I’ve Found This Place At Last Redux

UPDATE: November 2015

After returning home from spending Thanksgiving with my grandson’s family, I was browsing my computer to catch up after being away.  I came across a reference to an article I wrote for my LifeCentering blog back in April 2013.  I had written it after moving into my manufactured home in Dallas, Oregon.  Reviewing it gave rise to the same feelings of satisfaction that I had after visiting Aubrey and his family.  I figured it was a good time to reprint the article with an update.  What follows on my blog is my effort to share my reflections on “being at home!”

April 2013

I was looking through some articles that I had started writing over times past because a semi-formed idea struck that seemed to want to be expressed.  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how one looks at it, the idea did not continue to develop so it was relegated to the general file with other ideas that experienced the same fate.

However, as I was looking through that file today and reading the lyrics of K.D. Lang’s  “Trail of Broken Hearts,” which was part of an unfinished article, I came across the words:

Broken trail so long
A long and tired past
An emptiness has gone
I've found this place at last
And here will remain
With only the aim
Of staying sure and fast
Leaving just a part
Down the trail of broken hearts. [1]

Then it hit me.  I have found my place at last!  Some of you know that I recently bought a manufactured home after apartment living since selling my former mobile home in the Seattle area after retiring.  Though I enjoyed the apartment I never truly felt at home.  I had to put a number of things in storage, many of which I did not need, but some were things that I missed.  I had to get rid of all my major power tools, my garden tools and things that one needs if you are a homeowner.  If I needed or wanted to “fix” something, it usually called for a tool I couldn’t get to or no longer had; or maybe it was a particular nut, bolt or screw for some project that I thought I needed to take care of.

Now I have my shop mostly all set up again.  All the containers of nuts, bolts, washers, screws, etc. are nicely arranged on shelves ready for any project.  I already had to locate just the right bolts and nuts to replace ones missing from an adjustable bed frame kit I bought for my second bedroom.  (Darned Chinese can’t seem to get everything in the package that is supposed to be there! Don’t ask about the “instructions.”)  My mind is beginning to see a number of projects that I would like to take care of.  That doesn’t include all the things that NEED to be done in the yard—blah, blah, blah!

But, I have found this place at last, and here I will remain with only the aim of staying sure and fast . . . 

I was excited for the move and knew others could share the joy with me.  Most did, but of course, there were some who thought it was a stupid choice, saying, “For the life of me, I do not understand you or your choices now or in your past.” 

Sometimes one has to shake the dust from off his/her feet and travel on.  There is that place for each of us and it makes no difference whether anyone else sees it as we do or not.  In the right place there are new opportunities, new people and a new spirit, if one feels free to embrace them.  So I leave just a part down the trail of broken hearts, and move on.  I take all my great memories of the road leading me here along for the rest of the journey, and leave any broken heart memories where they belong—in the past!

And now 2015 . . .

I have, in fact, taken on a number of projects in my new home—yard and building maintenance, extensive garden box building and fair harvest of the veggies I enjoy.  I still feel I have found my place.  Certainly, with the steadily increasing rents in the Portland metro area that I would have been subject to if I had stayed in my apartment, I have more reasons to appreciate the move I made.  Living expenses decreased considerably.  Anyone who might still wonder why I made this move will just have to figure it out for him/herself.

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[1]  Trail of Broken Hearts, K.d. lang/Ben Mink
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/k/kd_lang/trail_of_broken_hearts.html ]