Sacrifices

I'm stealing a few minutes away from packing up our house (shhh...don't tell Jessica!). It's a busy week getting ready for our trip to Portland. We leave on December 30th at 4:45 am on the Alaska Marine Highway. The movers will come to get our stuff three days before. So its crunch time around here.

The end of last week was full of more emotions. One of the hardest things about leaving Juneau is thinking about the impact on my family. I am completely grateful to Jessica and my children for making the journey south to Portland with me. I couldn't imagine leaving them for even a short while to pursue this fellowship. It's also wonderful that the WT Grant Foundation Fellowship is so flexible as to allow us all to move south for six months. I reckon they realized that I couldn't have this rich research experience in Juneau, Alaska, and so are paying our way to move to Portland for six months. But even though the move won't cause our family financial strain, I do wonder about the impact on Jessica and my children.

Particularly hard was leaving Celia's preschool. She is five and has been attending the Juneau Co-op Preschool for the past three months. She attended last year as a substitute, but these past three months she's been there as a full student (three hours a day, three days a week). The teachers at the school are some of the most caring, intelligent, and devoted early childhood professionals that I've ever come across. Celia has forged a particularly strong bond with them and the school. She's also been doing exactly the work she needs to be doing there right now - learning how to interact and play well with others. This has been a challenge for her during the past year, and something that seems to have gotten harder for her at her previous day care facility. So it's hard to pull Celia from this wonderful place, just at the time that she seems to be making progress and creating good friends.

It makes me wonder whether the benefits of this fellowship opportunity will outweigh the costs. How can I say that this opportunity for me is worth more than the potential impact on my kids and spouse? Will I learn enough, will my work be important enough, to make it all worthwhile? Is it worth delaying Jessica's re-entry to the workforce so I can have this experience of personal enrichment? Is it worth removing Celia from the caring community of teachers, friends, and other families that nurtures her so well?

My hope is that moving to Portland for six months will provide Jessica and my children opportunities for their own personal enrichment. This may be my solipsism creating useful mirages. But I do think that the city will give Jessica the chance to maybe take some classes she wouldn't have otherwise had the chance to take. And we may find another wonderful preschool with just as much opportunity for Celia to learn. And the city might also provide great chances for Celia and Ferguson to have new experiences foreign to our isolated burg. I also have the sense that embarking on this adventure together will be the kind of intense experience that pulls us together and makes us stronger as a family unit.

But I still worry. And as ever the Catholic boy, I feel guilty about the sacrifices my family will be making on my behalf over the next six months and beyond.

Thank you, Jessica, Celia, and Ferguson, for taking this bold leap of faith with me. I hope the benefits to you, our family, myself, and the children affected by my fellowship activities will outweigh all that you are giving up to make this move possible.