Bitter and very Sweet Memories

As y'all know I am TERRIBLE at posting in this blog. I blame Facebook . . .it's just too easy to put a quick bit every day (sometimes four times a day but who cares?) Just thought I'd write a paragraph or two about my emotional state today. Long, long story short . . .Charles and I are moving to St. John. Yes, St. John. The one in the Virgin Islands. Really. I can still hardly believe it myself! When Charles worked for Starwood before we always, always tried to get Employee Hot Rates to go there but you never could. So we had knowledge of the island and always dreamt about going there. Now we are. For several years. The Universe is funny like that.... But this post is not about St. John. It's about Nashville. And journeying and, hence, leaving. Charles and I have left many places, cities and small towns. We do leaving well. This time was different, for me at least. We LOVE Nashville. Truly love everything about it (except for 95 degree humid summer afternoons). The people, the restaurants, the museums, happy hours, the smell, the parks, the coffee shops, the accents, the pride of the town. I love that people don't honk their car horn if they are sitting behind someone at a light and that person doesn't see that the light has changed to green. They REALLY don't! When I arrived here from Chicago that was AMAZING to me! There are treasures here which we haven't had elsewhere. The Belcourt Theater. The Southern Book Festival. The Frist. The Wild Cow. Percy and Edwin Warner Parks. The Full Moon Picking Parties every month at the barn. Buttercup's Pet Hospice. Dr. Brasher at Belle Forest Animal Hospital. Great neighbors. The way this town pulled together and lifted each other up out of the floodwaters back in May 2010. I have met and made so many wonderful friends and it is very hard to fly away from all of this. It is a constant battle in me . . .the need to see what else there might be, around the next corner. Good, bad or ugly, I want to experience it all. There's also, now that I am older, a side to me that KNOWS and acknowledges when something is good. That recognizing, in the moment, that this is a good time in life. The stars were aligned. The tea was sweet. The fireflies were bright on soft, summer evenings. The people were SOOOO good. Alas, that wondering if something else might be fun for a while has finally got the better of us, and we are off. Of course we wonder if we are doing the right thing. But how can we know....we just have to go and give it a shot. We are keeping our house, ostensibly so that it might gain value but, for me, as a tie, a reason and a place to return to, should I need to come home.

The movers came today, packed and moved a lot of our stuff. I am sitting in a virtually empty house. Alone, but not alone. Memories of these last six years have flooded this place today as forceful as those floods filled homes back in 2010. As the afternoon has worn on I have been (in my mind at least) on our deck with my girlfriends, sipping wine or sangria or some new-fangled tequila cocktail, laughing till our eyes watered. I've been laying on a blanket with my dogs in an open field at Percy Warner, watching fluffy white clouds cross a sky so blue it made me weep. I've watched Nigel take his final breath, right here in front of the fireplace. It was at that moment that one of the wonderful women, Laura, who had come to help Nigel pass entered my life and I'm so grateful for her friendship over the past couple years. I found, serenity and a bunch of new friends at the best yoga retreat (Gray Bear) in Tennessee. I walked past a woman on a trail in the park and we smiled and said hello and realized we were both English, and Dawn and I have been friends ever since. I've made Cosmopolitans for my friend, Karen and I, with my mum watching, in my kitchen to start the celebrations for my 48th birthday. I've called a friend and neighbor, Laura, when my Jack Russell was critically ill & needed to get the vet in a hurry and I couldn't drive for sobbing...and she came within a minute. I've watched the house fill with good friends on a bathroom pit stop one cold night on a limo tour of the Christmas Lights in a limo with blacked out windows (we couldn't see one light!). I've learned about open heartedness and a gentle spirit from my friend, Pallu, as we've excitedly discussed where else in the world we want to travel (we plan on meeting in Guatemala next June). I've busted a move at a bootcamp three days a week for two and a half years, at 5.45 in the morning, and watched the sun rise while jumping rope or doing push ups! I've had Thanksgiving celebrations with my American family over in Donelson who thought it strange I didn't eat meat! (Fun memory) I celebrated Christmas in a hotel room in Gatlinburg with my dear friend and her tender hearted mama, the room LIT-UP with lights and decorations, and we gorged ourselves on sweet potato casserole and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. I remember so many long walks in Percy Warner Park with my husband and our beautiful dogs - Christy, our Border Collie; Nigel, my 'child' and Kit, a short and so so sweet addition to our family in 2013. All three of them are at Steeplechase now and it hurts to leave them even though I KNOW those ashes are not their spirits. I remember a whole day (I think it was 13 hours) of baking holiday sweets, cookies and truffles before Christmas with Katie and Nicole and planning on doing it again this year! I have taken care of dogs and cats all over Nashville . . .every one of them a treasure. I miss the ones that have passed and I'm a little sorrowful that I won't get to see the ones still with us grow old and gentle and gray. I remember two wonderful evenings, each a year apart, with dinner in a picnic shelter on the back side of Edwin Warner Park lit up from a hundred tea-light candles, the space glowing with candlelight, firelight and moonlight. I'll stop, though I could go on and on and on..... When my friend, Leesa, suggested we move to Nashville we were more than hesitant. We resisted. She persisted. She said it was a great town and we would like it. Understatement of the century...thanks Leesa! So, it's adios to Nash-Vegas for a while. We have a new horizon to reach. I do LOVE journeying and I am pretty good at being, fully being, wherever I am at that moment. So I know it will be fun. St. John is a quirky little place & we will drink it all in. But Nashville, oh Nashville, I'm sad to say farewell.