Home at last

[Just discovered that I never posted these first two entries. They were written shortly after we moved back to Southern California, almost two years ago.]

It's been a total surprise that this sort of change has happened in my life. Our lives. Over 44 years ago we left Southern California, where we both grew up. First there was a long work-related stay in Sacramento, and then we headed way north to eighteen years of retirement in "The Fourth Corner," snugged up against the Canadian border in Western Washington. Why we did not communicate to each other that this latitude is where we wanted to be again, I'm not sure. Probably because we hadn't articulated it to ourselves. I should have known. There were times when I wondered what I would do if I found myself alone. I always ended up here in my mind.

There was another reason, I suppose, and this is what makes me question the trajectory of our human lives. Sometimes we think too much, but we don't think again about what we thought in the first place. When retirement came, we told ourselves that Southern California was too crowded and too expensive. We made up our minds too fast.

I'm second generation California both sides of the family. In Washington I announced that with a fist in the air and the challenge to "live with it." Washingtonians are suspicious of Californians. They don't understand that most Californians are from somewhere else. Mike was born in Washington, but grew up a ways up old Highway 395 in Lake Elsinore from where we are now.

Now I live in the town where my mother grew up. Grand Avenue is still Grand Avenue, although the hardware store is gone, the one where I used to go when I tagged along with Uncle Paul in his Escondido Water Company truck. The one where every other person we encountered greeted him and asked to be introduced to me. It's harder to get connected without Uncle Paul, but I'm happy to be here.