I need to move into a much smaller place than I’m in now. Three bedrooms on over an acre of land is too much of everything…too many empty rooms with no furniture to accommodate all the visitors who never come, now filled with empty boxes that became a playground for my kittens.
My sacred little acre’s home to dozens of mature trees of every tribe, and each has too many branches that fall to the ground after storms which must be cleared before Ronnie, my lawn guy can come again, and mow to keep the neighborhood looking as manicured as it should.
There’s a beautiful little pool with a perpetual waterfall of music which runs far into the night and long after I retire, and whose caressing waters are only used when the temps are warm and friendly, perhaps four or five months each year.
But I’ve always loved being on water, before, the inland lakes of lower Michigan, and then the Great Lakes enveloping both the upper and lower peninsula of my birth state, and now, in later life, to the tempting, tropical lure of agrarian Florida, summoned here by my mother’s love of this place.
I’m on the hunt for a one bedroom, condo or cottage, requiring little in the way of upkeep, and affording much in the way of peace, solitude, and a long view of the blue Gulf through as many windows as I can manage. And I want a high balcony to feel the warm breezes of July and August on my face, and the misty, cool of the early morning as I sip my coffee and savor the faint scents of the Caribbean Sea.
I want a white sandy beach nearby that I can walk to in the mornings, and can wade into during the heat of the August summer days, just deep enough to enjoy the refreshing cool of the Gulf shallows, and just wet enough that it will keep me cool as I walk back to my balcony nest.
Perhaps, with any luck, on the way back, there will be a small, shady tiki bar where I can stop and sit a while, sip an icy draft, watching myself and others I knew many years ago, replaying the very script of life’s joy, as we all sat around the bar, obvious lovers speaking in low tones about the burgeoning wonders of their lives.
I want to simplify to the extent that life becomes effortless, or have I just made a wish upon a fantasy? Perhaps so, but we must all have goals and fantastic or not, I will entertain mine for as long as life allows. There will be days when I’m certain that I have achieved the magic formula, and others, when it’s painfully clear that I most certainly haven’t, but still, I’ll try.
Turns out I won’t need a golf cart as I once thought, and I won’t need two or three cars when one good one will do, and since I can’t see very well at night anymore, I’ll spend evenings with my kittens, watching the sun set somewhere beyond the horizon, beyond even Mexico as it disappears into the great Pacific, and dream of tomorrow.