Losing Home

In the process of creating this new home in the beautiful northwest I never considered the opposite side of the coin of losing the definition of home in San Jose.  During my last visit, it was clear that the past vision of home is slowing fading into distant memories.  As we flew from Cancun to SFO, we cruised right over SJC.  It was an odd feeling to see the place I called home for 40 years as such a small thing.  The high rises seemed odd pinnacles lying between two sets of hills.  The streets I walked in downtown for the last two years of my life there were simply dashes in the distance. Later in the week, I realized I had lost my sense of direction in the valley.  The streets I could negotiate mindlessly have now become a great puzzle.  With each visit back, I lose a bit more of that comfort that I once had in the bay area.  Home in Vancouver and the need to be here has now taken over what was home in San Jose.

The Passage of Time

Tick Tock.  Time goes by and we are completely unaware without something to mark it.  As a mother, it was in the accomplishments of my children, when she/he walked, talked, rode a bike or a roller coaster.  We become aware of it by major events - graduations, retirements, or cultural life changing ordeals - JFK, 9/11, and now too numerous to recall.  In San Jose it was droughts, rains, or earthquakes.  I was well aware during my 41 years in the south bay of the perfection of my living conditions.  Beautiful blue skies with only slight fluctuations in the temperature as time passes from January to April to June to September.  So there was no awareness of it.  You just slowly floated from one week, month, year to the next without stopping to look up.  Now that I am in my winter of life, I want to notice everything, especially the passage of time.  There seems no better place to do that than here in the northwest.  I arrived with summer and green trees, blooming flowers and heat.  The September transition made me aware of a change in the air but everything was still beautiful.  Little did I know that those green trees would soon become florescent in the weeks of October.  And now there is no mistaking fall as the leaves make their departure for winter.  Yesterday I returned from 6 days in San Jose and in that time the tree I walk under each morning went from its glorious red to bare and the view out my window has gone from green to yellow and tinges of brown.  It is the reminder that everything has a finite lifespan - flowers, trees, pets and people too.  In this glorious time of slowing down I enjoy the view of each day.  I appreciate everything it has to offer and especially the change it provides.