Exiting

The house is sold.  We will have enough money to put in our well and water tanks, our electricity, our septic tank, and get the permits we need to build.  Jeff has given notice at work.  Word has gotten around on my campus that we're heading south.  The girls have liquidated their toy collection in exchange for a trampoline. We have radically downsized our possessions, as well.  My mother has begun work on remodeling her barn, so we can move in at the end of June, when I get back from Vietnam.  We have joined a swim and racquet club in Scotts Valley.  A Prius is coming, which will be my commute vehicle.  I have at least three potential carpool friends from work.  Jeff has applied for a few jobs on both sides of the mountain.  The roses are blooming.  The attic eaves have been vacuumed.  A party is in the works.

I have never been so terrified, but I also haven't been this excited in years.  We are both really ready to leave Napa, even though it has been so good to us, and we have made some good friends.  I'm really going to miss my neighbor Mary, who has supported us in so many ways: she watched our kids, cleaned our house, watered our plants when we were on vacation, made us cakes and brought us flowers from her yard, gave us cigarettes, sewed halloween costumed for the girls, fixed their boo boos; in short, was a surrogate grandmother to us (and to Sophie and Lucy).  I loved sitting in her yard with her, just shooting the shit.  I'm really going to miss her.

I'm also going to miss our poor house, which was in such a terrible state when we bought it; it smelled awful, had been so abused.  We moved so many rocks out of the yard!  We tore down the carport and a rotting, rickety, cinder-block-footed spa enclosure in the back yard.  We sanded down and patched the redwood siding.  We slept on a mattress on the floor when the girls were small.  We had no real kitchen for 18 months.  There wasn't a surface in that house that we didn't touch.  Slowly, its beauty reemerged. 

I had cancer in that house.  Our daughters learned to walk in that house.  I earned tenure in that house.  Jeff studied for his license in that house.  We were patient in that house: that's probably what I'll remember the most.

It's time.  Farewell, Napa!