Cold, single digit temperature days in Boulder require a different perspective on one’s daily activities: we are used to being outside at whim but with this cold, we plan, bundle in layers, and walk gingerly on slippery sidewalks. And then, in the time it takes to watch a long movie, we are back in Sonoma, with spring-like breezes, a few daffodils poking above the ground, squirrels jumping from tree to fence and back again, their faces full with acorns.
One wonders about our adaptability, our transience, our ease (or discomfort at times) of never quite being in one place. Doug says our life has been a series of transitions, rarely in one place long enough to learn all the nooks and crannies, adventures, and opportunities. I sometimes wish for deep roots, familiar roadways, neighbors who know our quirks without the intimacy of best friends.
We balance this life of ours, sometimes in synchronization of the adventures, other times, one of us (usually me) yearning for stability. Yet, we remain together, weathering more than thirty years together, despite job opportunities that take one or another to other geographies, children grown with their own adventures, family dynamics of aging parents, and siblings so different from one another.
My brothers and sisters are mostly stable, the years since college in more or least one geography; my addresses are written in pencil, the changes too often to remember the most-recent telephone number or street address. How did we come to this history? I wouldn’t have intentionally chosen to be a wanderer, but circumstances have given me this path.
I see the moon from various horizons, with the children’s song: “I see the moon, the moon sees me, the moon sees the one I long to see, so God bless the moon and God bless me and God bless the one I long to see,” the sheep-counting variation to which I try to fall asleep. I may wake in the middle of the night, in the pitch dark, trying to remember where I am for the night. I find my bearings, sometimes only after a bump or two into a closet or misplaced door location, then head back to bed, assured for a time that I’ll be in one place.
I wonder how long we will be at this location? How many moons will I see wax and wane? How many summers will we spend in the mountains, dreaming of fourteeners, having the boys visit, planning on, finally, swimming in the cold reservoir? How many times will we tell friends and family that we’ve settled down, this is our plan? I wonder.
[Moon in the morning just above Dakota Ridge/Sanitas Valley Trail, Boulder]
