At last count I have lived in eight different states and moved countless times
The state I’ve lived in most is the state of limbo. Wondering where the next place we are going to move is.
It’s not that my mate is a derelict or running from the law or anything as remotely interesting as that. No. he is a radiation oncologist. A doc who nukes people for a living and can only live where there is a million dollar piece of equipment used soley for the nuking of people. Consequently, we have to live where a population not only has a high incidence of cancer but a population base high enough to warrant a radiation oncologist in its midst.
I’m an almost social worker. I can pretty much live anywhere and get paid squat. But we live off the money he makes and for some strange reason, the kids like food, fuel and shelter.
I’ve become an expert on packing up and shipping out. In past generations, mothers didn’t bond with infants because they knew the chances of the child not living very long were pretty good. Why bond when you could lose that bond so readily? The same phenomenon has taken place with neighbors. I have learned through self-preservation not to get too close to the folks I live next to. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I say hello and accept halibut and take over Christmas goodies and attend the occasional garage sale. But we don’t have dinners together.
Forrest Gump put it best when he said, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.” Well, I’m one of those chocolate eaters who takes a bite and if I don’t like what I get, I put it back and try another one. If I’m in the mood for caramel and I get nougat, I keep trying. If I’m in the mood for nut and I get caramel, I’ve been known to leave the caramel and take a bite of nut, even though I actually LIKE caramel.
Every box of chocolates given to me for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Birthdays, (my sweetheart isn’t much for shopping) is thrown away with half eaten chocolates. Unless, of course, the kids get to them.
So, if life IS like a box of chocolate, maybe people can be classified into types of chocolate eaters. If you are the type who studies the underside of the lid in order to discover the mystery of the insides of the chocolate, you are likely to be the kind of person who studies maps, googles school districts, emails chambers of commerces before choosing where to live and actually staying there. If you are the kind of person who takes a bite and feels like you have to finish it, whether you like it or not, besides weighing more than you should, you are likely to be the kind of person who digs in where you are and sticks it out, whether you actually like the area or not.
But if you are like me, you not only eat chocolate in a random way, you move fairly often.
1 comment:
We are more alike than I realized, though I haven't moved as often as you have, I've been willing to. In fact I have itchy feet again, but Rob really likes our house, yard and garden (probably because I've about worn him to the bone getting it all finished and put together nicely--but in my mind it was always so it would sell for a good price. Maybe it has something to do with not having any roots of my own. My parents moved us around a bit in my growing up years and didn't stay anywhere near the home I remember the most.
Anyway, maybe we'll end up neighbors sometime and we can share a box of chocolates and/or swing some tall flags around in the back yard.
P.S. Please tell your brother, Robin, 'hi' for me when you see or speak with him again. He was kind to me in high school when most boys were not...I appreciate that more now than I did then...
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