It began with a soccer ball.
We had spent 10 years talking about where to make our home. From September 2003 to September 2013 we visited many cities with ‘high potential’ to become our home, the place where we put down roots and decided to live long-term.
I had never lived in a place that I felt was home. While we LOVED our neighborhood in Northern Nevada and had some wonderful friends, the town itself did not fit us well. Even my daughter who had only known this home and town wanted to leave. I talk more about this in The Naming of The Boy Wonder, if you are interested.
I returned from a business trip one day. I got off at exit 46, West Fernley, and was driving through the little town. I turned right at one of the two stoplights in the town and within a couple of hundred yards there is a park, called the ‘In-town Park’. In amazing creative fashion, the only other park in town is the ‘Out-of-town Park’.
There was a huge crowd in the parking lot and included some friends of mine so I pulled over to see what was going on. It was Saturday and these were all people from a new church called ‘Journey’. It was non-denominational and a come-as-you-are kind of church. As such, it had become the largest church in town in only three years, mostly of all people who had moved to town recently.
The church puts on a free ‘movie in the park’ night every Saturday with their blowup screen. Everyone had come down to pick up the litter in the park and clean it up before the movie. But that is not what the crowd was about. They were all in the parking lot because they were being ticketed by a city official for not having a group permit to enter the park. Seriously. That was the extent to which the old town ‘blood’ did not like ‘all those damn Californians’ coming into town. God forbid someone cleans up the park for everyone to enjoy.
That is the definitive day I decided we needed to move. The last straw, the line in the sand – pick your cliche but I came home and immediately told Christina we were moving. I told her the story and she agreed, it is time to move on.
We had already stayed four years after we had first decided to move and even though the timing was not good for us in many ways, we had to move forward, take the next step, leave our dear friends and neighborhood we had grown to love.
I travel a bit for work and whenever I had work in a city that sounded interesting, we would all go and spend some time there and hang out for a week or so. Austin, Encinitas, Bend, Ventura, Boulder were are places we visited and really liked a lot.
In April of 2013 we took a 6 week road trip to some of the places that we had liked over the last 10 years. We waffled, mountains versus ocean, sailing versus hiking, the beach versus isolation, and all of the places had a lot to offer. It was our last day of travel and as we were leaving Bishop California, we had four hours before we got home. I insisted we have a decision made before we got home or another 4 years would go by!
About two hours into the drive, we settled on Boulder Colorado. We decided up on moving at the beginning of September which would give Bella a last summer with her friends and a couple of weeks before school started in Boulder. That give us four months to find a house in Boulder, get our home in Fernley ready to rent, pack up everything from a house we had lived in for 10 years, close down my office, close down my warehouse and keep up my regular work schedule. Needless to say, we were busy.
The plan was to load up the largest truck we could and tow our car behind it. Our other car was graciously driven to Colorado weeks earlier, loaded with as much as we could get in it.
Unfortunately, I was absolutely ridiculous in my ability to pack that truck with all of our stuff. Or, perhaps we had just waaaaay more than I really thought. It is funny how a three car garage gets filled up with stuff. We tried to get rid of as much as possible as we were moving to a home with a one car garage.
So, in the end, the solution was to rent another truck and Christina would have to drive it.
The only problem was that Chris had gotten increasingly sick over the summer to the point where she could barely drive to her parents only four hours away. Now she was having to drive two 8-hour days back to back. She insisted she could do it and she did, but just barely.
Renting made the most sense for us. We didn’t know Boulder very well and there are lots of great little neighborhoods. Plus, I wanted to be 100% sure Boulder was our home. Visiting for a little while is one thing but living in a place is altogether different.
We were crazy busy that summer and it turns out that renting in Boulder is incredibly difficult and near impossible from a distance. I turned to The Boy’s Godfather, who lived in Boulder, to help us both soothe landowner’s and also look at the homes to make sure they would work for our family. It was hard work for him and looked at many places for us. We finally found a place and he said it would work for us in a bit of a lukewarm manner.
I pulled up and the house looked great. It was very simple but had a huge Colorado spruce in front and was in a nice little neighborhood.
Then I walked inside.
I was only in the place for 5 minutes when I knew we were going to be moving out as soon as our year lease was up. I could not tell you what the problem was. It was quite pretty inside. New kitchen and very nice appliances, even though it was much smaller than our previous one. The owner had left a bottle of wine and a nice note on the counter.
The living room was long and had dark wood beams. It was very nice. There was a long hallway from the living room to the three bedrooms.
That was what I saw when I walked in. I have no idea why I disliked it so much and I had not even looked at the basement yet, which doubled the size of the house. But I knew there was just something wrong with it and I am not naturally intuitive to energy like that.
I had arrived about two hours before my wife Chris did and had hired some movers so we could unload quickly. About 10 minutes after I opened the moving truck doors, it began raining. The movers were able to unload and put everything in it’s place before Chris arrived.
She was absolutely exhausted by the time she arrived but we got it all moved in very quickly so she didn’t have to do anything.
Only a few minutes after going inside, she said, “This isn’t going to work. This house sucks.” Basically the same response I had but much stronger and more vivid.
Remember I said it started raining right after I got there? Well, it didn’t stop for 8 days. Boulder had the ‘Flood of the Century’. The main street nearest our house became an uncrossable river. Our house, while it didn’t have water coming in from the outside, did have water seeping up from underneath. The entire basement had to be dried out, drywall removed and treated for mold. It took several months for everything to be fixed and were unable to use the basement at all. We had moved from a 2,000 square foot home with a 3-car garage to a 1,200 square foot house with a single car garage.
There was still a ton of unpacking but now we had to be extremely selective about what should stay in a box and what should be brought out. Chris had to spend hours going through boxes because we had not packed thinking we would not be able to unpack everything. It was exhausting work and she never really did recover from the move. Her pain and fatigue were at all time highs.
Isabella’s school was not far, about a third of a mile each way, but you had to cross a major street to get to it – the street that was a river just a few weeks prior during the flood. We were not prepared for a 10 year old to cross the street. So, I walked her to school every morning and pick her up every night. It was fun and a few minutes each day I got to spend with her and we would talk about the important issues in her life.
A few weeks after Isabella started school, one day Chris wanted to walk her home from school. She had recovered a little from the move and I thought it was a great idea. It wasn’t. She was barely able to get out of bed for three days her body was in so much pain and she was so exhausted. It is crazy to think about looking back, but that is how sick she was. None of her friends and family ever knew just how bad it was.
Chris recovered from the move slowly and she was pissed off and frustrated most of the time. I would be too. She was incredibly active a few years prior and had been in a steady decline over the last three years. The only time she felt good, and she actually felt great, was when she was pregnant. To go from feeling great to a year later being in bed for three days after walking 2/3rds of a mile was just too much. There were no answers for her from doctors either. It was a big mystery.
We were able to fly back to Christina’s parents for Thanksgiving, which was a bright spot. Her Italian side gets together for a 6 hour feast. Her Zia Nella (Aunt Nella) puts on a massive spread. You could stuff yourself just on the appetizers. Or just the pasta. Or just the unreal desserts. I am leaving out ALL the other thanksgiving food. Trying to stuff it all into your gullet is a monumental feat but I did my best. You just have to want it!
Having Chris’ family together in one place is hysterical. There is LOTS of talking but not much listening. Lots of laughing but not many good jokes. For someone who is a bit of an introvert, these family dinners were intimidating in the beginning. But after a few I came to enjoy seeing everyone and watching them all interact. All of their non-listening and laughing came from a place of family love and that is something we never really had during Thanksgiving at my house.
Thanksgiving at my house was nice but toned down about 99% from Christina’s. Some laughing but never any yelling. I don’t mean angry. I mean volume. Chris’ family is not angry but the volume is at an 11 out of 10 100% of the time.
Chris came to Thanksgiving early on when we were dating. She left the table at one point to go use the restroom. She didn’t come back so I went to go look for her. I stood outside the bathroom and could hear her crying and talking to someone, “Mom, they have all this weird food… No, I am serious mom, there is some kind of green thing on the table (pistachio pudding) and some kind of orange thing with mushrooms on top (candied yams) and mom, some – she REALLY starts crying here – the string beans came out of a CAN!… I know, I know… but mom, they don’t even have any pasta. What am I supposed to eat?”
I felt terrible. More because I was laughing my ass off at how she was describing everything. I should have had more empathy but it was hysterical. Stop judging. I was concerned too alright. I just had to compose myself before I went in because if she knew I was just laughing at her I would likely be seeing a taxi at my door taking her to the airport. We were able to smooth it out and it all turned out okay but my family Thanksgiving traditions were almost a polar opposite of hers.
During the Thanksgiving trip to her family that year, I was able to get some downtime and take a 50,000 foot view of my company instead of just the work right in front of me.
It was at that point I realized something was seriously wrong. I looked forward to the first quarter of 2014 and saw there was zero work lined up. As in, no revenue for the company.
Remember when I said I closed the office, shut down the warehouse, etc? Well, my right-hand person and one of our dear friends from Fernley, Melissa, went on maternity leave. She handled all the calls and emails and handed them off to whomever should follow up. I was still getting a few direct calls and referrals from clients and have been SUPER busy with work up to that point. So nothing in my world had changed.
But everything in my world had changed. It was no one’s fault although ultimately my responsibility. Most of our new business comes from the internet. People find us and contact us. We have zero outbound sales as no one wants what we have to sell until they want it. When they want it, we get their business at least 80% of the time. It had worked well enough or 10 years but definitely created too many peaks and valleys.
Well, a developer redesigned our website and accidentally got us eliminated from Google where we had lots of top 10 rankings. That happened in late August, right before we moved. I found the problem in late November. Two months and the damage was done. We would never get our rankings back on Google again.
What that also meant is that we lost 90% of our revenue year over year from 2013 to 2014, most of that at the end of 2014. Rent on the house in Boulder was 4 times more than our house payment in Fernley. Chris was horribly sick with no answers. The move to Boulder was ridiculously expensive as well as preparing the house in Fernley for rent. We were in trouble.
I didn’t realize it but it was going to get much, much worse.
As I said, it all started with a soccer ball.
There was nothing special about the hallway to the bedrooms but it was one of the bright spots in the house. Right after learning to walk The Boy started dribbling a soccer ball. I have never seen or heard of anything like it. My little boy was a prodigy, a soccer hero! He could actually keep it under control while kicking it back and forth between his feet while he walked. The hallway was helpful because it helped not let the ball get too far away. Also, we would run up and down the hallway together and kick the ball back and forth. With that hallway, even a bad kick would get down the hall. Nothing but positive self esteem for my little soccer prodigy.
One day I grabbed the soccer ball and said, “Let’s play!” He ran down the hallway and I kicked the soccer ball to him. When the ball go to him, he didn’t kick it. He gave it a puzzling look, reached down, picked it up and threw it back to me.
With that one seemingly insignificant act, our world changed forever.
We quickly noticed other signs as well. All eye contact stopped. All of the words he had picked up – ‘Bella’ for his sister – disappeared. Just recently, I found the video of him first walking. He had a huge goose egg from where he had fell and hit the leg of the chair. But he was laughing and looking right at us, twinkles in both eyes and all other signs of a typical child. There was no reason to expect what might happen in just a few short weeks with that soccer ball.
It’s cliche, I know, but it was like a light switch had been flipped. One day – normal happy little boy and the next day he was a very different child.
We tried not to panic. Of course, as the man and husband, I tried to remain calm while silently worrying to death. I wasn’t calm but I also knew there was nothing we could directly do at the moment except wait to see if he snapped out of it.
Within weeks, we had lost him. He had turned inside himself and nothing we could do would get home to come out. He wouldn’t make any eye contact, he started self harming, he was filled with rage at times and nearly all affection stopped.
My wife and I have some skill with children. We had both worked in a Psychiatric hospital for children as mental health counselors. We had both worked at summer camps for years. But babies and toddlers were not our specialty. We had experience only with our daughter who grew up as you would expect.
We had left our entire support network of friends and family was nowhere nearby to help either. It was just us and we didn’t know what to do… Nor did we have any money.
We had gone from a successful business, manageable health issues with Chris with really only first world problems and a lovely family and friends to finances reduced to nothing, Chris extremely ill and a little baby who needed us yet lacked parents who knew what to do. Isabella got to watch all of this shit-show as ten year old.
It was rock bottom for us as a family. As I look backward, I even wonder how we made it through. There was support at just the right time and just enough hope to keep us putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes that’s enough, I guess.
He wouldn’t kick a soccer ball again for three years.
By the way, after we moved out of that first house and into our current house, we had a party and invited all of our old neighbors. Come to find out, the first house we lived in was actually the home of some kind of religious cult. They ran certain ‘educational ceremonies’ in the basement and had to be evicted. The neighbors all decided not to tell us while we were living there. Yep, true story.
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