, yes, I can make it anywhere for a month, this is true. However, within minutes of hanging up the phone with my dad, Chad walks up to my truck window only to tell me that not only is the place terribly small, there will be no way to move our huge furniture into the cabin we've rented. I couldn't believe it because my sister never mentioned any problems would occur if we tried to move our things in. I got out of the truck, went in and looked around the place only to agree that there was no way we would ever get our things in this cabin as it was three stories and each level wound up a staircase that was way to narrow for our things to get up and around. When we made reference to the renter he said he could build us a ramp that would go into the second level where a door presently stood but where no deck had yet been built to accommodate the door. He showed us some flimsy plywood and said he could use that to form this bridge which could lead from the U haul to the cabin. I in the meantime was still agitated that there was no apparent town. My husband looking for an escape said, "Where is the so called town? Sarah is going to freak out unless she at least sees a Walmart." He gave us directions of how to get into the city of Petoskey. All of us loaded up in the Avalanche and to my pleasant surprise found Petoskey. We were thrilled to find that while it was small, it was equip with gas stations, grocery stores, and a hospital. We all ate at this cute little basement place
called the Noggin Room and enjoyed our lunch together while trying to figure out our next move as we did not see ourselves unloading our HUGE U haul into this little tiny cabin. We started driving down and around streets looking for anything that might say, FOR RENT but we didn't find anything. We then thought we'd be moving ourselves 2 hours south to Big Rapids. Upon our return to tell the renters this we found that they had in-deed built a ramp onto the house using this upstairs door. Both Chad and I felt terribly guilty to think we were about to tell these people who'd obviously been working their tails off to make this ramp that we were not going to rent from them after-all.
As we stalled for time, I said as a pure cover-up, "Let's go back in and let me see where we would put things if we were to move in." So Chad and I went in and began on the third floor and walked from room to room diagramming out loud where things would go. This there, that could fit here, so on and so forth. Over the course of about 10 minutes we realized maybe we could actually fit our many things into this cabin. The garage of course would have to be used entirely for storage though. Chad decided to check out this ramp and sure enough, probably due to Chad's facial expression when they mentioned they could make a ramp using this flimsy plywood, they had upgraded to much stronger building materials and to Chad's surprise and that of his brother and friend Jason, they all agreed it could with-stand the weight of each of them and the heaviest piece of furniture we owned. So to make a long story longer, we moved in, and actually did find a place for every piece of furniture. Boxes of course had to be stacked up in the garage, but over all we liked the set up. We only lived in that cabin for 8 months but since we moved over Labor Day Weekend 2002 we stayed there during the winter months, and because we were up on this mountain side we were layered in snow higher than I had seen since I was a kid in the 70's, it was extreme but really rather exciting for our first winter back. 9 years later and 8 years later in this home I now live in, I can honestly say that not only have I grown to like the area, I've fallen head over heals in love with Petoskey, and my small town girl life is back to stay.
So, while I live a small life in a small town, enveloped by my little house, two little children, one dog, two cats, several fish and one amazing and loving husband, I'd have to say, it maybe small in many ways but valuable???? You Bet!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment