Moving On

Things change. October’s bliss is January’s headache, and the thrill of 2010 can always turn to disappointment in 2013. Most of us are aware of the changing nature in all things human but depending upon the person or change, metamorphosis arrives either with surprise or a groan:  “I saw that coming.”

I made the decision in 2010 to leave Japan after many years and make my home on Florida’s east coast, less than 200 feet off the Atlantic Ocean. A tremendous change and one layered with possibilities both good and bad. One thing was certain: I was trading a crowded city life for one in a near paradise of ocean, surf, sand and cloud-filled blue skies—a place as different from Tokyo as the moon—and my first thought on looking out at the stunning vista outside my Florida windows was that living in this environment could go either way.

Newness, novelty and grand scenery always make change easy to bear. Some things at first seem difficult or unreasonable, but whatever the gripe it is soon painted over by the overwhelming scale of living on a beach. And though you’ve read a few books about life along a coastal environment, they are nothing to the experience of walking out your door every morning and encountering firsthand the power and diversity of nature. One morning walk on the beach can be colored by seashells or baby turtles, a burst of red-orange from a carpet of wildflowers growing on the dunes, an expanse of sand and water empty of even one other person. The next morning may find that same beach a dangerous place to be, lightning splitting the sky and wind-driven rain turning everything into a waterworld. 

I have catalogued a great many of those wonders over the past three years in the pages of this blog and most of those posts were fueled by the joy of living in an endlessly fascinating place. But like I said, things change.

The time has come to leave this beach and make my home in a place with different qualities, another setting calling my name. I’ve been defeated by the popularity of Florida beaches and the noisy throngs of vacationers they attract. These days I hear mainly the shouts and screechy frolicking of too many children and endure the ill-behavior of inconsiderate strangers inflicting their holiday activities on me and my home. Beer cans in the flowerbeds, randomly tossed cigarette butts, the midnight hoot ’n holler of college boys, the horrified screech of schoolgirls encountering a harmless sand crab on the walkway…

The sale of this property on one of the state’s golden beaches has not been difficult and to make the process even easier, moving out to make way for the new owner is unhurried. Time aplenty to transfer furniture, books and art to the new house. 

Moving from Japan back to the US in 2010 was one thing, and like that move this one too will involve new experiences and a different set of challenges. It promises to be interesting and as time allows I will try to keep a record of it all here on Scriblets. Come back another day to read about well water and wild turkeys.

Houses

Some talk yesterday about the passage of time and its effects on the changing face of hometowns and the confusion, surprise and sense of loss that these changes foster in old eyes looking back through the filter of youthful memories. There’s a pretty good chance the surprise is multiplied when eyes are turned to the house you grew up in, if it happens to still be standing. And I suppose for many of us that is the case.

My family moved to Baton Rouge from Mississippi in 1948, Daddy Clyde going to work in a lumber company on Florida Boulevard. The five of us moved into one of Aunt Emmy’s houses across the street from Coco Lumber, rooms where earlier tenants had left their shades upon closets and bedrooms. I was too young to notice the arrival in Louisiana, and my first memories of 340 Wabash come at a later time.

The images are strongest some years later, those between twelve and eighteen when I had my own room thanks to Daddy’s decision to build an addition onto the house when two bedrooms became too few for five. Not surprisingly, life changed after I got my own room. And it’s those changes and those days and nights that captured my attention on Tuesday.

In 1996 my sister and I made a visit to Baton Rouge for the purpose of resolving issues with the old house on Wabash. Since our mother’s death it had been home to a string of temporary part-timers, and was in dire need of serious attention. The last renters had run out, leaving the place with a post-tornado look. Not the solution we’d expected, but within a couple of weeks a buyer turned up and we sold the old Childhood Library of Memories for a fair amount. For my part, in selling the house a hard kernel of sadness came with the relief.

Back for visit I was eager to return to the old neighborhood and see where time had taken that house, the ark of a thousand memories. My last sight of the house on Wabash was years ago, not long after its renovation. The first impression yesterday was of tree growth—the entire neighborhood now overhung with giant live oaks swooping down upon the street. But the house, despite a certain charm that came with its earlier renovation, is beginning to look lived in. Nothing exceptional, only the average signs of life spilling through windows and cracks into the front yard. Hard to say how these things work, but I got that old feeling of home-ness that I remember from throwing my bike down in the front yard and tumbling inside just as Mamma called supper.

A different time, a different family, but the chord stretching forward from long years back still resonates with a feeling of home. Pictures, then and now…