The automatic Gaussian filter of the mind is taking over as we move closer to becoming homeless. There is a sense of sunset about it, yet there is a new chapter emerging, still formless, still the ever recurring blank canvass of tomorrow or the next day. It is both intimidating and enticing. Fifty-seven years in the making; homeless without the fear that there will never be home again. Home has become, I guess, wherever we go now, and we go a lot of places. This is the next adventure becoming complete.
It's been a good house for twenty-one and a half years. Not huge, but big enough to raise four kids and still have a room or two where you could go and hide for a while. The kids could all walk to school (and for Baily and Max, from kindergarten though 12th grade). It was a great place to raise children, and now that's going to happen again: the new owners have a four-year-old and a two-year-old, and that makes me smile. We really haven't lived there for almost three years, Beth closer to four years. But, in the end, it's a just a house, not really home anymore. We figured out that we spent about 23-24 days there last year, and that works out to be a pretty expensive dollars-to-days-used place to live. So, we move on.
On that thought, perhaps some day we'll get to park overnight again at a rest area near the city of Weed in Northern California, and watch the sun rise over a cloud-shrouded Mount Shasta, and for a few hours we'll feel right at home right there, too.