Chapter Eight: Maryland, Here We Come

When I got home from Barbara's house, my mom and dad said they needed to talk to me about a couple things. First they said, Wesley, Bill's older brother, had been sick for awhile and he died the night before. After I got a little older and understood more about things, I asked mom, what exactly did Wesley die of, and she said he had leukemia. After hearing that, I started crying. I was 10 years old and hadn't experienced anything like that before, and also had me thinking of Bill and how I would miss Wesley.

Wesley was an odd duck. He was a couple years older than Bill and I, and spent most of his time alone. He also had weird eating habits. My favorite "Wesley" snack was him putting nothing but ketchup and mayonnaise and spread them together on two slices of plain white bread and eat it.

Then they told me something that I really wasn't prepared for, and that dad need to transfer to Maryland and we would need to move by the end of the school year. That bit of shocking news really got me crying.

I was just finishing the 4th grade at Troutdale Elementary and by that time had become very popular and I would be needing to say goodbye to all my friends. Mom and Dad were very supportive, but it didn't help how upset I was. Because in one low blow, they told me I had lost a good friend and I would leaving all my other friends and be forced to move to a completely different part of the country and start all over. So going to bed that night, pretty much sucked.

By the time the end of the school year arrived, we had gotten all packed and ready for our trip. I said my goodbyes to Bill, Barbara, and my teachers and other classmates, and we were ready for our cross country adventure to Maryland.

We rented a Ryder Truck with a cab in the front big enough to carry 5 people. My dad drove, my mom sat next to him, then my sister, Becky, sat next to her, and I sat by the window seat. We had to put a small box under the glove compartment for Cinnamon. It took us roughly 10 days, to go from Oregon to California, then to continue traveling through the heart of United States, finally ending up in Maryland. We got there by the end of June and this gave us a couple months to get settled. My dad's company found us a beautiful house across a huge lake. And when the school year began, I would be in the 5th grade, but would be doing it in Salisbury, Maryland.