It’s hard to believe. After living in the deep country which I am assured is relaxing and never being able to…after moving back to my beloved Florida seeking calm, I found it in a most unexpected place.
Small Town, as I’ve mentioned before, was my home as a child. I literally ran almost a thousand miles away to escape it. Over forty years later, it offers the solace, the peace, the sweetness of life I searched for on the East Coast.
Mornings and evenings find me sitting on my back porch. It’s not a lanai, nor a veranda; it’s just a very plain cement and block back porch. I look into the woods behind the house, where the tranquil movement of the trees lulls me as if I were a child being held in Mother’s arms.
There is no theater, no five-minute run to shopping, and no constant tug from within to get something done. My pace has slowed. It took from the beginning of July until now, but the magic of Small Town has wrapped me in its sweetness.
Escaping to stores, entertainments, appointments, and made up places of importance no longer shoves me out the door and into a life spent in the car. My daughter feels it, too.
I feared leaving Florida where she had such an active life would be detrimental. Children with her disability often find change difficult. That has never been the case with her.
“How do you like our new home now that we’re settled?” I asked, worried she would break into tears of misery.
“I love it!” She squeals. “I got Uncle Jim and Aunt Vickie! And I got church!” Lesson learned.
It doesn’t take things, places, or lots of events to be happy. It takes a loving uncle and aunt who, I might add, have no problem spoiling her rotten. It takes new neighborhood friends and a church of accepting people who welcome her with open arms.
I look back on my childhood here and smile. We had boundaries and rules in every household – most of them remarkably alike. We also had the assurance that every adult in every house had permission to make certain we played by the rules and stayed within the boundaries. It was a safer time for Small Town’s children. They stayed out, usually at each other’s homes, well after dark without worry of kidnapping, shootings, or other crimes, because parents sat out on those big or small porches keeping a watchful eye while talking about work, kids and such.
We chased fireflies, putting them in jars, unaware we sealed their fates by doing so. All we knew was that they made a special light in our rooms. We grabbed dandelions that were going to seed and blew the fluffiness all over the yard. What parents didn’t do was scold us for spreading weeds. Usually they were the ones who had shown us how. It was more fun to grab a few of them and twirl around madly until the weed heads were bare and we fell dizzily to earth.
We played in the woods and in waist high hay fields with never a thought to snakes, ticks, or anything else that might put an abrupt end to our happiness. We trekked through those precious woods looking for the perfect Christmas tree. In our home, it began the day after Thanksgiving with my brother, my senior by five years, allowing an irritating sister to tag along.
Before Christmas Day we had at least three trees because after a week or so, he would notice an imperfection and the hunt was on again. I think he hated for those special moments to end. By the third tree I was throwing full hands of icicles at the tree. The magic ended on my side by the second time around. I put up with the last one because it kept me near the brother I so admired.
Maybe it’s not the porch that relaxes this restless widow. Maybe it’s the beauty of memories spilling back into my life; memories I stifled for too long. Whatever the reason, it’s good to be back. It’s good to remember. It’s good to have shut down the urge to move yet again.
It’s good to be home.