They glance at each other, and I sense there’s a whole silent conversation happening in the form of tiny eyebrow movements.
“Don’t be nervous,” Mom says. But I can feel my blood pressure rising.
My mouth is hanging open, waiting. They’re both just staring atme.
“You have to say it now! Jesus, Mom.” A dozen health-related crises race through my mind. “What’s wrong? Is someone sick?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Perry reassures me. “That’s the thing—we want to take advantage of the fact that we’re both in good health and we’re up for an adventure.”
“Like skydiving?” I ask.
Perry smiles. “Not quite. I’ve already gone skydiving twice.”
Huh. Perry contains multitudes.
“We realized we have this really great opportunity,” Mom says. “Perry’s going to start working remotely.”
“Oh.” I glance around the apartment. “Do you need the office during the day or something?”
“I can work from anywhere,” Perry says. “It doesn’t have to be in the condo. It doesn’t even have to be in Columbus.”
“We’ve been talking about it for a while and we want to make a change,” Mom says. “There’s no reason to wait until we’re retired to explore a different lifestyle.”
I have no idea what this is building to, but the wordsexplore a different lifestylecall to mind swinging or cultsor—
“We’re going to be digital nomads!” Mom exclaims. There’s a giant smile on her face. “We’re going to live in Portugal.”
She’s beaming in a way that makes me wonder if I’ve ever beamed.
“Portugal for now,” Perry says. “But I’ve heard amazing things about Albania. The cost of living is low and it’s a beautiful country.”
They’re racing through this conversation while I’m still shifting into gear. Actually, no, I’m still checking my mirrors.
“Hold on.” I shake my head. “When did you decide this?”
“We’ve been discussing it for a couple months,” Mom says. “We wanted to figure out some arrangements and make sure it was definite before talking to you about it.”
“So, you’re…moving to Europe?” I ask dumbly. “Since when was this something you even wanted to do? I’ve never heard you talk about wanting to live abroad.” I grasp at any memory of my mother wistfully reminiscing over a trip to Greece or something, but I come up completely empty.
“Sam, we talked about this the other day. I’ve given up a lot. I’ve lived in Columbus since college,” she says. “I never even did a summer backpacking trip or studied abroad. And we started planning our honeymoon and looking through all these videos of people walking the Camino de Santiago. The more we started talking about it and researching it, we realized that there’s noreason Perry can’t help people plan their financial futures from some beautiful stone cottage in Porto instead of a spare bedroom in Ohio.”
I let this visual sink in while dozens of questions run circles in my head. Notably: Why am I not doing nothing from a stone cottage in Porto instead of ten feet from this couch?
Instead, I get practical: “But what about your job? How can you sell real estate remotely?”
“Well, I’m going to put that on pause for now,” Mom says a little sheepishly.
I’m astounded and doing a poor job of containing it. This is the woman who spent the last ten years warning me about the importance of supporting myself without the help of a romantic partner?
“It’s not like it was my lifelong dream to sell three-bedroom ranches,” she says. “I’ve spent a lot of years compromising, and now I’m in a position to do exactly what I want.”
“She’ll have some passive income,” Perry says, ever practical when it comes to financial matters, “when we rent out the apartment.”
That’s the record-scratch moment.
“This apartment? Hold on.” I put my hands up. “I just…”Breathe.“When is this happening?”
“Assuming everything goes to plan, a couple weeks after the wedding.” Mom looks me in the eye. “We’re going to do some updates around here, and hopefully we can rent out this place by the beginning of the year.”
