Why? (Roxi)

What have we said about “why?” Did we leave out that chapter?

We visited Arizona in February; a quick trip to get us out of here during the time of year when I can’t even work up a good depression. You here in the North know that this is a mixed bag we reached into. Reaching with one hand, a break from a New York February can do wonders for your mental health. With the other hand, re-entry is brutal – an actual pain somewhere just beneath the solar plexus. A belly-flop back into reality. Within a week the antifreeze starts pumping through the arteries again, and we can hold on for another eight weeks.

So, it’s not surprising that anyone would come back and pack up the cats. I’ve been back to Florida many times since I left in 1979. I’ve vacationed in exciting, beautiful and sunny places.

Do you play this game? Go away, relax and have a wonderful time, and pick your new home in this place? I do it everywhere:

Toronto: north of North York.
Lakeport, CA: anywhere by the lake.
Manhattan: the mind boggles.
Jacksonville: Neptune Beach.
San Francisco: the fallen redwood in Muir Woods.
D.C.: Pennsylvania Ave.
Hondo: San Antonio.
San Antonio: Austin
Los Angeles: Ithaca, NY.
San Maarten: oh, just anywhere I can lay my towel.

It’s just a game, until it isn’t.

We’ve told our friends about the sky, the rocks, the eagles, the canyons, the sun, the heat and even the people. Those things are the reason, but they’re not. It was the sudden sense that all of this is possible, when a week earlier, it was not. The shift from “I’ve been here thirty years” to “I was there thirty years.”

I can’t show you a picture of that.

For me, the change is natural and organic. My child is an adult. My job is over. My cracker is already perforated for a clean break. Annie has to perforate her own cracker (can I say that here?). I think her task now is much harder. Me, I can sit around, blog and moan about ‘grieving losses.’ She actually gets up and goes to work. Blech. How do you people do that every day?