Home Sweet Home

Happy Sunday Y'all! I slept late and I'm feeling lazy and I want to spend the morning on the couch reading the paper and the afternoon in my flowerbeds so I'm taking a day off from being a drunk and I'm cheating on this blog and stealing a blog from another blog I write. Wow, the word "blog" three times in a sentence. As I have posted in earlier blogs, I do believe my Co-Writer does reward me for trying to stay sober and writing this blog and just for being one helluva a gal. (My mother would say I'm full of piss and vinegar this morning. I'm just in a good mood. I'd forgotten what that was like. Those bogus good moods brought about by several Jack and Diet Pepsi's just don't measure up) I have a requisition of miracle requests that I expect to be filled. One was already delivered this week when my foster dog Daisy was permanently adopted. I wrote a couple of blogs about Daisy, Walking Miss Daisy and Saturdays Spent With Daisy. Even though I tried hard not to, I fell in love with Daisy and it was hard to leave her behind but it for many reasons it just wasn't feasible to bring her back to the states with us. That being said I was scrambling and writing feverish emails trying to arrange her shipment here as the time was nearing that she was going to have to walk that Green Mile but luckily my prayers were answered and, I hope, a loving family agreed to take her in. So there's one miracle I can check off the list. The next one is that I figure out a way to keep both my cabin here in CO and my casa in Mexico. Here's the blog:
Before we left Mexico a month ago, a friend of mine gave me an assignment. You see, she knew I was beginning to feel the pressure to move to Mexico full time. The cap'n is getting tired of working full time and would like to retire completely. I can't blame him. Thanks to him, I basically retired fourteen years ago. Unfortunately, while we could live like kings in MX on our retirement income, we can't continue to support two households (plus that freaking boat). So the time for making a choice is drawing near. I'm not ready. So my friend gave me the assignment of writing a blog of why I love my home in Colorado.
Several of the reasons are simple:
1. The ease of living in my own country. The familiar language and laws. And if you are an expat from Mexico, the cleanliness and the plethora toilet seats.
2. The music. No, not the stuff coming out of the radio, although I do miss that, too. I miss the gurgle of our stream, the chatter of the squirrels, the scolding of the blue jays and the whisper of the wind through the pines. Mexico has its own music, beautiful and exotic. It's just not my music… yet.
3. The smell. The early dawn air scented with woodsmoke after a fresh snowfall. The musty perfume of sun warmed pine needles on a summer afternoon.
But the BIGGIE, the main reason is harder to explain, but I'll try.
My Grandmother died when I was very young. Lucky for me and multitudes of cousins, we had Aunt Irene and Uncle. Aunt Irene and Uncle Paul had no children of their own but they helped raise hundreds. Their modest country home was a monument to continuity. Through all the years I visited, with the exception of new photographs of great nieces and nephews taped to the glass front of the china cabinet, it never changed. The same pictures adorned the walls, the coloring books were always in the same drawer, the toys were in the closet in the first bedroom and the cookies were in the same Dutch Girl cookie jar on top of the refrigerator. More importantly, the rituals remained the same. Mornings started in the kitchen breakfast nook with the toaster on the table amid an array of homemade jellies and jams to choose from. The day was filled with trying to catch rabbits or fish or each other as we played hide-and-seek in the cornfield. When the stars came out the grown-ups would be on the front porch watching as we chased fireflies. I'm sure I complained many times of being bored but I loved that house and the people that peopled it. There was solace in knowing there was one place in my ever changing, growing-up world that would remain the same. A place where I could expect the expected.
That's what I want for my children and grandchildren and, possibly, their children. I want my cabin in the mountains to be their haven from this frenzied world. I want them to know the comfort of coming up the drive and know that there will be a welcoming fire in the woodstove. The coloring books are in the buffet, the old favorite board games are in the closet in the first bedroom, and the fishing rods are leaning in their corner of the living room. Mornings will start with hot chocolate out on the deck. The days will be filled with trying to catch chipmunks, fish or each other as they play hide and seek among the bristlecone pines. When the stars come out the grown-ups will warm themselves by the fire in the fire pit while the young ones roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories in the night shadows of the forest.
Idealistic? Probably. But more than possible because I've already lived it . I just can't see Mexico with all of its strangeness and its distance fostering these kinds of memories. I worry that it will always seem an adventure instead of a homecoming.
But I'm greedy. I want them both. Good thing I have tonight's winning lottery tickets in hand.
Update: The lottery tickets were bogus!
So today I'm out there doing my best to wage war on the scourge of dandelions in my flowerbeds and waiting on a miracle or two.