Moving to California after living away from there for more than 30 year creates all sorts of mind messes. My daughter told me it somehow made her all excited and happy to think of me living there. They have heard the stories, of the years that I worked so hard to get them out of the "evil state". Moved them to Northern Idaho to protect them from crime and drugs and smog, to give them farms and small towns, horses, chickens, good schools. Funny. Those things are completely irrelevant now.
I have become the prodigal daughter. Suddenly things like oak/savannah landscapes, the high sierras, Yosemite, access to culture, and of all things, really great restauarants have more meaning than how good the schools are. Just being in Sonora for a day or two, I felt such a huge difference in the way people act and interact. That california instant intimacy that I remember so well was everywhere. Friendly people, talking and sharing way too much according to those folks who live in colder climates. What IS it about warm weather than makes people different?
I am excited about it. I am so ready to not worry about shoveling snow, to escape that feeling of being old and crotchety on icy driveways. For pete's sake, I actually knocked myself out on my driveway this winter on the ice. Yeah, I know it rains in California, a lot actually where I am going. And it gets hot. Really hot. I guess I'll have to see how I hold up on that one. I guess the other difference for me is that I know that I no longer am trapped no matter where I go. The world is smaller for me, and I have the freedom to move around in ways I never used to when I had small children and no money.
If I get too hot, I'll drive to the Sierra Crest and hike in summer snows. If I get too bored with one landscape, I'll drive to another. If I want to see the ocean, I'll drive two hours and hang at the beach. If I miss Oregon, I'll get in my truck and take a long weekend back to Oregon. Easy. But in the mean time, I'll live in my little mobile home in a "holler" along Wood's Creek and fantasize finding another one of those magical miracle gold nuggets that float around there.
Work will be challenging, and that's a good thing as well. New landscapes, new project to develop, new opportunity to apply all the things I learned in Klamath and now I can do them even better. New people to meet. Even a knitting store in town that says "come on in and knit". I somehow know that I won't be anywhere near as lonely there as I was when I first moved to Klamath. Read that again, Sue, I know it.
Leaving Klamath is another story. For some reason I am ready. Not to leave my home, since I do love my little home a lot and know I want it waiting here for me to decide later on if I will come back here. I guess it also depends on how Klamath grows in the next few years and where we think it would be best to spend the rest of my retirement. As I always said, winter in Florida, spring somewhere green and fresh, summer in the mountains of Oregon, fall in Utah, or New England. Still sounds like a motorhome life that really awaits me and all I have to do is decide where I am going to keep my rocks and the family photos.
But for now, the adventure awaits, and I am excited about the growth that it represents for me, the career growth, actually it will be the culmination of that career, and the personal growth. No more looking for the right partner, the right person. I am content in my life, very much so, very content as it is right now. I have lots of love and carre, as well as personal freedom and the ability to be just who I am, all the time. Not sure how that happened actually. I got stronger, I got less frantic about the whole thing, I became more secure in the real me without having to be so "out there" with it all.
So, I plan to learn Spanish, my next project. and keep knitting. and ride by bike and swim every dayin the pool, and do lots of walking the hills. I plan to work on my photos, and make sure that I write and write and write. Most of all I plan to do a really great job as MMA project leader, and make that the best project that I possibly can make it. I care about it. The project will be my last career move, my swan song, so to speak. I want to go out with a bang and do it well.
In the mean time, I am here looking around me at the organizing things that need to be done, at the rooms waiting to be separated for storage vs moving, and waiting on the final word for the house in Sonora. Maybe I'll get some sleep this weekend.
Only Maybe
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