Next Step

January 13, 2020

The New Year arrived with cold and darkness but, for us, also with new ideas about getting out of town permanently. Leaving appears as the Next Step, perhaps the final one.

For some folks, regardless of age, the dream of a life of order and peace, a life that is settled and hopeful, blends with thoughts of moving someplace else. Younger people relocate, some for better jobs, others to change scenery in hope that the new scenery leaves out old problems.

Many older people look forward to moving, usually to a warm place. It may be because their current home or hometown doesn’t hold them in some emotional or spiritual way. Changing addresses may promise some form of peace or truth now lacking. Or they may simply want to be closer to grandchildren.

Some are weary of the world. They may hope to escape the human comedy around them, from lying politicians to nosy neighbors to robocalls. But Shangri-la doesn’t exist.

It’s been no different for us. The idea of moving has been in the air since I quit working, and especially since our kids scattered across the country.  So our eldest daughter, Laura, who’s staying with us for a while, convened a meeting of the three of us in the living room to talk pros and cons about our future dream home, and where we’ll find it.

We’ve been through this before. Readers of this blog also have been put through it. It’s the play that’s always in Act I.

Sandy throws herself into it. For her it’s a newer house with two or three bedrooms, one level, i.e., no stairs; hardwood floors, gas heat, a wraparound porch. Also: a walkable neighborhood, close to stores, parks, a church. Finally, no more than 90 minutes to an airport. I guess that’s an airport served by major airlines, as opposed to a dirt strip.

I have a little fun with it. I say that except for the one level and the wraparound porch, we hit all those markers by staying here in Woodbridge, Va. But that’s not in the program. She points out that some people call this place “Hoodbridge.” As I listen, I can’t help thinking of those retirement trade shows we’ve attended, and the endless do-loop of sales pitches for sunny beaches, walking trails, and golf (this blog, March 4, 2019).

On the “con” side, she ruled out Upper Midwest, New England, “tornado alley,” wall heat, a big yard, a homeowners association, cold, and scorpions. I’m sure that’s still an incomplete list.

In what they suspect is a diversion, I point out that first we have to sort through the junk we’ve stockpiled here over the years, which we didn’t consider junk when we acquired it. That includes piles of the kids’ stuff, tucked away in closets and crawl spaces.

So we go through this drill. As with anyone else, our preferences are based on personal experience and prejudices. I grew up in New Jersey. Who wants to move there? People are fleeing the Garden State, New York, and Connecticut before they’re taxed to death. My younger brother moved from Jersey to Delaware, a tax haven. Delaware just doesn’t grab me.

Pennsylvania, where our son and daughter-in-law live, is a fascinating state, full of smart people, rich history, and beautiful places. I finished my one 100-mile ultra-run in Titusville, way up near Erie a few years back. Great trip. But winters, and even autumns, are pretty darn cold there.

Our youngest daughter lives in Colorado ski country. We’ve been to Montana, which is spectacular, but only in summer. Rocky Mountain winter weather is a big negative. I’d like to explore the Southwest. But a Maryland friend with family in New Mexico said that state taxes make New Mexico more expensive than Maryland. I want to see more of Texas, but it’s had its share of violent weather lately.  California and the Pacific Northwest are gorgeous, but too expensive, too remote.

Our second daughter Marie and her family are in the Greenville, S.C., area. So the inclination for the moment is a mid-size city in the Southeast, but not too Southeast. We’d steer clear of the rural Deep South, ruling out Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Northern Georgia, with its rugged mountains, could be OK, I wouldn’t go near Atlanta or the mint-julip South. We have friends and family in Florida. I like the warm weather, don’t like the flatness and the bugs.

I keep reminding myself, as Thomas Wolfe wrote in his lyrical way, “you can’t go home again.” Years ago we assumed we’d go back to Nashville, which was a friendly, comfortable place when we left in the mid-eighties. It’s now congested and expensive. Still, the great storyteller Peter Taylor’s In the Tennessee Country makes me think about the Volunteer State. Sandy has family near Chattanooga. Her hometown is in Franklin County, below the beautiful Cumberland Plateau and near the respected University of the South. But we’d quickly run out of things to do there.

The list probably is endless. Last week Marie called and said someone told her that Floyd, Va., southeast of Roanoke, is a nice place. So is Canton, N.C., west of Ashville, which I toured by looking it up on the internet. Not mid-size cities. But local boosters say they offer interesting history, modest home prices, mountain vistas, and Fourth of July celebrations.

We come back to the same place. We have a bunch of fix-up projects to take care of here. Other things get in the way and the time melts away.

Among the things that get in the way: the comfortable sameness of the place we’ve lived in for so long. Moving, even to some paradise on earth, means saying goodbye to the same old neighborhood with the same old neighbors, some of them eccentric, not all of them friendly—the same church, the same parks, the same weather—none of that fabulous, but familiar. And the house we’ve slept in all these years, and the memories that haunt it, of kids growing up—the swim meets, soccer games, science projects, Brownie and Cub Scout meetings, grandma visits—all those things that cling to this place.

So the chore is to convince ourselves that the next stop on the way to meet our Maker has got more to offer than here, in the way of all those frills we talk about endlessly. Once we do that, we’ll move on, to become strangers again in a strange place. With no tornadoes or scorpions.