Texas, and the Places We Used to Live

We lived in Texas, and we came back to Arizona. That move is part of this site because it's part of why this household exists.

I wanted my children to know their family. My mom was taking care of my grandmother, Donna Hancock, when my mom was diagnosed with cancer for the third time. So we moved back. We live in Anthem now, under one roof. I told that story more fully in One Roof, Three Generations and in Kids in a House with a Grandparent. Texas is the place we came from. Arizona is the place we came home to.

I already write destination guides. They live at Travel at My Pace, starting at home in Arizona, and at Japan at My Pace for our trips there. If you came looking for a place to go, those sites are the right door. This one is about the life those trips come home to, and about the move that made this particular life possible.

We were there. We came back so the kids would know their family. The household we have now, three generations under one roof, and more of our family down the road, is what that decision turned into.

Coming home did not make travel disappear. Joanna and I have still gone, including two trips to Japan, at a slower pace. The difference is the house we leave and the house we return to. I wrote about that pace in The Pace I Travel Is the Pace I Live. A move toward family is not the opposite of going. It's the ground the going happens from.

On this site, Texas belongs as origin, not as a second destination guide. The reasons for the move belong here because they are household reasons: family, care, children who would know their grandparents and, for a time, their great-grandmother as someone who lived with them. Donna lived with us until she passed a little over a year ago. That's Arizona life, and it started with a decision to leave Texas.

If a later trip takes us back through places we used to live, and if I write that trip as a guide, it will live with the other destination writing. I'll send you there.

What I wanted, in the end, was close. We found it by coming back. The travel I still do has to fit that life, and it does, as long as I keep the same pace in both directions. Leaving, and returning, and letting the house in Anthem be the point of the return.