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Health & Fitness

Alligators Meet You at the Airport, and Other Tales About Moving

Summer is moving season. Moving with children presents some unique challenges and learning opportunities. This series of entries will explore various aspects of moving as a family.

One of the benefits of being on the top end of a large family is that I got to read children’s books until I had children of my own.

Ours was a PBS household. My favorite show as a child was Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Sesame Street was a close second. But by the time my five brothers and little sister were hooked on PBS, Reading Rainbow took the cake. Just the name of the program is enough to have me humming its theme song all day.

It was on Reading Rainbow that I encountered one of my favorite children’s books of all times. Titled Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport, this sweet story chronicles the fantastical uncertainties of a little boy who is moving from “165 East 95th Street in New York City” to what he calls “Out West.”

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The boy fears stampeding buffalo, prickly cactus, the slow drawl of cowboys. He thinks he’ll have to wear a sombrero and ride a horse to school. "Out West" they eat chili and beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner, he thinks. And gila monsters meet you at the airport. Mostly, he’s afraid he won’t have friends.

When he arrives in what could only be Phoenix (Arizona is the only state with Saguaro cacti and gila monsters, after all), he encounters a boy moving “Back East.” This boy shares his similarly fantastical fears of bad traffic, tall buildings, gangsters and alligators in the sewer before his parents whisk him away.

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Our little protagonist is excited to see restaurants and kids playing baseball and to arrive at a normal house, with a horse in a field across the street.

Having grown up in Arizona, we thought the boy’s characterization of the west was hilarious. We identified with the boy at the airport, moving east. The east ran out of space a long time ago, we believed. It was full of gangsters. People lived in skyscrapers and sometimes helicopters fell from the tops of buildings.

Of course, I know better now. My own children think of Arizona as an exotic other-world where it’s always summer and everyone owns a car — a car for every adult in the family, in fact. Cars are so important in the west, my older daughter told my younger daughter, that they get their own room in the house.

There are myriad children’s books about moving now. As the owner of a moving company, I keep my eye on this particular genre, and I’ve never found one I like as well as Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport. But that the genre exists is a testament to the fears and uncertainty that children experience as their families transition from one home to another.

Whether you’re moving from Fort Greene to Park Slope or from Park Slope to Mamaroneck, or from Mamaroneck to Denver, moving can be a big deal for small children. Their reference points within the home are suddenly entirely different. The routes and routines to which they’ve grown accustomed are upended and take time to reestablish. And they may have to make new friends, learn how to navigate a new school, and get used to a whole new set of circumstances while their parents are doing the same — settling in to a new job, figuring out the new commute, finding a good grocery store, a dry cleaner, the library. Unpacking. Buying a car, perhaps.

When we moved from Degraw Street to Baltic Street — a mere four blocks — in early spring, my pre-kindergartener expressed confusion that we no longer had a basement. She continues to say sometimes that she misses the old house. We walk by. Together, we remember what we liked about it, and I invariably try to draw her attention to the things she likes about our new home. If a move like ours, which didn’t involve a change of schools, making new friends or finding new places to play could be so unsettling to a small child it’s no wonder that children whose families undertake larger moves need help coping with all the sudden change.

Summer is moving season. According to the American Moving and Storage Association (AMSA), roughly 70 percent of residential household moves happen between June and September. That means a lot of families are going through this transition right now.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about moving — about children’s books I like, about how the industry is regulated, about packing, about picking a mover or deciding to do it yourself. I’ll give suggestions to get children involved and excited. I’ll write about my friend who moved to Australia at the beginning of July, and how her children are doing as they acclimate — not just to a new home and new city but to new seasons, a different sort of school year and cars with steering wheels on the other side.

What I’ll focus on is the unique experience of moving with children. If you have questions you’d like me to address, send them my way. If I miss a book in my next column, let me know. I’ve worked in the moving and storage industry for about 6 years now. That means I may take things for granted that are confusing to you. I might not always explain things right. If that’s the case, just ask and I’ll try to clear it up.

Here’s to a great season in a city where I once believed alligators would meet you at the airport.

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