The Move Mysterious

Years ago, when we bought a vacation (possibly retirement) home, we decided to furnish it with the contents of one of our (several) storage spaces. We contracted with a mover, met him at the storage compartment and watched him cart off beds and dressers and tables and lamps and assorted boxes that had languished in storage for far too long. We had furnished our then-current household with all we needed. The excess was headed west.

Now you may think this was rather cavalier of us to send boxes of the unknown on a cross-country trip. Surely we could have winnowed out some useless stuff and thereby reduced our moving bill. Maybe. But the luxury of time was something we could not afford just then, so out it went, to be winnowed at the other end.

That was seven years ago, and we are still surprised by items that surface at the San Diego house: bits and pieces of our past, a number of “I-know-it’s-here-somewhere” items that we have searched our Virginia house for in vain (there are two glue guns here in California, for example), some totally random books, half a set of china, a child’s Japanese tea set, the odd vase, a framed print or photo—even an icon of Elijah the Prophet that I painted once upon a time. There is a hodgepodge of furniture and appliances and tableware. My mother-in-law’s everyday dishes and a mix of her Revere-ware with an old set of Copco enamel-on-cast-iron pots that I won in a contest years ago in Virginia Beach. Glasses scrounged from the sale when the restaurant on the corner closed; a blender from a yard sale, a set of Pyrex bowls and some Corningware from a local estate sale. There is no rhyme or reason, much less color coordination going on here.

So the question is: what will happen if we ever move here more permanently. The Wal-Mart mixer will give way to my loyal Kitchen-Aid; some of the dilapidated furniture—the dresser with the broken leg, the wobbly chairs,  the wooden patio table and chairs that are past their prime-- will have to go. Likewise the duplicate utensils, cookie sheets, muffin pans, the childrens’ books, the bouncy chair.

I can see my future. It’s wearing a ‘Yard Sale’ sign. 

Homesick? Not so much...

We are a week away from returning to Virginia.  I’m not particularly excited about a return to the land of cold and ice and sometime snow. Particularly the cold. I have quickly adapted to a place where there is a minimum daily requirement of sun—and if clouds intervene (or, god forbid, rain!) the populace, by and large, apologizes for the weather. This is the place where, at 70 degrees and cloudy, the local Jiffy-Lube manager tells us that the bad weather kept people home and that’s why business is so slow today. Really? This is “bad weather”? Let me take it off your hands, please.

It’s a blessing to walk out in the morning without a coat, to eat at an outside table at a restaurant, to sip a cup of tea because it tastes good, rather to have something simply to warm my hands. I like seeing green things growing, and pink camellias blooming their hearts out in our yard. But most of all, I love sitting at the kitchen counter with the sun warm on my back and rainbows playing across the floor from the beveled glass window in the family room. It’s liberating to make plans without factoring in the possible disruption of (truly) bad weather, be it snow and ice or even heat and humidity. It’s nice here. Almost all the time.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think any place can compare to Alexandria in the spring, when gardens wake up to daffodils and tulips, and the parkway trees turn green almost overnight. Dogwoods and redbuds are spectacular, probably because of the contrast with their winter selves.  And after a long, hot, meltingly humid summer, the first crisp morning of fall is a thing to be savored. But…there is always a ‘but’… February in San Diego is a guilty pleasure and I am loving it.