The value of words

It's been a mighty hot day today, but I must learn to take it in stride, for as the place to where I am going to the heat will not be tempered by the large, beautiful body of water that sits outside my window, the one that always finds a way to wick off a bit of coolness from the inlet. Instead, where I'll be living will right plonk in the middle of ancient lakebed, turned farms and strip malls and housing tracts. In the summertime the heat is relentless. The heat settles in and just rolls to wherever it's going. I'll hopefully find a place with a tree, a nice backyard, a wading pool and a good swamp cooler. The weather here in the Puget Sound has spoiled me for life.

I've been working like a dog for days now, prepping this house, and just to say that draws stares from my cat. I think of all that I have done around here over the last few weeks and know that it's not just me who dwells here. I look around me and see my children, see the Estranged One, see you, and know that this house is truly a house of spirits, but one in a good way. It's been a lovely, tragic and very special home and if it wasn't for my children I know I would never have the heart to leave it.

I painted the porch the other day and thought about endless battles of over color choices I had in my old life and then thought about those afternoons when we would sit on the couch, or rather, lounge, side by side, and discuss color swatches. It was never much more than a hoot, a good time, a lovely conversation. When we got through with the stack I bagged from Ace we finally agreed a color or three, then looked around at all the sheets we disgarded, the ones we tossed over our shoulder as we went through the options. I think of that porch I recently painted and how much I like it and know that when I leave here that I will carry with me not only the colors and sounds of the inlet, but also the sounds and colors of this house when you were about. The choices we made then were easy, but then again, back in those days we were, too.

Today I stripped off ivy from the back house, brought light back into that little space. It had been shrouded in greenery, in old bird nests, in the dust and busyness of overgrowth for years. I went back there today after the first major stripping and thought, wow, it's a new house. I've thought the same thing after ever step I've taken to get this place ready to sell. It feels sometimes that I've spent more time readying this place to sell than I've spent living in it, but that in itself says something about this space and the impermanence of it all. I gave my word a few weeks ago to leave this house behind. I once said the very same thing to you, and now I've said it to my children. I couldn't act on it with you, but I have to act on it now. I must go forward, do what it takes, no matter what the cost.

Three years ago I did something similar, said very important words, ones that got me to this place. I told you years ago, my dear, that I loved you, and since then I haven't been much good at living those words down. I still feel the same way about you, the same as the day I met you way back when, and to that end, all I can say in my defense is that what I said to you then is what I still feel now. I have applied that same mindset to this latest adventure of mine. I told my children that I was going to be there, be there in the Treasure Valley with them. That I would be close by, close in to see them grow, to have them over to my house to play and eat supper and sleep over. Those words were as good as gold as far as I was concerned, as good as the one's that I threw your way that day oh so many months ago. You have to understand this by now, that no matter where our paths lead us, no matter where we end up, I said what I said to you, and that's that. I'll always stand by those words.

So, the basement is full of garage sale items that need to be unloaded this weekend and so is the back patio. Every item checked off on the the things-to-do list is augmented by one or more new items to tackle. The back house is filling up with boxes of books and movies and such, and the big house is looking spartan and sharp and clean. Every day is one more day closer to my children, and, alas, one day closer to the closing up of this old house and our old dreams. But the beautiful part of dreams is the waking up and realizing that they were just that, dreams. How we feel about those dreams and visions afterwards and how we apply them to our waking lives is what truly matters. And what matters most here is that I am going forward with my word to my children. That I will be there for them. And that I realized, finally, that this house, this place of dreams is just that, an old dream, and that I am ready to move forward into the waking reality of my new life.

Professora, know that I love you, that those old dreams and tender words still stand, strange and crazy as that may seem, but hey, I am a romantic, and we romantics do things like that. Things like stand on our words. And those words, my love, for now will help carry me and my goods all the way to Nampa.

Your WHMB