LEAPING THROUGH SELF-IMPOSED BOUNDARIES

Leaping feet first into new adventures makes me feel fully alive.  I love it! As I am nearing my 76^th year, alive is a great way to feel.  I’ve never been one to over think what might go wrong when deciding to take my life in a new direction.  When new possibilities have presented themselves to me, I’ve simply said, “Oh yeah!  Let me give that a try.”  I have done this often throughout my life, and overall, it has served me well.  (More about that in future blog posts.)

          A few years ago, I made one of the biggest leaps thus far in my 70 plus years.  At the time I wasn’t entirely sure if it was a foot first leap, a close eyed headfirst dive into an illusion, or simply spinning out of control.  Though I prefer to think of it as a spin out of the ordinary rather than a spin out of control. 

          I knew that, however it turned out, it would call into play nearly every lesson I had learned thus far in my life, while challenging me to learn new ones along the way.  I knew it was initially going to be a ginormous roller coaster ride, but most of all, I knew I was 100% up for it.  (Oh yeah, definitely the stuff of more blog posts.)

          After attending my 50^th high school class reunion I knew I wanted to move back to where I grew up, to Willamette Valley Oregon.  Being a big city girl in Houston for a number of years had fulfilled my high school dreams of living in a place filled with excitement, energy and opportunity.  A place where I was free from family and community expectations to be anything I wanted to be.

          Now I was ready to go back to a simpler, slower, more contemplative life. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, so for me, home was more about my natural surroundings than about the people in my life.  I found myself longing for the Oregon Coast, the Cascade Mountains, the Columbia River, and most of all, the Willamette Valley’s fields of strawberries, green beans, and mint that filled my senses on warm summer evenings.  

          At 68 years old, a move across country really was a leap outside the boundaries I had set around my comfort zone.  I was leaving friends, financial security and everything that had become familiar.  I missed the Pacific Northwest, but how much of it had changed over 50 years?  Was it just an illusion that I could go home again and find comfort there?  Well, there was one way to find out.

          It wasn’t as quick a transition as I expected.  There were delays in selling the house in Houston and I decided it was important to wait until my grandkid graduated from high school.  Traveling back to Texas for graduation would not have been feasible. 

          So, after a couple year’s delay, I began my journey from a city dweller and landlord in Houston Texas to becoming a writer and nature lover in the Willamette Valley. 

The bean and strawberry fields were mostly replaced by blueberries, vineyards and hops, but the mint was still there.  Many things have changed, and many things have remained the same.  The outline of the Coast Range to the west and the Cascades to the east were comforting sights. 

My daughter came with me on this adventure.  We have shared laughter, tears, lessons learned, wisdom gained, and we’ve only just begun.  She grounds me without stifling me and is a chip off the old block when it comes to leaping out of her comfort zone.

My grandkid also came, graduated from Central Washington State University, the whiz kid is now on her own adventure in Seattle. 

          Meanwhile, as I am looking out the windows from the hot tub at the health club, I see the evergreen trees in the early morning sunrise, and I think, “You sure don’t see that in Houston.”  It’s good to be comfortably settled in Salem for now, but I know I’ll always be looking forward to seeing what adventure awaits me around the next corner. 

Regardless of my age, I know I have many more leaps of faith in my future.  While they won’t necessarily take me to a new geographical location, (though I’m not ruling that out) they will certainly take me past the edge of my comfort zone.  That is where I love to be, where I feel most alive. 

And like I always say, alive is a great way to feel at this age.