Moving On...

I left my house in 1995, when I moved to the Midwest. Of course, I thought I'd be back soon...

My son, you are now living in that house ... but it's not the house I remember so fondly. It's not MY house any longer.

I loved my little house! I loved the yard and the shake roof and the flower-covered mound to the west, and the vacant lot next door.



I loved that beautiful old pine tree in the unpaved Women's Club parking lot behind -- that pine which dates from my Uncle James' first job at age 15. He was hired by the founder of the town to water the acres of Cambria pines planted on the Heights for windbreaks against the blowing sand...








I loved the view of the Rock and the Bay down the hill, too. And the way the setting sun would turn the office walls softly orange and rosy in summer, and the way I could open the doors to the green house and heat up the house on a sunny winter day.

Most of all, I loved the people who lived in that house with me.

But most all those things I loved are no longer there (and neither am I).

The view is blocked by the condos across the street, the empty lot is no more. Even the shakes are gone, with the freeway daisys and the Hyssop crabapple at the office door, and the raspberries on the kitchen fence.

Neighborhood cats may still come to play in the yard, but I bet the gophers are all gone. The snails? Well, I think I can live without them!

And, not least, the people I loved then are not the center of my life anymore.

Some famous writer claimed, "You can't go home again"...and is right. Not that home, at least.

My little house in Morro is no more. It can't ever be what I remember again. But it is NOT dead and gone.

It needs a new life, a face lift, a remodel. It's time to let it move on and grow, not sit there sadly remembering a past which can't be rebuilt -- even if we could remember the way it really was!

Add a bedroom, or two -- redo the kitchen and baths. Put down new flooring or fence the yard for the kids. Make this a new home.

Not the home it used to be, not my home, but the home it can become.

Your place.

Not mine.

"To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition."
-- Samuel Johnson