Some of the hardest places to live are the hardest places to leave. The places of investment, in heart and soul and toil and belief in a best possible life. A place where it was difficult to get to, in the first place.
In 1988, immigrant pioneers we were not, but we still came to a lifestyle and region foreign to us, because of hardship. With a minimum of money but a wealth of dreams, like the pioneers, we could have land! Acreage, rolling fields and woods. A farmhouse, if dilapidated and barely removed from many years of abandonment.
Build your dream and it will come, we thought. So, we listed our Colorado home, went to work in California and eventually signed on the dotted line for a different one, in the crosshairs of random hope and deeper seeds of faith.
We did not sign on for peace of mind. When we finally arrived, we were so awash in doubt we despaired and almost didn't want to unload the rented truck. Our two young kids must have been so confused by parents who had hyped a "dream" to them for almost two years but now acted as if its arrival were a nightmare!
We knew no one, but the locals were kind and that helped. It was April and the landscape shrugged off winter into a greening Eden, even in what later proved to be a drought year. We were making friends quickly, becoming a part of what did look like a wonderful place to live.
It appeared to be "Onward Wisconsin" for us, but the Colorado house hadn't sold, and Ramon had only found the poorest of work. It was hard to do all that was needed to prepare for an eventual winter in a house we couldn't do much to fix, one that was heated by wood alone. A proper chainsaw and truck for the woods were out of the question until the house in Colorado sold. As long as that house WAS unsold, we waffled. We could still possibly go back, and we might have to.
Each day we experienced a mix of highs and lows. The casting aside of realities to get here now reared its ugly head. We hadn't planned well! We had planned on fate intervening in the nick of time in a positive way, and only when we were in the trenches could we see it might not work out. And that maybe we didn't even want it to, after all.
Still, we began to plant a garden. With shovels, we turned soil that hadn't been worked in ages. In my own mind I was contemplating if we would even be here for its harvest. If we were, we would need it, so we might as well do the work.
As the four of us dug, we began to turn up pieces of objects from another era, rusty fragments of farm implements and hardware, old bottles and broken glass. When our son pulled up a dish, he called me over to see it. He flipped a whole small plate, with clingy dark earth that I brushed off, to see a pretty pattern, and to GASP.
I gasped because the dish was an exact match to one single other one that I treasured, one that I'd found for a dime in Colorado and had tried for years to find more of. In fourteen years of living there, I never could scare up even one more, not in the dozens upon dozens of antique stores that we had visited.
Serendipity, some would say. I looked it at otherwise. It was messaging. We had to believe we were meant to be here, we had to stop doubting. And to double-down on this messaging, the next time we went to the mailbox, there was a package in it from my sister, holding a sweet little picture with words that said, "Go forward and never lose sight of your dreams."
How could she know?! I wondered. We'd only said, "We have our work cut out for us here." Pride had kept us quiet; we hadn't said much to the family and friends who were waiting to hear more, about how it was going for us.
She didn't know. It was messaging again, responsive to that leap of faith we had taken.
It's been over thirty years now since that fateful time. Lately I've been looking at other houses and places. But faithfulness to this one is a weird thing! Surely there's something finer out there, and it's fun to be on the prowl, if a fling with a different one sounds better for a new (or older) stage of life. But it takes time and a lot of lived experiences to make a house more than a house, a place to live more than just a place.
Once you've raised kids and helped grandkids grow up mostly in one single house and place, it's a home, and it's like second skin. If you hurt, it helps you heal, especially if you still have another beating heart in its walls with you. Maybe ONLY if you have another beating heart in it with you! So it is for some, not for others.
For pleasure, work and exercise we've traversed hills and fields all these years. We still prefer a wood fire over the cooler breath of an alternate fuel. Whether for joy or for winter warmth, it all adds up to work. Work that doesn't get easier with time.
But it's even harder, to consider leaving your "storied" place! At least this far.
