Three years ago yesterday marks the anniversary of my move from Chicago to the Lowcountry, to join my other half who had arrived here two weeks earlier to start his new job.
Since then, our lives have changed considerably. Sometimes for the best, and sometimes not. We left many of our friends and moved to a place where we find it incredibly difficult to make new ones. We miss the music, the architecture, the social fabric, the walkability, and the culture, to name but a few voids we experience here. And while the culture (less) here doesn’t necessarily jive with our flow, it has taught me to be more tolerant and has really tested my belief in compassion and my ability to practice the idea that we are all one. Believe me, while this is fairly simple in theory, moving to a place that predominantly holds the opposite political and social viewpoints as you truly puts you to the test. And I can’t say I am succeeding yet, but I try.
On the flip side, we own a beautiful home that is our sanctuary and have built a life together, where we rely heavily on each other for friendship, companionship, love, understanding, humor, food, entertainment…uh, you get the idea. We basically rely on each other for EVERYTHING. The great part in that is that we have come to understand completely that we are absolutely made for each other, and that we are so damn lucky to have found one another.
In our work, we have excelled, both having reached goals and aspirations that may have taken us much longer to do so in a bigger city. It’s the big fish, small pond thing. And so far, it is working really well for both of us.
A couple of weekends ago, we walked the beach where the ocean is, and it took us 15 minutes to drive there. It was 70 degrees, crystal clear, sunny, and we saw dolphins. In January. Not bad.
It is calm and serene in our day to day lives, and we don’t expend too much energy commuting to work or doing errands. There are lots of wide open spaces, and it is green and lush and spanish moss hangs from the arms of their 200 year old lady hostesses, the live oak trees. We see blue heron, egrets, storks, and other crazy water birds every day. And ‘gators, too, in the spring and summer, and sometimes even in the fall and winter, on unusually warm days. The air is clean but thick in the summer, like bags of dew worn as scarves; sometimes heavy, but cleansing like a steam bath is. The BBQ is good, and makes up for the frustrations in other areas of pubic life here. The BBQ is REALLY good.
And while we may not call it home permanently, we call it home now. It’s where we hang our hats, live our lives, and look to the future. A future I can only hope holds as many gifts as the present. Life is good.