Lora and I seem to have reached a decision. A few weeks ago, our son received word that his employer was closing the Boise office where he worked. He was given a choice of severance, or the continuation of his job, but at the new corporate headquarters in Boca Raton. After some agonizing, he chose the latter. Lora and I had moved to Mountain Home, just outside of Boise, really for one reason and one reason only -- to be near our granddaughter. We very much wanted to be present as she came into her own, to see her through at least her high school years. Unfortunately, impersonal decisions made in a corporate office, at considerable distance from us, have taken that away from us.
Though it was considered, we cannot afford to move to Boca Raton. We have done enough of that moving in our life -- the selling of a house, the packing of box after box after box of belongings, the lugging of it across country, the buying of a house, the unpacking of box after box after box of belongings. It happens at considerable economic expense, but also emotional and physical expense, and at our age, we can no longer afford any of it. In truth too, though we love our granddaughter enormously, Florida is not where we want to be.
Still, there is the desire to move on. Mountain Home is not where we want to be either, and with our granddaughter soon to be in Florida, we began examining options. First, it was down-sizing to fit in a tiny house somewhere in Washington or Oregon. There were attractions in this, mostly in the down-sizing, the reaching out for greater simplicity. Ultimately, we could no more afford that than we could a move to Boca Raton, and a certain doom settled over us. We seemed stuck in Mountain Home, with its red-neck red-state politics and its depressing nostalgia for glory days long since gone. The idea of being stuck in Mountain Home pressed down on us with all the continuous overcast of a winter sky.
We had talked about it for some time, even before we moved to Mountain Home -- selling everything, getting an RV, hitting the open road -- but the prospect appealed to Lora more than me. I think it is easier for her to "get rid of everything" and pare life down to the necessities. Philosophically, the idea appeals to me. I could quote Thoreau or the sutras to support the idea of shedding unnecessary "stuff," and we have more than our share of unnecessary "stuff" to anchor us in Mountain Home, should we choose to let it. And there are certain things I find it hard to give up -- mostly the woodworking and the tools for woodworking that I have accumulated over a lifetime. My identity is somehow tied up in those things, but I wonder just how tied up? Enough to trap us in Mountain Home?
Let us hope not. So we have reached a decision. We've already taken the first step in shedding stuff at the flea market, selling off the excess inventory from our failed entrepreneurial enterprise. Lora has already reserved a spot at the local consignment store for knick-knacks and other sellable stuff. For myself, in anticipation of the spring and summer, I have been tying flies. The one pictured is called an Improved Sofa Pillow. Why exactly, I'm not sure. It's a version of the Stimulator and is intended to imitate an adult stone or salmon fly. I'm visualizing myself stepping out of the RV, looking down on the river to see the trout rising, gearing up as I drink my morning coffee ...
