My oldest child worked hard to become part of the increasingly demanding field of education. 

She earned her degree in 2015 but nothing worked out where she could both find proper care for a very young child with some special needs and secure a job as an elementary school teacher.

She and her husband finally found good employment situations for both of them and their kids in a foreign country. 

Now, however, I’m glad to say, they’re coming home. 

They’re leaving some people and employment situations behind that made their lives easier. 

Thankfully, those people are more accessible with modern-day communication tools like texting and Facebook and the various ways of video-chatting — Skype, etc. — that have made the world a much smaller place.

The world is certainly much smaller and less expensive than when my mother had to spend bunches of money to talk to my father for five minutes when he traveled to Spain in the long-ago era before cell phone technology and the Internet.

I’m glad they are coming home despite all the troubles we are having in this country trying to figure out how to live with each other in a post-COVID world.

They are moving to Tennessee which is no more devoid of troubles than in Georgia. 

Every day, it seems, we hear about even more troubles in this part of Georgia. It may be shootings and murders that seem to be daily occurrences somewhere in Metro Atlanta when it formerly was much more rare. Or fights between teens that formerly were settled with fists and now settled with gunfire — sending young people to prison in much greater numbers than before.

It’s political disputes in this country that some say will permanently divide us — the latest of which likely will divide this country into pro- and anti-abortion states.

What about rural and urban residents in states like Georgia? Will they ever agree on anything? They both claim the other side schemes to impose their values on each other when the governing policies that made this state and country great were built on compromise — virtually a curse word to many.

In my limited travels, I thought the rural-urban split was only a southern phenomenon until I saw a Confederate flag flying in rural Ohio. Their ancestors who fought to keep a nation together 160 years ago in places like Gettysburg are probably spinning in their graves.

This may be a flawed nation but I don’t think I could live anywhere else.

As far as I know, we still abide by the rule of law. Joe Biden, for better or worse, was legally elected president by this uniquely American system called the Electoral College. Many, obviously, did not like that he won but he was sworn into office with a Bible, not a gun.

I hate my daughter’s family is returning to a divided country politically but I believe it’s still the best country on earth.

Despite some very rare instances, those who march in the streets in protest in this country are not shot and killed. 

Those who espouse views different from their country’s rulers don’t typically disappear and are found murdered as is typical in some other parts of the world.

We aren’t even scared that our neighbors to the north or south are about to invade us — at least with armies.

Yes, I’m very glad they’re coming back to this country even with all its warts and scars.

Tom Spigolon is news editor of The Covington News. Reach him at tspigolon@covnews.com.