From Snow Shovels to Umbrellas: A Ledwith Family Update

It’s been a big year for the Ledwiths. Both boys are in college at the same time, one finishing up and one just getting started, and Sandra and I decided the obvious thing to do with our newly quiet house was to leave it and move to a different one, about 1,700 miles away.

Here’s where everybody landed.

We Moved. Again.

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If you know us, you know we don’t stay put for long. Sandra and I have lived in Southern California, Central New York, Overland Park, Kansas, and, most recently, Blaine, Minnesota. This time, we moved to Davie, Florida.

Minnesota taught us a lot. It taught us that “feels like” is a number you check before you go outside, and that the number can be well below zero. It taught us that in some places, people plug their cars in overnight like phones. It taught us that “it’s not bad out” means something very different in January than anywhere else in the country.

Florida is teaching us a whole new set of lessons. “Feels like” is still a warning; it just points the other direction now. It rains almost every summer afternoon, hard, for about twenty minutes, and then the sun comes back out like nothing happened. Nobody here says “at least it’s a dry heat,” because nobody here would believe you. In Minnesota, you keep an ice scraper in the car. In Florida, you keep an umbrella in the car, another one by the door, and it still isn’t enough.

Davie itself turned out to be a surprise. It’s a town in Broward County with deep western roots, thousands of horses, a rodeo arena, and streets where horses are allowed to share the road.¹ I did not expect to move to South Florida and end up in horse country. Then again, we just came from a place where cars have extension cords, so maybe nothing should surprise me anymore.

Edward: Senior Year

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Edward is a senior at the Florida Institute of Technology, studying aerospace engineering. His senior capstone team is building a system that detects and intercepts drones on its own, which is the kind of sentence I never expected to write about my own kid. He plans to stay at Florida Tech for a master’s degree in flight mechanics and controls, so he isn’t done with school quite yet.

The best part of the move: Edward is now a few hours up I-95 instead of halfway across the country. That makes visits a lot easier, in both directions. (Laundry is a direction.)

You can read more about him on the Family page, or check out his own site at edward.ledwith.org.

Nathan: Freshman Year

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Nathan just started his freshman year at Stevenson University in Owings Mills, Maryland, just outside Baltimore. He’s studying nursing and swimming for the Stevenson Mustangs. For those keeping score, that’s a major and a sport that both start well before sunrise. He chose this. On purpose.

Here’s my favorite fact from this whole year. When Sandra and I moved from Minnesota to Florida, we went roughly 1,700 miles, and we ended up almost exactly as far from Nathan as when we started. It’s around 1,100 miles from Blaine to Owings Mills and around 1,050 from Davie. We moved across the country and gained about fifty miles on him. I’m calling it a win.

The Empty Nest

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With both boys away at school, it’s just Sandra and me now. It’s quiet. You’d think the refrigerator would finally stay full. It doesn’t. It’s empty most of the time, because we’ve started buying exactly what we need and nothing more. For twenty years, the question was how to keep enough food in the house. Now the question is what, exactly, two adults want to eat tonight, and it turns out that’s one of the harder decisions of the day. I’ve designed software systems with fewer open questions than our dinner plans.

It’s a strange feeling to be proud and a little lost at the same time. For a long time, our days were built around the boys: their schedules, their practices, their friends, their stuff in every room. Now they’re off building lives of their own, and doing a good job of it. That’s the whole point of raising them. It just turns out the point comes with a lot more silence than I expected.

“Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.” — Marcus Aurelius

So here we are: a senior, a freshman, and two empty nesters in horse country, learning to love the rain. If you’re ever in South Florida, come say hi. Bring an umbrella.