Cold Comfort

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‘In the Waves of Change we find out direction.’ ….unknown (more water)

In the other house, I didn’t do much of anything. Walked the fields with my dog, drank wine in the evenings, listened to music, cooked in the kitchen, made dog food, slept eight hours, shopped for groceries, did the wash, read,wrote, made a few things from scraps of wool and notions in my head. I didn’t go out much at night, didn’t want to leave the comfort. Some days, feeling a bit squirrely, I drove to a favorite store. Friends came for dinner the odd time or we went out to their house. I dropped in on my girls or one of them came for a quick coffee.

The other house had property, took its pound of flesh and bucket of cash. In return it was a garden filled grassy slope to a meandering river and it was all ours, a  twenty year love affair. Then it gave up on us and we started looking around. It happened with small annoyances, like chewing with your mouth open or picking your teeth. We started falling out of love, flirting with realtors, having clandestine meetings in small towns. Irrevocable.

So change of house, change of land, change of town, change of scenery; two hours up country, sitting pretty on a huge lake.

‘Just for the record darling, not all positive change feels positive in the beginning.’ ….S.C. Lourie

The house throws a blanket around my shoulders like all good houses hand picked with love and money; the same lovely man pours me wine, lights the fire. There is a beach to walk, dunes and tall grasses to sniff with the dog, familiar trees nod and quiver when we pass, the evening ecstatic with sunset.

‘If you don’t like where you are, move. You are not a tree’

It wasn’t ‘not like’, it was want less, want different, or who is going to do all the work, is there another way to live, are we stuck, scared of change and what about an adventure. So I looked straight ahead, not sideways into the cedars where I saw deer and coyote, not up river where I pulled handfuls of watercress, not at the studio we built.

‘A ship is always safe at the shore but that is not what it is built for.’…. Albert Einstein.

I’m uncomfortable as hell. Everything feels different. I’ve pulled up anchor and I’m blowing all over the place. The roads used to curve, there were mangoes in the produce, I recognized faces, I could drive to Homesense, the Vet Clinic and lunch with a friend in twenty minutes.

‘You’re always one decision away from a totally different life.’

Yes well that certainly rings true, but I think I need one more quote to smooth this whole thing out. A panacea for my Sea Change.

‘Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.’….Robin Sharma

I want gorgeous right now. Here we go. This little house sits on the bank of the marina, the sun blazing up through masts on parked sail ships, gulls careening in the wind, sun struck bodies like stars. Ice in the harbour smooth as glass, the next day a broth of broken marbles, then a heave of shard crystal. We walk for miles on the beach, landscape ripped daily; sand, stones, bone worn trees; given up, swept away. Fire burns on the horizon, crimson, blue, lavender, magenta as the sun leaves the sky to the moon. The water freezes and builds in waves of spray making hills and valleys, a pie crust of ice and snow, the beach a moonscape.

‘In the waves of time we find our direction.’

Patience and faith.

xoLA