Un-Settling

The view from our new home

It has been nearly four months since I last posted. As someone who, for quite some time, posted on this blog every day, that silence is akin to saying "I quit." But I didn't intentionally quit. As I returned from Thailand and the experience of the post below, it was clear to me that life would change. I felt that I had directly heard permission from God to go now, and I was grateful. I wrote the following paragraph in March, and it sums up best what continues to drive my response to the experiences of the past year:

There is so much not worth spending one's life on, so much junk and ugliness between people that we put up with instead of demanding something better of our short lives. There are so many ways in which we just let time slide by without grabbing on, squeezing the best out of life, living for meaning rather than just existing or blithely pursuing our momentary whims and adventures. We settle for inertia rather than making a move to take care of what really matters. And what really matters is a very slim set of things indeed, considering that we are like grass that withers and blows away and is forgotten.

So the change is underway. This past week we have been busy packing up our belongings in boxes, and in just over a week we will pull out for the long drive down to southern California, where I have taken up a new job in educational administration. Husband will be taking the year off paid work to finish his doctorate, and my parents have [thankfully] decided to move to the same area a month after we do. We will be living half an hour from all three of our adult children, and all five of our grandchildren. (Number 5 made her appearance in May.)


As I have been packing boxes, I have run across mementos of my life before I moved from California to the Northwest, and yesterday it left me very pensive at the end of the day. I realized how much of my creative self and inner well-being I have sacrificed to my work and to the small and rather insular community here. I have given up art work, various types of crafts, quilting, writing and performing musical theater with the college students, playing the piano and organ and guitar ... and sometimes flute, creative writing, and writing for publication. I used to go to concerts and dramatic productions, museums and art shows, and explored historical sites within driving distance. All of these things died away, one by one, in a long, twisted suffocation from my life. Some of them died, not because of time and work constraints, but because of the ways in which this community--despite its many good qualities--has squelched my inner self. I think I didn't fully recognize it because I try to always view my circumstances in a positive light. Handling the evidences of the past richness as I packed, made me wonder where that woman went, and whether she can be recovered. Or is life too far gone, has it changed me ways that I can't or shouldn't go back and do those things again?


I deliberately packed up some of my unfinished things of the past rather than discarding them, because it represents hope for the future. I'm keeping my unquilted fabric and some of my craft supplies. I'm keeping the organ music I love the most. I'm keeping my slips of paper with ideas for writing. I'm keeping my music-writing paper, and my old piano books, and I'm keeping my guitar and flute. 


I am looking forward to reconnecting with my long-time California friends who will go shopping with me, go on visits to the Getty museums, walk on the beach (which will be just a half hour drive away), explore ghost towns, and attend concerts at the Redlands Bowl and the Hollywood Bowl. I am going to seek out old and new friends who are hopeful and optimistic people. I want to spend time with people who are interested in building others up than tearing them down, looking for the good rather than criticizing, withholding judgment rather than building grudges, focusing on the big issues of the planet rather than giving themselves over to a small-town dramas, grabbing onto what is meaningful in life and trying out new experiences and skills, rather than simply existing from day to day without breaking the routine.


While life will be unsettled for the next six or seven weeks, I am feeling hopeful. "For Any Eyes" just might be hearing more from me again.

Five sweet reasons to head for California