I forgot to tell ya

We had 15 showings of druid labs in the space of one week. (All that time spent out back - in the rain - with the dog is probably what weakened my immune system enough to have caught that cold, mind you.) On Wednesday last, we were presented with two offers. Neither was adequate, but evidently competition is a good thing for us sellers. The two parties were informed that there were multiple offers, and asked to write up their best offer. That was Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, I took off for BirdDoo, though I thought I was going to Whinney. But you can ready about that below.

hobbitt called me when I was in Maryland, I think, to tell me that one of the parties, which already lives in this town, offered full price. Our agent was going to come over that night for hobbitt to sign the papers. (I dug out our POA papers before I left, thinking that this would all happen as soon as I had left for the mountains.) Dunno what else to say but - golly, the following blog entries notwithstanding, this hasn't been too hard. We're very happy with a full price deal. Evidently the buyers liked the house enough to be that aggressive, and no more, and lucky for them, too!

The following day, another party toured the house. They, too, made an offer. Our agent explained that the property had just come under contract. She was, in fact, in Pennsylvania at her brother's hospital bedside, waiting and worrying through his devastating heart ailment. The other agent accused her of withholding offers from us, and evidently got pretty nasty. It seems her clients were a little desperate. Their offer was about $5,100 over our asking price.

I had wondered if this would happen. I was blissfully unaware of it, of course, as I was on the road, but I considered the possibility. It seemed to me that a contract should be honored. We were happy with the price we got. hobbitt was evidently of the same mind. Our agent was pleased that he didn't consider breaking our contract for this other offer, probably because of her own personal issues at the moment, but also because it just seems to be plain bad business. $5,100 more wasn't enough to make me want to feel bad in my gut. (I don't know if there could have been, realistically, any amount that would tempt me into breaking the contract. And when I say realistically, I am saying that it would be unlikely in the real world that someone would dump a mega-millions lotto jackpot down for this house.) I know business is business, but karma is karma, too.

Greed isn't one of our vices. That's probably because our vice dance card is full, of course. It's pretty heavy in the lust, gluttony and sloth departments. At druid labs we consider these to be largely victimless crimes, though that could well be the devil's rationale. Whatever.

I hope this deal goes through, and that the M. family loves this home as much as we do. I'm grateful for their generosity. Here's hoping that on May 6th, we get to celebrate our good fortune together.

the plague

I understand it's going around.

It started for me about nine days ago: scratchy throat, burning sinuses. Nothing major, but uncomfortable. I began eating Cold-eeze as snacks. I believed I had it under control. I even felt "okay" enough to babysit Dylan on Wednesday - and he was coming off a bad cold that had an even worse cough. I washed my hands so often my fingertips began to crack open.

For the long drive Thursday, I made sure I had a box of tissues on the passenger seat. On Friday, when my friends and I were stumbling around in an Appalachian fog, my voice began to sharpen, and deepen. My sinuses filled up. On Saturday, the coughing began. By Sunday my voice was a hollow rasp, the tissues had run out, and the toilet paper I was using to blow my nose started to have the same effect as sand paper on my delicate nose and upper lip. The skin on my fingers began to crack on just about every finger. I hardly left the property up there at the cabin in BirdDoo. The one walk I attempted left me light-headed and weak in the knees.

By Monday the coughing was wracking my body so fiercely that I actually retched more than a few times, while driving home. The rattle in my chest was alarming, though I had no trouble actually breathing. I went through three rolls of toilet paper on the 10-hour drive. Today I felt like a rubber bone fish, and talking was an effort - because it would bring on the coughing.

When I got home last night, hobbitt was sitting at his desk working, and shivering with a high fever. He couldn't get warm all evening, and when he's sick, he doesn't like to be "social." There wasn't anything I could do for him, not even hold his icy hands to try to warm them. He did let me tuck him into my custom-made pillow blankie, though. In the middle of the night I woke because of how damp - no, how soaking wet - the sheets on his side of the bed felt. He wouldn't let me get dry sheets on the bed. He slept. I didn't. I was too busy coughing and then scraping flesh off my face while emptying the viscous happiness from my nose.

Today was the worst so far for me, though I made it to my Master Gardener class and didn't need to leave the room because of coughing. I believe I ate an entire box of Hall's, though. By afternoon I felt as though I was filled with nothing more than a tepid wind, except for my sinuses, of course. hobbitt was as hot with fever tonight as he was last night, though he didn't seem to be as chilled. Still, he huddled up under the pillow blankie.

My sister has this cold with the cough. So does my other sister, who lives 380 miles away. Should I be paranoid?

I tossed together some canned vegetables with chicken meat and stock I had in the freezer, then added some sushi rice and a whole lot of garlic. That's what hobbitt and I had for both lunch and dinner. Very soothing.

Hopefully we'll both feel better soon. We need to start talking about how we're going to make this move, and when. It's starting to look like a road trip for hobbitt and me and Inti. All we have to do then is figure out how to get the kitty shipped out. I can't imagine subjecting her to 5 or 6 days in a car. I cannot even begin to fathom the hell we'd all have to pay after that. But such things will have to wait until we all feel better, can talk without choking, and have clear heads. Well, it'll have to wait for 2 out of three, at least.

my spring break

"Lovely 6-room cabin, hot tub, loft, fully-equipped kitchen, sleeps 13. From I-xx at Flathead take 15 east to Witless Sprains, then follow 20 east for 22 miles to Dianthus. Continue on to BirdDoo and then for another 14 miles along the river to log cabin on left. 1271 Dog Fork Road, Whinney, WV."

Faithful reader - do you take this verbage to mean that the cabin you rented is at 1271 Dog Fork Road in Whinney, WV? Well, you'd be not only wrong (Whinney, WV is where the owner lives. Silly me.), but you'd be three long fucking hours away from that lovely cabin if you went to 1271 Dog Fork Road in Whinney, WV. You'd be tired and pissed off, and unlikely to be able to do the required mileage math when you finally found your way to BirdDoo, WV, which is on the other side of the freaking state. And heaven forbid if you call the innkeeper, a lovely and extremely friendly gal with a penchant for useless directions. Example: "Y'all just take this road right on up here, and y'all will come to a place where a road goes off to the right. Just stay on that road..." Gentle reader, on which road should you stay? The one you're on, or the one that goes off to the right? I don't know either, so I ask: "So, do I turn there?" And she answers, "No, once you're on that road, you don't turn." So I say, "So I just go past that road that goes off on the right?" and she says, "No, y'all just stay on that road..."

Lucky for me she was home when I still had cell phone reception, and after 42 miles on a twisty winding mountain road, she met me and escorted me to the cabin. I was 4 hours later than I had expected. I had been driving for twelve hours, and it was 10 o'clock at night. It was cold in the cabin. There was very little kindling for the Jotul wood stove, and all the other wood was unsplit. I'm definitely a pyromaniac, but this one had me stumped. The forced air heat took a very long time to get the chill out of the log walls. I waited for my friends until midnight, then drank three very large glasses of wine (okay! I lied! It was more like 3/4 of the 1.75 liter bottle - I guess that glass held like 20 ounces...), and decided I'd take the loft bed. I had no way to contact my friends to tell them not to go to 1271 Dog Fork Road. They finally arrived at 5:50 a.m. on Friday (having started out at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday). I met them at the door, helped them with their luggage, showed them where the bedrooms were, and thanked the gods that I didn't travel in the car with them. It would be hours before they'd be speaking to each other at this point. The sun was coming up and they stomped off to bed. When we got up we'd all have a big laugh about it, wouldn't we?

Late that day the innkeeper arrived to collect our rent, and to tell us about all the local hiking spots, complete with driving directions. None of us could look at each other when she started with the directions. We'd either have to laugh in her face or kill her. There was no alternative.

I was glad, when I drove out on Monday, that I'd arrived in the dark. I was dog-tired when I drove in those 42 miles on the twisty winding country road and judging from how the cans of seltzer and CDs were flying around the inside of my car, I was driving a tad too fast, but I was impressed with my car's handling and response. Good thing, too. The right side of the road coming in had no shoulder and dropped off in some places about 75 feet straight down to white water. In other places half of the road had been washed out from the creeks coming down the mountain. Guardrails? I laugh.

dog fork

It's not what you think. It's a place, a cabin, a time to be spent with excellent friends on Easter weekend. Marjorie the wonder chimp (aka stunt monkey) somehow got the other two Pisces of our foursome to agree to a trip away together. It's been a whole year since they were here and we were sitting in the hot tub drinking slippery nipples and talking up a small storm. I saw each of them this past summer - Marjorie spent a long weekend with us in July, and I saw Lynn and Barb in Illinois when I was there in June. It's not an absolute requirement that we go away somewhere together, but it is important that we all be together, and a real bonus when the guys aren't around. We can be our own ridiculous selves, and eat too much, drink too much, and laugh until our sides hurt.

I don't know of any better way to heal the soul than to spend time with my girlfriends.

vernal equinox is coming right at me

Something wakes, stirred by vague warmth or lingering sunlight. I love that we know something about it, but mostly it's still part of the immense mystery, that eternal why that constantly escapes my lips. But somewhere out there xylem is waking up, and phloem is waking up, and vascular cambium is waking up, and cotyledons are waking up, and surely all that noise will begin to wake up the various larvae and instars and what-have-you out there in the soil, and before you know it, the cacophany of growth will have its way. Feeding will begin, and then everyone and everything will be in a big rush to attract pollinators or find mates and reproduce because there are no guarantees - there have been years without spring, certainly, when the earth belched up such quantities of itself so as to snuff out the life-giving sunlight.

I love spring. Can you tell? Some days I can stand outside and see the thick stuff of life wafting through the air - how many different pollens? - and realize that I am surrounded by lust, by an uncontrollable yearning and drive for union and creation. It's hardly possible to be unaffected by such a sight. Spring was already underway in Port Townsend in early March. All the trees were flowering, the daffodils were actually beginning to decline, and the bees were out foraging. So I've missed that for this year, but it looks like I'll be able to enjoy it here. Yesterday I saw the box elder bugs huddled around the garage door, basking in the warmth of the sun. There were some other flying insects about which probably overwintered in the soil as adults. The deer ticks are already making their preparations for this year's brood. There's a lot of green outside my window, but most of it is moss or pine or cedar or greenbriar. I don't know what to expect after such a mild winter, though the daylilies are peeking, and the crocus, and the rudbeckia outside the kitchen door. Soon the hostas will send up their pointy shoots, and by then we'll begin to watch for the hummingbirds.

No matter how long winter feels, no matter how dark the days, how cold the winds, how deep the snow, how brutal - spring eventually arrives, one way or another. And with every spring, there's just no stopping life's longing for itself.

ow ow ow ow ow

It isn't a happy thing to have an insistent and irritable bowel when there is a line of prospective buyers waiting to get in to see your home. That's all I'm saying about that.

aggravation

Everybody that comes to see this house is very interested, seriously interested, I'm told. But all are concerned about the water we're currently pumping from our brand-new, spiffy, upgraded sump pumps. The sump pumps that I just spent $3,232 for. The sump pumps that are working flawlessly, silently, and powerfully, and doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing (keeping our basement dry).

Here's the thing: we live in an area dotted with springs and creeks and vernal ponds. Water doesn't drain into this area from anywhere else - it arises here. It's known as a seasonally high water table. So if there is ample snow in the areas that serve the local aquifer, come springtime that water finds its way here and the water table will rise along with the springs and creeks and vernal ponds. When I was buying this house in April 2002, the sumps were bone dry. It was the end of a five-year drought.

Our first summer here, we had a devastating thunder storm that lasted the better part of an evening. The winds and rain were frightening, and we took a lot of close lightning strikes. The neighbors lost a huge tree just to the south of their pool, split in half lengthwise by lightning. Our gutters here were full of rotted leaves, and looked as if they'd never been cleaned, and so they overflowed. We had some seepage along the front basement wall that evening. There are stains from that storm, though there were already marks on the wall, so that wasn't the first such event. We have kept the gutters clean since then and even in last summer's 13-inches-of-rain-in-one-afternoon, we didn't take in a drop, and the sumps were dry by that time, too.

Houses float on the hulls of their foundations in a sea of earth. When that earth becomes saturated, the force of water can crack basement floors and walls as it increases in volume. Sump pumps keep that from happening, and keep the pressure down enough so that there is no seepage through walls or up through the floors. In Illinois, our home was on a slope, and the pump emptied about 30 feet from the house, cutting a little channel toward our neighbors' property and seasonally flooding a bit of their lawn on the property line. Mary and I planted, together, a bog garden there, filled with gooseneck loosestrife and other wet-loving flowering plants. It was a beautiful spot, and a nice solution between neighbors. Plus, some of the plants we put in would have been invasive if not for the fact that the water was only in that one spot, so we could grow things that we wouldn't dare try in any other part of our gardens. Here is it:



Well, this little piece of paradise is flat, and I'll go further and say it's a poorly-graded building site. The classy work the plumbers did had to be amended by me and hobbitt in order to not just pump water right back through the basement window. So while it's not a lovely flexible black hose running across the south side of our yard, it's doing the job of keeping the basement dry while the water returns to the Pine Barrens, and creating a little bird bath out there to boot. I can understand why buyers would question it. Nothing I say will convince anyone we don't have a problem here. But I'm still really pissed off and aggravated that by improving something that never was a problem, we've made it look like there's a problem.

spring, or something like it

There is some sort of weed in bloom in the lawn, all over the place. It's a tiny, prostrate bronze broad-leaf thing, with an erect spike of wee, vaguely pink/purple flowers. I think it's pretty, but it's very hard to notice. The maple buds, on the other hand, are getting gaudy and fat, and last year's growth on the sweetgum and tupelo is greening up, too. I looked long and hard to find the shining sumac yesterday, but I'm afraid it's been lost to the grape and greenbriar.

The bee balm has spread and is poking its head out of the ground, perhaps about a half inch, and yet the fragrance is strong and sweet. I scattered thousands of milkweed seeds nearby, out behind the solar panels, and can only hope the snow helped them find their way into the soil. Butterflies should be pretty happy here this summer. I saw two crows flying over the labs to the south east, both with huge long twigs in their beaks. A pair of titmice were courting in the gutters right outside the bedroom window this morning. Yesterday, I'm pretty certain I saw a pair of waxwings in the woods near the stands of cedar out back. The Carolina wrens have been pestering the terra cotta birdhouse out front all winter, and I'm curious to see whether they'll build their nest out front this year, or find a place in the back like last year.

I found the root of the grape vine and cannot fathom why I haven't noticed it before. It's right under the holly whose topmost growth is inundated with vines. Should have been obvious to me, huh? Well, I'm not doing anything about that now. Nor will I trim back the crossed branches on the crab apple right outside the kitchen door. I may, or may not, remove the flags I posted near the wintergreen I found in the north woods. Maybe whoever buys this house will enjoy having a little mystery on their hands.

In Master Gardening class on Tuesday, the instructor passed around a clod of turf dug up from right outside the Ag center's back door. We identified some type of Kentucky blue grass, as well as a perennial rye and what appeared to be a hard fescue. I held on to that sample for a long time, my face deep in the container, looking at the small spots of some fungus attacking the grass leaves, but I couldn't have cared less about the grass. The soil clinging to the plant's roots catpivated me - that unmistakable fragrance of sweet, delicious earth. I breathed it in, deeply and repeatedly, until the person sitting to my left got impatient waiting to see the plants.

I suspect the earth outside my office window here at druid labs smells the same way, though perhaps a bit drier since it's much sandier. I want to go out there and trace the progression of the season; look to see where sap is rising, where shoots are emerging, and where life will have its way once again, in spite of the increasing white-tail population. I don't mind that the cedars out front are stripped bare to a height of about five feet. As much as the new growth, that's a sign of life around here. Even the strip of skunk fur I found in the south woods a couple of years ago - that speaks to me of success in the hunt. And don't get me started on the mushrooms. This place teems with life, vibrant, colorful, and unrelenting.

today's breed of tourist

Let's just say that I'd sell them the house if they coughed up the bucks, then warn my neighbors across the street to sell their house in a big hurry. They probably won't want a dirt-bike track so close.

I won't go so far as to say it's genteel on this street, but it's a peaceful and quiet, private and respectful bunch of residents. Well, except for our neighbor to the north, who likes to drive his big construction equipment around at all hours, all year long, but especially on balmy summer evenings. He's recently built a huge (RV-sized) illegal garage in the woods, which he shouldn't have cleared without papers from the Pinelands Commission.

The potential buyers were pleasant enough, though 15 minutes late for the half-hour appointment, which they then overstayed by 45 minutes. (It was cold out there with the pup.) I wasn't enamored of the way they whipped the garage doors up and then just walked away leaving it wide open. Something about them rubbed me the wrong way - a brashness, perhaps, or just a tiny hint of crude manners. I can't put my finger on it. They just seemed a little rough.

But I'd sell them the house, if they coughed up the bucks, and hope they commenced to cause some misery to the neighbors to the north.

lonesome

The bad thing about my Master Gardener course is that I don't have anyone to talk with after the lectures. I'm pumped today about plant disease diagnostics and would like to rehash the lecture to cement in my feeble brain the ideas of biotic and abiotic plant diseases, of physical, chemical and mechanical injury to plants, of symptoms and signs, patterns, evidence. The speaker, Rich Buckley of Rutgers University, besides being a brainiac and all-around expert on turf grass diseases, and therefore much sought after for golf-course turf problems, is an engaging post-hippie bike-riding (to the tune of 15,200 miles last year), non-golf-playing plant nerd. I think I fell in love. And if I wasn't moving to Washington, I'd consider taking some of his plant diagnostic intensives.

But there's no one to talk to about that awesome lecture, or the previous lecture on turf grass management. Oh well.

yikes

I'd forgotten the real danger that lies in showing a home: keeping the kitchen cleared and clean. That is to say, one eats out of packages and such that make little mess. One doesn't use pots and pans. Everything must go in the dishwasher.

Okay, let's make a list of such things: cheese; potato chips; canned refried beans; baked potatoes; cheese; canned soup; corn chips; pretzels; and fruit, of course.

You get the idea. All I can say is that I'm craving some spring greens with pecans and a nice blue cheese vinaigrette, or a chicken/orange casserole, or even a nice veggie lasagna. It's likely to be a freaking parade through here this weekend, so I'm going to guess that next week will be much like this one in the food department. This kitchen won't be thoroughly thrashed again until we have a contract on the house and the inspection is completed.

In the meantime, just hand me some more psyllium, willya?

whoa

Okay, we had a walk-through yesterday. Their realtor asked our realtor, in an off-hand way, if we'd take x-dollars for the house. Our realtor replied, "Put it in writing and I'll present it to my clients." X-dollars would be fine. Excellent. Really, really good. Of course, I don't know if that was the beginning of an offer or just a fishing expedition. In either case, I haven't discussed with our realtor what our bottom line is, or how much we'd be willing to wiggle. She doesn't need to know that.

Today at noon a couple arrived with another realtor. According to hobbitt the showing went really well. They're coming back tonight.

The vibes of this ordeal are so much different than the last time we sold a house. I knew I was coming to a much more, shall we say pricey area, and felt I had to squeeze every dollar out of the house that I could. We'll make a small fortune in just the 2 years and 9 months we've lived here, and we're downsizing, so I don't feel any of the angst or stress or clenching that I did then. My calm and hobbitt's seeming delight at the showings - well, let's just say that this is a new sensation. And I'm liking it.

Perhaps we'll sell our house soon. Perhaps it won't be soon. Either way, it's all good. But check in with me tomorrow, or whenever price negotiations start. I've never been on the winning end of that. Maybe my streak is coming to an end.

big black cocks

My notebook is usually open on my desk and running at all times. I just never know when I'll need to read Alison's blog, or try to remember Joan Crawford's name, or find out how to get to the Brielle Yacht Club for lunch tomorrow with Aunt Grace, before her appointment with the podiatrist. All our books are packed up, so I can't consult my birding guides, or my plant guides, or maps, or the big movie book. Not even a dictionary.

This morning I sat down here at my desk and my email program (Eudora) was visible. I get a ton of junk mail - phishing expeditions, offers from local housewives whose husbands are idiots and who want to have sex with me, drugs offers, and more mortgages than you can shake a stick at. Usually I keep HTML turned on, or it's difficult to read the mail from NASA telling me when the space station will be visible from the hot tub. (Okay, they're not specifically notifying me about the hot tub, but still...) Eudora nicely sorts all this crap into a separate folder that I rarely have to pay attention to, except to see if some legitimate mail inadvertently got tagged as junk. Evidently last night I left the junk folder open.

Imagine my surprise when seeing immense letters from the Eudora screen shouting "BIG BLACK COCKS" with accompanying photos. Perhaps I should make sure my apps are shut down when potential buyers are doing walkthroughs, huh?

error in judgment

I've been so excited and happy about moving to Port Townsend that I've started to become anxious and even a little frustrated with where we live now. (Like that's not obvious to all of you.) I took several moments yesterday to be grateful for the time we've had at this beautiful, spacious and peaceful home. Dishonoring this oasis feels really bad to me, and I don't like to feel bad.

Getting the sumps working properly and without causing erosion in the yard has gone a long way to making me feel centered again, to be perfectly honest. The bluebirds have their bath again, we have our dry basement again, the cat has the bluebird channel on kitty tv (watched from my desktop), the Cooper's hawk buzzed us yesterday a few hours after the red-tail swooped by, and tomorrow the For Sale sign goes up.

I can do this. Nobody said it would be easy, right?

betwixt and between

On Saturday I was standing with hobbitt on a dock behind the Waterstreet Hotel in Port Townsend, enjoying the last of the late-afternoon light. To our right, or south, we could see the beach of our new community, Kala Point. A little further to the right, south-west, we could see the dark, looming peaks of the Olympic range. Straight ahead was Indian Island, across Port Townsend Bay. To the left, north-east, Mt. Baker's snowy facade in the Cascades was basking in the low sunlight. A river otter swam past in the water beneath us. Behind us Port Townsend was in full bloom, with bees nectaring, and earlier in the day, locals in shorts running errands to the stately old post office.

The closing didn't take place when it was supposed to; the phone company was unable to connect phone service; we somehow clogged up a toilet in our new home; the dishwasher in the new kitchen is a feature-free bottom-of-the-line noise machine (which the builder will remove and credit us for); our flight back east was cancelled due to icing and high winds. The new sumps were dug here over the last couple of days and there are sand piles on the back walk. While cleaning up the basement after the plumbing work, we discovered that the downstairs shower drain leaks.

Now I know from my spiritual training that there is magic in those betwixt and between places. Actually, I know it from my Master Gardening training, too. Those areas neither here nor there contain the vital stuff of life and energy and growth. Carbon dioxide is exchanged for oxygen; tidal marshes comprise the fecund scapes which give rise to both aquatic vigor and feeding and nesting grounds for migratory birds; the heart opens for goodbyes while the mind imagines those new horizons, creating a mix of emotions and the volatile blend of impatience and expectation.

Yeah, it's a rich place indeed. Yet I feel like a prisoner in some ways. The "neither here nor there" part of it all has an emphasis on the neither part, for me. I don't feel like I can do this. I don't know how I'll get through this. Right now, it's just too much.

home

Tomorrow, early, we take off for Port Townsend to take possession of our new home. In addition to being excited, I'm worried, tense, happy, giddy, confused, sad - okay, just name an emotion. I'm feeling it.

When we came here, it was my dream to make "home," the place that I missed after moving out of the house I grew up in. After a dozen years in Illinois, I was hoping for some reprise of my youth, not for myself, but for the entity I call my family. The place where unfathomably, two adults and 4 children lived in a three-bedroom home, took all our meals together, and watched television programs together at night. Where we shared chores and fights and phone calls from boyfriends and prom nights, graduations and holidays, hams and turkeys and grilled meals in winter, varsity games, mumps, hurricanes and above all, raucous laughter from time to time. The place that I can barely remember, but on those rare occasions when I do, my heart is filled with peace and longing at the same time.

We siblings grew up and a little apart, going our separate ways and keeping as close touch with our parents as we were individually comfortable. Holidays became chores, gathering difficult, and not only because Dad was gone, or because Mom was unable to enjoy herself in the midst of the chaos that grandchildren and adult reprobates brought. It seems that for a lot of years, family became superfluous. I wanted it back. And so I manifested this large home, with this amazing pool and decks, space galore for playing or relaxing, room for sleepovers. A play house, a vacation home, or just a place that my sisters and brother and mother could come and not worry, not be anxious about spilled drinks or not enough chairs. After one Thanksgiving here, my mother acknowledged me to be the "hostess with the mostest" marveling at how relaxed I was with a house full of insanity; and later, after another Thanksgiving, she called me "the matriarch" of the family.

That wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but that's what I got. The matriarch. Keeper of the hearth, keeper of the family. The place where the boys could come on snow days, where for the first time in more than a decade and for probably the last time, my entire family spent a holiday together. The place where my big sister, after a long week of work, could come with her children and enjoy an evening's swim. The place where my little sister could stay comfortably and visit everyone else when she came into town from Massachusetts. The place where lunch was served after Mom's funeral. The place, home, the hearth. Here.

My sisters are sad about our move. Terry because she feels rather isolated, living as close as she does to our brother but having no real relationship with him. Nancy because I'm taking away that notion of home she's come to substitute for Mom and Dad's house, and removing the ease of family gatherings. And for those same reasons I'm really sad, too. I would love to have that same childhood cameraderie with my sisters (minus the bickering and occasional fisticuffs), the familiarity that only comes with proximity. Heck, there's no place for me to stay when I come back to visit.

I'll talk with my sisters, and probably my brother, at least as often as I do now. That won't change. I can't imagine how often I'll see them, but that's no different than in the years we lived in Illinois. My conflict is that my heart still yearns for family at the same time as it yearns for the life that hobbitt and I envision for ourselves. This move will be hard. It's not about the house, which I loved from the first moment I set eyes upon it. It's about something intangible and perhaps even impossible, or nonexistent.

When I think about being able to see snow-capped jagged peaks shrouded in morning mist, and open water, whether bay or strait, I am filled with happy excitement. I know the place I'm going to is filled with the spirit of "my people," a phrase I first uttered during a ferry trip through the San Juan Islands. I can't explain what I mean by "my people" except to say it has nothing to do with humankind. There is something in the spirit of the mountains and water that called to me - no, positively shouted out to me - and that I would be foolish to resist. I'm going home. I'm sure of that. It's hard to explain all this sadness, then, to hobbitt, who has never had roots in the soil longer than the 10 years we lived together in our last house. He's not attached to family or place. I have roots in every place I've ever lived, though that's not the same as attachments.

I hope that this time, when my foundation gets pulled up once again, the wound eventually gives way to stronger, wiser, quieter new roots.