The Next 20

We were pulling out of the driveway heading to Ott’s when Marie turned to me and said, “You know 20 years ago this week we moved into our house”.

No sooner had those words left her lips and vanished into the air did I recall that exact memory and for the next few miles while we drove to the local bar I smiled as my mind floated effortlessly back through time.  

I remember that being an unusually cold week leading up to Halloween.  We took possession of our new home on a Friday night, however all of our worldly possessions would not arrive until Saturday morning.  That first night we packed up our Honda Accord with blankets, pillows, and some of Lauren’s favorite toys and stuffed animals.  She was three years old.  That night we set up base camp on the beige rug in the big empty family room.  We huddled close to the fireplace, which of course we could not operate since we had no wood or fire irons.  The early sun shone through the white French doors the next morning and eventually the moving van arrived from Magnolia with all of all favorite things inside.

Eight Meadow Drive now lays claim to being the tax address where I have lived over half of my adult life since my college days at Rutgers ended in 1984.  Oh if these walls could only talk?  This white center hall colonial on the cul-de-sac has watched Marie and I become first-time parents in our 30s, struggle with the stress and uncertainty of middle-age in our 40s and now contemplate our quasi-retirement and our family’s next steps while entering our mid-50s.

As husband and wife, we laughed and loved, cried and worried, and planned and dreamed within these four walls.  As a family unit, we watched as the seasons turned on the kitchen calendar each year.  I can remember watching Lauren walk across our front lawn with her back pack which was almost as big as she was to the bus stop waiting for the bus to take her to South Valley Elementary School.  She was a fourth grader.  I blinked and we were suddenly packing up our Subaru Forrester with her favorite belongings driving her north on Route 295 to Rider University.  She was now a college freshman.  I blinked one more time and yesterday she was driving her yellow VW Bug going to work at the New Albany Elementary School.  She is now a first grade teacher.

Family and friends would gather annually for birthdays, Easter dinner, Marie’s Crabfest on Labor Day weekend, Thanksgiving dinner as well as other assorted gatherings and dinner parties the rest of the year.  Macey, our family dog, would come into our lives in 2002.  Then there was the time our house was struck by lightning and thankfully the only thing we lost was our old SONY TV which was long overdue to be upgraded anyway.  The winter that rogue squirrel terrorized us living in our attic.  Our formal living room (aka Lauren’s Toy Room) where her doll houses, play forts and imagination lived when she was a toddler.  When she outgrew those toys, we were going to purchase ‘adult’ furniture and properly furnish this room.  Of course, that never came to pass, as it currently serves to hold our inventory of old photo albums, shelves of CDs, DVDs, craft supplies and my surfboard.  I can recall the small back bedroom which frightened Lauren when she was in kindergarten forcing us to move her ‘things’ to the bedroom at the front of the house.

There were summers eating dinners outside on the large slate patio after work watching the sun go down and winter afternoons building snowmen and playing with Macey in the fresh powder.  She learned to ride her bike on the tennis court and played with neighbor kids on the backyard swing set.  And just a few months ago, a rather large tree limb landed on the roof over where Marie and I sleep together each and every night.  Again, like a cat with nine lives, we escaped serious danger once again.  We were fortunate to live in a wonderful community of nationally accredited Blue Ribbon public schools, a sleepy Main Street thoroughfare and a town where our only daughter found her true love when these kids met five years ago at the local public high school.  Looking back, we had a great run in this home.

But the time has come to move on from this great old house and make plans for the next 20 years……

We have started to purge our personal belongings and fix-up some rooms in the upstairs part of the house.  We have a long way to go as you fellow homeowners know, 20 years is a long time.  The plan remains to live near the ocean.  To live in a place where we all gather each night (together) under the night skies.  A small home with minimum upkeep so that we can maximize the unknown hours, days, weeks, months and years that lie ahead.  

Someplace that we can all live together comfortably marking the milestone events ahead.  A place to come back to after we travel abroad.  A warm and happy place to live our lives instead of worrying about the upkeep and maintenance of owning a home stealing our precious time.  Time that has become appreciably less than what we all started out with on this journey.  Plans that include working multiple entrepreneurial pursuits, enjoying the outdoors, no longer waking to an alarm clock having to work for someone else, doing something we no longer have a passion for.   All of us living a life instead of merely existing in a life.

So here I sit in transition this morning, enjoying the bittersweet emotions of facing the end of an era and the excitement of starting something new.   

May our next 20 years be filled with patience, understanding, laughter and love which have greatly helped us make it through the first 20 years.  We all know by now that the future is fickle and works according to its own agenda and timeline.  All the planning in the world will never completely prepare us for what lies ahead as the wise old idiom states “failing to plan is just like planning to fail”.

The accountant in me has been trained to measure and mark my progress, while the artist in me yearns to explore, grow and follow my true bliss.  Because this time of the year nicely coincides with a forced closure on the last 365 days, today serves as timely reminder to commit to the goal ahead while mapping out the necessary little steps that will ensure a long-term success.

There a dream I can see in my mind’s eye that I can’t (and won’t) shake.  It’s a short video of my family and next generation of Kerns enjoying sun drenched days by the ocean not just during our typical summer months down the Jersey Shore, but year-round.

We’ll keep you all posted on our progress and send you all postcards when we arrive wherever we are destined to live our next 20 years…….

~The Kern Family

Scott & Marie and Lauren & Brian

One week before Christmas 2015