Poems, Personal Stories, and Observations

Posts tagged ‘moving’

Fairy Tale Dream

I lived in a fairy tale dream 
Of mostly sunny days —
Little disease and little pain —
Then reality came. 

I felt accused of misplaced trust,
Defensive, and defend I must.
The hopes of wanting to believe,
The criticisms ill conceived.

And cancer struck, not once, but twice.
These unexpected enemies caused
A leeriness, and gave me pause.

Life wouldn’t go on as I had thought —
Events could happen, unannounced,
Nothing seemed safe; nothing sound.

The sunny days had turned to dark,
The world, instead, became more stark.
I had to be ready; I had to be armed.

And then to move o’er 2,000 miles,
Uprooted, after 67 years –
Somehow, that caused a lot of tears.

—

Each day that passes, I come aware
Of tragedies, of people’s cares —
That lead some people to despair.

Evil spreads, or so it seems,
Yet parallel, a good perceived —
Incomprehensible battle screams.

And then He said, “Take up your cross,”
“With Me,” He said, “Must count the cost.”
“Without the cross you will be lost.”

I learn to hear His voice each day,
And trust He’s with me in the fray,
And good, o’er evil, wins the day.

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Lost Item Axiom

For the last several days, we’ve been looking for our glue guns so that my hubby can fix a wooden item. After several days of searching, we happened to be at a store, so we decided to buy a glue gun, reasoning: “Maybe we gave the old ones away.”

Well, an hour after we got home, I happened to be in the basement for another reason, and noticed an open moving box with four shoebox-sized boxes inside it. Spotting one of them, I thought, “Wait a minute, that looks like the old glue gun box.” Sure enough, it was.

We will be returning an unopened new glue gun soon.

Axiom: If you can’t find an item, buy a new one, and the old one will soon turn up.

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A Year Since We Moved On!

About one year ago (June 27, 2021), my husband and I set out on our journey to move to Ohio from California. We chose to take nine days to do the drive, with our cat.

The trip here, and life afterwards have been an adventure, to say the least. For me, it’s been a bigger deal than for my husband. He grew up in Ohio, whereas I had lived in California my entire life, not even going away to college, not even a college within California (except as a commuter student, three or four times). Possibly, making a big change like this when you’re 67 might be slightly difficult!

We ended up in what I might call a semi-suburb. We are outside the limits, and on the east side of a large city. Our zip code is the same as a nearby small town, but we don’t live inside that town’s city limits. Although we have a sewer system rather than septic tanks, and other suburban amenities, it’s a very quiet neighborhood (development), which happens to have a small woodsy section in the center permanently preserved for wildlife. We often see deer, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, and many, many birds. On the other hand, my son and his family, who live within the west side of the same big city mentioned above, also see deer, plus have woodchucks nesting in their big yard, and other wildlife makes its presence known to them.

The people in Ohio have been wonderful. The biggest adjustments for me are climate (humidity and cold), bugs (chiggers are the most difficult so far), and poison ivy (rooting it out can take a lot of work, and you practically have to where a hazmat suit to work on it). Getting a new driver’s license (because of my unconventional birth certificate) and setting up new doctors were also challenging.

And the many good things: Abundance of natural life, plenty of water, dramatic clouds and thunderstorms, friendly neighbors who almost always wave, family helping each other, fireflies, a beautiful river just a few miles away and the riverside trail along it, etc.!

Thanks be to God and to all who prayed for us and made this journey possible.

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