Free Falling

By Åsa Muckosky

 

We’re on our way to the Vancouver airport and Tom Petty’s song “Free Fallin” comes on the radio. This is no coincidence. I’ve been hearing it all weekend in my head.

My husband and I are on our way back home from a whirlwind weekend trip of shopping for property in Salmon Arm, British Columbia in Canada. We’ve managed to narrow down the options to the ones we like and amazingly I think we are on the same page.

Moving from the North has been on my agenda for many years, but my husband has a great job with the Yukon Government and he loves his life there. He hunts and enjoys the outdoors and overall it’s the perfect place for him to live.

As for me, not so much. We moved to Whitehorse, Yukon, seventeen years ago when our kids where little, just a two year old and a baby. I have managed to make it my home because I believe home is where you make it home and I’ve lived a good life up there. I have a job that I like and I have made some wonderful friends. But it’s not where my heart is.

My husband has been wanting to build us another house. He built our home in Whitehorse and it’s a beautiful home, but the process of building it took a lot out of our family life. The kids were little and he was never home. It wasn’t something that I ever wanted to go through again. Although now when the opportunity came up for a move I jumped on it.

My husband gets to build a house and I get to move. So here we are diving head first into a totally different life. We pick Salmon Arm because of the beautiful area, four season climate with long hot summers and also fairly reasonable property prices. We are on a roll and decisions are made quickly. My husband quits his job and I’m fortunate enough to be able to keep my job and work remotely, for the time being.

It’s now the beginning of winter and the wind is howling outside our lake front rental house. I am so grateful for having found this place to rent over the winter. It’s beautiful and living this close to a body of water is amazing. We have to be out of here by the end of May, so our plan is to move into our new home by then.

We financed this venture from the sale of our home in Whitehorse, but currently my husband’s income is non-existent. My income is about half of what it used to be and I may not be able to keep my remote working contract very much longer. When I pay our huge credit card bills of house building supplies, I question the viability of what we are doing.

Will my husband get another job eventually? Will I have a more stable income? Our plan is to live mortgage free, so we should be able to spend less money than in the past, but our kids are teenagers and still live at home. I’d like to help them out as much as I can with college expenses and education, but we may not be able to do that.

So Tom Petty’s song keeps playing in my head from time to time. It feels like I’m free falling and I’m not sure where I’m going to land. Sometimes my fear rears its ugly head and I worry that one day we’ll do a crash landing and this beautiful dream of mine will disintegrate.

There’s no turning back now and there are no safety nets. I just have to believe that when we’re all done, we’ll be coming in for a nice smooth landing and my new life in my new home will be all that I dreamed of.

Another Tom Petty song has been playing in my head today. ‘I’m runnin’ down a dream. That never would come to me. Workin’ on a mystery, goin’ wherever it leads. Runnin’ down a dream.” And that’s exactly what I’m doing. Running down a dream.