For days now I have been working under my porch, taking out ant eaten timbers, replacing studs, dousing myself with bugspray, all that. It's taken it's toll but it's done. I was finishing up with braces and some overhead work when I noticed that the all the "no parking" signs finally came into play. They had been there for five days and I had wonder what they were all about. Well, this afternoon I finally found out. Kitsap Street was to be the staging area for the character parade that was the second to last highlight of the day, Cedar Cove style.
The street was teaming with life, I have to say. Beautiful old rides graced the drive, sort of like having my own mini-"Cruz", right there in front of the house. As the minutes ticked by the street became even more of an open theater, filled with signed character actors, certainly most if not all of them locals, acting out roles and characters from the novels. Key city bigwigs were present including the mayor and various council folk. Cheerleaders from South Kitsap High, local police and fire department personnel and numerous other folks involved with the Cedar Cove celebration were all milling about, waiting for the parade to begin, all laughing and grooving to the backbeat of Councilman Child's boombox blaring right in front of my house.
I have to admit it was truly a warm experience. It was one of those things, like my neighbor pointed out, that said that this town knows how to pull together when it wants to. The sprucing up of the downtown, the massive turnout both locally and across the nation, all to see this little burg, both in it's fictional and real self. All that makes me proud to be a citizen of Kitsap, of Port Orchard, in a way that I haven't felt in a long time. I have been so deep into my projects and outcast-ness that I forgot what the point was, and that is that I love this town and this house and all that this place represents.
A few months ago I wrote a post to that effect. How this house was my kid's house as well as mine, that it was the "western holdout", how it was an outpost to old dreams and a temple to old loves. But more it was what this town and this house and that view outside my door all meant to me, that this little house was home. That part was really hard to deny today with all those cars and characters and the author herself all grooving on the sunshine and great feelings that were eminating from the gathered crowd and neighborhood locals.
What's more, it reminded me of a quote that went something like this: "never apologize for your reading interests". I hooted and howled and emailed you for all I was worth when I read that Macomber book you tasked me to read four years ago. I looked around me today and see that that author and her books and this town mean a lot more to folks than my persnickity reading interests and high-hat-ness could ever possibly understand. Least ways, until this week.
For a few weeks I forgot what this hold out, this outpost, this line in the sand was all about. It wasn't a place to forget and get away from, it was a home to remember. It wasn't a house to grovel in while I awaited my fate, it was my comfort zone, my cocoon, my nest, my sanctuary. It is and will always be the place where I came home to "Papa's home". It will always be the place where you shed your shoes as you came in through my back door. It will always be the place that held me near and dear when the snows fell and the winds blew and the rains pelted the house in the dead of night. I have been warm here, loved here, validated here.
Let the world do it's worst. I am home. Home in the place where I wrote you some fairly derisive stuff about a book and a series that, by all accounts, is far more treasured than I am at the moment. Today I rediscovered my sense of humility as I stood on that porch and saw all the character players milling about with cheerleaders and civic leaders and motor heads, all loving life. Today I witnessed all the ties to my old self, to my heart and to you displayed before me in a pageant of love to a fictional place that is just as real and lived in as this place, this temple, this house of love that I've built for you here.
Ah, my love, what shall we read next?
Your WHMB
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