The Manning family, though spread far and wide throughout the southeastern United States, is composed of Meg, my wife, Liz, my daughter, and CJ, my son (and of course, the pets too).
Our family started in the summer of ‘76 when Meg and I were wed. At the time we lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the only other member of our family was a holier-than-thou cat named Seraphim (yes, a plural name for a singular cat – more appropriate than you would think).
Approximately 5 years later, our first-born came along – a daughter we named Elizabeth Leigh (we were aiming for something with the cadence Elizabeth duh-DUH-duh, but neither Meg nor I liked the name Rebecca, and Brunhilda was just too cruel a name to burden a little girl with, so we opted for the monosyllabic “Leigh” instead). Another 3 ½ years later, another child entered our life, this time a son named Christopher Joseph. (The doctors swore he was going to be a girl up until the moment he was born, and we had decided to name her Emily. As Meg was in labor, the doctor was saying “C’mon, Emily! C’mon … Emily!” When CJ appeared, the doctor exclaimed “You’re not Emily!” True story.)
Life in Michigan was lovely. When the kids got a little older, we moved into a beautiful old farm house on a corner lot, with a big oak tree in the backyard, a lilac bush in the front, and a gorgeous wrap-around porch with a trumpet-vine-entwined trellis.
We loved that house, and we loved living in Michigan, but when the company I was working for started making cutbacks, I was forced to look elsewhere for a new job. There were job offers in Death Valley, California, Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Huntsville, Alabama. The former two fell through, and so in February 1993, the Mannings up and moved to Huntsville, home of the Space and Rocket Center and not a whole hell of a lot else.
The kids (11 and 8 at the time) adjusted to life in their new schools, and Meg quickly found the local yarn store (she had reservations about working for the trial lawyers of Alabama as she had in Michigan, and opted to be a stay-at-home mom for a while instead).
The years passed, and we settled into our new lives in Alabama. Meg opened her own yarn store two years after we moved, and it continues to thrive and grow to this day. The kids grew up, made it through middle school, high school, and moved on to college. Things are pretty quiet around here these days without the kids in the house, but Meg and I manage to keep ourselves busy nonetheless.
Page last updated: Sunday, July 6, 2008 [ 11:12 am ]