For the Record

We are moving and I am glad.  Which is sort of a unexpected feeling for me.  This place has been hard in ways I wouldn't have anticipated.  We hoped to make it our home for many years but it turns out this job and this community have merely been a pit stop rather than a destination.  A place to refuel and tune up.  It has made us stronger.  And happier.  And better.  We have changed because of it.  There was a disappointing landlord.  A neighbor whose character was likely the very inspiration for Oscar the Grouch.  An opportunity to make large and hugely unpredicted changes in our path.  A time to close chapters and begin sketching new ones.  People who gave a lot to us.  And a lot of opportunities to give.  I am happy to record that we are leaving this house better cared for than we found it.  I believe that homes have personalities from the moment they are built, and this sweet old building was begging for a refreshing bath and a little kind companionship, which we could give.  We'll leave it with a full host of pink and red flowers waiting for the next tenant.  And the hopes that perhaps we contributed other less tangible things in the vicinity.

Yet I still found myself uncomfortable with the idea that for the first time in my life I will leave a place without the slightest inclination to linger.   I like to put my roots down deep and quickly.  I like to fall in love.  And it just didn't happen this time.  We were here so briefly and in the midst of such a swirl of constant transition that I had doubts as to if I would even remember much about it.  Then today, I felt the crunch of last October's leaves underfoot, and I knew precisely how I our time here will indeed live in my memory.

This morning I let the girls lead me through the white picket fence that an unusually harsh winter battered beyond it's original rustic look.  I saw the tulips we planted poking brave green shoots like spears through the leaves that merely waited out the months under the snow.  The leaves are crisp again now.  They rustle under foot.  And the dappled sun is playing gently with my darlings as they swing and twist and their own kind of light bursts through in the shine of their eyes and the effortless happiness of every muscle in their little faces.  It feels to me exactly like a golden autumn afternoon.  I realized that in my mind it will always be autumn in Connecticut.  Our autumn.  The one with blue skies and endless hours running loose in a yard built precisely for the catching of leaves.  Two little girls in it, chasing after leaves twirling down on a breeze in the hopes of catching a wish.  An eternal moment.  Like the sunset on Oahu, or a moment of quiet solitude under a midnight sky.  A memory you visit like a location, not browse through like a file.  This is where we really lived.  And that is how I will remember it.