For those who don't know, I moved from Seattle Washington where I've lived for the past thirty years, to Indianapolis Indiana, the city of my birth and where I grew up. The thing is, I've known a few things since I was in junior high, one is that Indianapolis Indiana is not my home. I knew it instinctively. I knew it like one knows if they're gay or straight. It was something that was obvious to me, like one plus one equals two. So when I got out of the Army in 1986 I stayed in Alaska for a few years, even got married up there. But when I decided to go to college my first wife and I moved to Seattle and I completely fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. It's liberal. It's accepting. The vibe is just completely opposite the conservative, overly religious, repressive atmosphere that is Indiana. Washington is green the year round. Indiana is brown and dead once autumn is over and that lasts until springtime. Do you like the desert? If you live in Seattle all you have to do is drive east for two hours and you're in a desert! Like the mountains? Drive east or west and you're in the mountains! Want to visit a real rainforest? Washington state has the only temperate rain forest on the North American Continent! And of course there's the Pacific Ocean. I miss the ocean. There's just something about the way the ocean smells and the way that salt smell mixes with the thick smell of pine. And the sound of the surf as it meets the land is one of the oldest sounds in the world. Standing on the beach in Washington always made me think that I was listening to the same sound and smelling the same smells as the very first human beings did.
So, why did I move back to Indiana? There's only two reasons, my parents. They're in their 80's and they're not going to be around much longer. And since I was no longer married, had no kids, and was retired there was nothing, other than my love of the place, holding me in Seattle, so I decided to move back to Indiana to be with my folks while I still had them to be with. It isn't that I regret my decision, I don't. But I will tell you this, whoever dies second, whether it's my mom or dad, within ten minutes of the funeral being over, I am going to be planning my move back to Seattle, back home.
Comments