…So, I’ve been depressed again.
It wasn’t just the IEP meeting – that was kind of the whipped cream, chocolate sauce and cherry on the sundae that was already built.
I don’t know…it seems to me that I’m dealing less and less well with the Bay Area.
I’m really grateful for the water supply there, but my heart is just not in it, overall. It feels like such an effort to connect with people, you have to do things I’m not good at like set up schedules, times and be on time and drive around and find parking and buckle and unbuckle small people into seats that secure them. I completely suck at this stuff.
And I know I’m probably making everything better than it was, but I long for places like where I lived when I was young. Levuka (in Fiji), where “town” was a tiny strip of archaic building 2 miles away, where our neighbors were our best friends and we knew when “Uncle” Adrian on the tiny hill behind us was baking bread because we’d smell it. We could lay out the butter and jam too because he almost always made an extra loaf for us.
I want that again.
I want the small, the intimate.
I want to know people and I want to be known.
I want goodness and wholesome life; crunchy without pretense.
Where we can dance in the backyard to Donna Summer and Christopher Cross and the kids can be naked and loud and free and I won’t have that nagging worry in the back of my mind about the neighbors.
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I want what I want and try and make peace with what I have and be grateful for what is.
And in the meantime, I’m fortunate enough to have my mom (– sainted!) who will drive me and the kids up to hang out with my brother, his kids and my grandma who lives with my brother.
It’s a good place, a crunchy place where people might talk about going to their backyard garden to get some kale for their morning smoothie
But it’s also a place people drive those monstrous trucks and do redneck-y things.
Yeah, Humboldt.
Where rednecks, the counter culture, Native American tribes and crunchy folk can – and do – coexist.
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The streets are broad.
I used to hate that. I felt so exposed, walking around.
Now, though, I love it.
I feel like there is more freedom for the kids, that it’s safer somehow.
I am not sure why.
Cars can veer out just as easily in those big wide streets as they do in the Bay Area, but I can’t shake my feeling of safety.
I love the love
My brother’s kids loving my own.
Love, too the unexpected bends and twists in the road that lead to green places
Walking with my baby in the morning, knowing my other two are happy with my Mom, asleep.
I miss my One True Darling Man, Mikey terribly but sometimes I just have to do what is going to take me out of that space, you know?
I’m just incredibly lucky that I have the wherewithal and the help – not to mention the place – to go to.
Being in a spot with beauty, space and wonder embedded within it’s very heart is a balm.
“The eye altering, alters all”
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I’m letting mine be altered.
Meriah Nichols is a counselor. Solo mom to 3 (one with Down syndrome, one on the spectrum). Deaf, and neurodiverse herself, she’s a gardening nerd who loves cats, Star Trek, and takes her coffee hot and black.
I long for that kind of place, and have never been there. So many days, I long for that intimate community – especially after the birth of my daughter. I want to go back. I want to go somewhere that I could just knock on my neighbors door, they would watch our kiddos while I cooked, we’d all share in it, and the next night, we would swap. Where there is no definition of my land, my space, my territory, but we all coexist.
I just left the Bay Area after 20 years there. I only survived 20 years because we could regularly escape, escape to Humboldt and the redwood forest. I miss the trees and will always dream of lazing around by a river, hiding in the shade of a giant. Feeling the history,the vastness of something even bigger than the City.The most special place on earth, marked by the Gods giant wooden toys, my mind forever altered by the skyward gazes toward tree tops pointing toward heaven. My kids reeling in awe.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Tom. What a great line, “marked by the Gods, giant wooden toys”
My “place” is where I grew up in GA. Sometimes I think I AM making it better than it really was but I know it’s better than where I am now. I really want to move back there…
Sorry you had a bad experience with the IEP 🙁 They shouldn’t have to be so hard. Glad you have a place to go to and get away from all that though. This post makes me feel like Humboldt is a place I might like.
Beautiful!
Vt is here. Come on by!