Maine's Newest Blondie

I used to have long blonde hair too.
*sniffle*

A little over 21 years ago, I was at the hospital the day Blondie was born. Her Dad – my uncle – and I went to dinner at Miami Subs to celebrate.

I share her athletic prowess, obvi.

A little over 19 years ago, I moved to Florida. An early practitioner of the gap year, I took a year off between high school and college. I moved in with Blondie's parents and worked as a live-in nanny. Blondie was 2; her sister, Dolleen, was born while I lived with them.

There's a reason I don't have kids.

That 10 months I spent in Florida, between 1995 and 1996, represented a high point for my relationship with family members. My family is all over South Florida. There's something like three sets of aunts and uncles and 10 or more cousins. My parents live down there now.

For the last 12 years, I have lived thousands of miles from any family member. Most of the time, it's the thing you ignore about living somewhere other than Minnesota or Florida. You can't often think about your family living far away from you because it hurts.

You still have a relationship. I flew down every time I got a break from school. When Grandpa died, The Wife and I were on a flight out of Utah at 6 a.m. the next morning.

It's different now, too. Facetime, Skype, Facebook and text messaging didn't exist when I was changing diapers. I was a "manny" and I'm a male blogger. You're just going to have to deal with that. Twenty years ago, moving away meant isolation. I got freakishly good at Minesweeper because I didn't have any friends.

She laughed before and after
this picture was taken.

I also built some spectacular relationships with the cousins. The cousins always ask a variation on this question: Who's your favorite cousin? I don't really have favorites, I tell them, but you've all spent time as the cousin I'm most eager to talk to and you've all spent time as the cousin I least expect to hear from.

Blondie has certainly spent time on both ends of the chart. She went through that teenager phase where she didn't return my text messages. That's fine. She's a teenager. We've all ignored our family to hang out with our friends.

But Blondie is 21 years old now. She doesn't know exactly what she wants to do with her life, but she knows she wants to take a shot at ... something. Something outside of South Florida, where she sees photos of people in Chic-fil-A uniforms posing with stacks of cash. Away from the club scene. Something different. Someplace arty. Somewhere like Maine.

A couple weeks ago, with help from Google Maps, Blondie and My Aunt Flo got in her little Honda and drove up the Eastern Seaboard. I called them a dozen times and texted them several hundred times. I'm more than a little excited to have family in Maine.

Maine and Blondie are a great mix. Blondie is a budding yoga instructor who now lives in a state that pays yoga instructors to follow people around. There are a lot of yogies here. It's arty here in Maine; Blondie had a third-grade painting displayed in a Broward County building.

She's only 21. She's not exactly sure what she likes about Maine, but she'll figure that out. Maybe you could help her out by offering her a job. She'll figure the job situation out, too.

My job is simple: Help her. If she needs advice, offer it. If she needs coffee, take her to the local place near her house. If she needs a place to shower after running through the woods with Daisy Duke, volunteer your guest bathroom and throw in a glass of wine for sipping on the back porch.

Transition is never easy, but Blondie already seems at home on our back porch with a glass of red, laughing at my many, many stupid jokes. I know she's only humoring me, but that's OK. That's what family does.

She'll hate that I posted this picture, which is exactly why
I posted it.