And Away We Go...

Well, I can hardly believe it but here I am looking out the car passenger side window at whole new worlds, learning new street names, the names of unfamiliar trees and flowers. Even though I grew up near here for a time, spent my early childhood years in Mill Valley, about an hour south of the wildness of West Sonoma County. And I am bewildered, a little, by my––and my husband’s––new scenery, but also by our willingness to make a sudden change after over three decades in Santa Cruz.

But the thing is this: nothing is stagnant. All the parts keep moving around on the board. Our beloved small town has gotten a lot bigger and is clogged with traffic and new builds. And anyway, we are less apt to go out at night and more likely to likely to stay in with our dog, Pumpkin. And Armando’s job started crumbling under the weight of this current moment in terms of funding for social services. Why not move somewhere smaller with less of a carnival going on each night and more crickets and warm evenings and country roads we don’t know yet.

So, that’s what we did. Moved in a month. It was heinous. That’s the only word I can think of. Even though we didn’t do the literal heavy lifting, a month filling boxes and putting away nearly everything you own is still a month without much leisure, and one with a lot of neck pain and sore arms. Unless you’ve already gone full minimalist with is not how anyone with hundreds of books and an obsession with ceramics can describe themselves. No indeed. So that stuff’s in storage and we’re in in a temporary furnished place trying out bakeries and backroads and eating ice cream and sitting down to work at our desks and settling into something like a routine. Thank god!!

And this is a very down home note just to let you know what’s going on now that I have a place to write and a spare moment to catch you up. And I think what I want to say about all this madness is that I’m grateful to be on a new adventure and that I love the way it’s slowed me down (everything is a little slower here) and made me want to spend more time just looking around and listening to the sounds at night and learning the names of what grows.

Yours,

Danusha

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