Month: November 2013

Joyful days on the Oregon Coast

Now I feel the joy.
When I came home from California two weeks ago, after nearly a month helping my ailing father, I thought I would feel joy the moment I walked into my house. I would have my dog Annie, my work, my friends, my house, my piano, my WiFi, and my beautiful Oregon. But all I felt was sad, sad for being so far from my father, sad at being alone, sad that my husband and so many other loved ones are gone, sad at all the bills and work that waited for me in this cold, wet place where the sky was always gray.
It didn’t help that it was raining and the roof in my kitchen leaked. Or that the warning light came on my car and I found that all four tires were dangerously low. Or that the dog was scratching with fleas again. I was still not completely over the food poisoning that struck me in San Jose. I did not feel any joy.
But over the last couple days, I have felt the joy. Maybe I’m just sun-drunk. The rain has stopped for the moment, replaced by dry cold. The pellet stove being my main source of heat, I’m using pellets by the truckload. I’m also giving my sweater collection a workout, but the place where I live in a forest two blocks east of the ocean is so beautiful I can barely stand it. Just now, at 6:30 a.m., I went out with Annie. Stars filled the sky, and the moon was so bright I could see my shadow on the ground. Yesterday, I lay out on the lawn in the sun with Annie, watching a tiny pine siskin in the Sitka spruce above me. The sky was so blue, the trees so green, and the quiet so profound that I fell in love with this place all over again. The day before, Annie and I walked on the beach. We were the only ones there. The ocean was a swirl of blue and green, the sand full of shells, the air like tonic. Yes, it’s warmer at my dad’s house, and his squirrels are as big as pussycats, but this is my little piece of paradise.
Last night I played the piano and led the choir at the 5:30 Mass, and that felt like heaven, too. I was surrounded by friends, the Christ the King liturgy was beautiful, and I felt so blessed to be able to do the music that I love. I have my writing, my house, my dog, my friends, and so much more. My tires are fixed, friends patched my roof, and my father is doing amazingly well for a 91-year-old man with three faulty heart valves.
Now I feel the joy. It’s going to rain again. The sun and the moon will disappear behind the clouds. I’ll worry about bills, Christmas presents, Annie’s fleas, and other problems. My writing will be rejected, my music will go flat, and I’ll hate my new haircut. My father is scheduled for surgery next week, and I’m going back to California. I believe the surgery will go well, and he’ll live on, but there are no guarantees. Life is never perfect, but I’ll do my best to hang on to the moments when I’ve truly felt the joy.
Do you have times when you feel that true happiness? I’d love to hear about them.

Tempted by all that Darned Sunshine

I just returned to Oregon after nearly a month in San Jose with my father. Dad is suffering from heart problems and will be having surgery in early December. Meanwhile he needed help, so I ditched everything here and hurried down I-5 to the place where I grew up.

Once I was there, I experienced this weird Dorothy-waking-up-from-the-dream-of-Oz feeling. I was home. The sun was shining. Every day. Every day for 28 days. Here, if the sun comes out, we rush outside to look at it because it’s such a fickle visitor. There, it’s the rain that’s a rare guest. It clouded over briefly a couple times, but cleared up without dropping any moisture.

I love the sun. I spent a lot of time sprawled on the old chairs in the patio soaking it up. Dad’s yard is like a nature preserve, full of shrubs and fruit trees, with three resident squirrels as big as your average cat, blue jays, mockingbirds, sparrows, crows, hummingbirds, and the biggest bumblebees I’ve ever seen. It’s nice back there, and it’s nice being warm. I barely noticed the constant roar of the nearby 280 freeway.

I slept soundly in my childhood room, and I enjoyed being close to the scenes of so many memories. It was also great being near my family, especially my father. I liked the fact that every store or business a body could think of was within a few miles, and I always had four reception bars on my cell phone. That first week, I thought: This is crazy. I should move back home. Now that Fred is gone, why am I staying in Oregon? I can’t afford to live in the Bay Area, where everything costs about three times what it costs here, but I’d have a lot more chance of finding a job there than I would here. I could rejoin my old writing and music groups. It would be great.

Over the weeks that followed, the feeling faded. Even perpetual sunshine gets old. Folks there are always worried about not having enough water because it rarely rains. Everything is crowded, and the traffic is unbearable. A week ago today, I took Dad to San Francisco to meet the surgeons who will be doing his procedure. I don’t like to drive in big cities, and I definitely don’t like to drive in the dark. The directions were good, and I made it successfully to the parking garage next to the hospital. But we got out at 5:30, the height of the evening commute. Stop and go all the way. Red brake lights in front of me, white headlights to the left, eight to ten lanes across. Gripping the steering wheel, afraid every minute of crashing and dying. After a couple hours of that, I told my father, “If anybody asks why your daughter moved to Oregon, this is why.” We agreed that no job is worth fighting that kind of traffic every day.

No, I live here. Right now, it’s raining. Out my window, the big Sitka spruce waves in a gentle wind. My dog Annie is asleep on her chair. And I’m writing in my bathrobe. This is home.

They say you can’t go home again. Well, you can, but it’s never the same, and you might not want to stay there.