the tide

A shorter post on Christmas Eve, a time when many of us think of home and family.  A big THANK YOU to my friends and family who are following this blog, providing feedback and encouragement – I wish you all some time for rest as well as fun over the holidays.    

Since moving to the west coast, I developed a habitual pattern with air travel.  During my departure, I went into a restive state which was, I guess, a form of decompression: not meditating, not sleeping, not bored.  My return flights were devoted to enthusiastically writing to do lists and a new daily schedule after I’d had a chance to relax and reflect on What Is Important.

This fall, I travelled to Nova Scotia for Canadian Thanksgiving and that first flight from Seattle since the simpler living epiphany was very different: I read and slept.  For my return flight, I also read and slept.  I did not work on an ideal schedule since I’d already determined it* as part of the plan.

I had a truly hearty visit with family and friends and it reinforced my decision to move back there.  But I don’t expect anything to be or feel the same.  I moved away fourteen years ago: I will no longer be a visitor but I won’t be a local again either.  I also haven’t idealized the place by forgetting how wretched the weather in winter (that generally runs well over into spring) can be.  The plan does not preclude living simply in a warmer climate for a few months a year.

Mom asked me once if I ever got homesick.  I honestly never felt that.  I like to think it’s just because slowly over time I’ve come to feel that home is wherever this body is.  If I’d moved back earlier, I would have felt it was because I was duty-bound or had failed at something.  Not now.

But I’m not going back to the area that was my home – I’m returning to what was home for Mom.  It is a place of natural beauty, energy, and magic for all who visit.  A place where a wide view of the Atlantic Ocean can replace a flat-screen TV.  In October, I walked down the road to the ocean and the tide was already there to meet me.

References

*See my No Time to Lose post.