Dear Reader,
When they say that a lot can change in a year, they are right. It’s not that I have never believed in this saying, I just never imagined how true it is. The me from last September was pleasantly on the edge of change that she had been wanting for a long time. Even though I had a good life and good career, I had been feeling stuck for the last year or two, and with my parents just listing our property, the sky was the limit. I am afraid that I was not cut out for the 9-5. It seems that after a year or two of something, I am usually ready for a change. Which doesn’t look really great on a resume, but when you are your own person, it doesn’t really matter. Last fall was really pleasant in the light of this change. I usually get wanderlust in fall, but this fall it was finally going to be fulfilled, even the weather seemed more autumn like than usual for Florida. It was about this time last year though, that I had my last “normal” weekend with life as I knew it.
After the rush of getting our house and property ready to list, I felt like having a party, so I invited some of my girlfriends over to do a fall craft on Saturday afternoon. I took off work early on a Friday so I could get ready. I stopped by my old office to drop something off, then I had to run to the next town over to get a truck part for my dad, on the way I picked up a friend who wasn’t able to make the party. The sun was just right, my truck was running like a million dollars, and all the right songs came on the radio. Even though the traffic was horrible on the one single lane road I had to go down, it was still a good drive. I loved to listen to 90’s country while I went down this road because it reminded me of my parents when they were young and inflation and development wasn’t so bad. To top it off, the part I had to pick up was steps for my truck that my parents surprised me with, just like my dad’s truck from the 90s.
A few days later, my parents had a buyer for the house, and the long-awaited change became a shocking reality. In retrospect, I can see why some people thought we were a little crazy. To leave a place that you have lived for almost 30 years, to move across the country with all of your equipment, horses, dogs, and household goods, to a place where it actually snows and stays colder for more than two weeks in the winter can feel a little crazy. But the thing about “crazy things” that people do spur of the moment, is that its not really spur of the moment. There has probably been a lot of thought, longing, and even planning to get to this point, but when the moment comes, it comes quickly.
Often change comes quickly like the fall weather here in South Dakota. My A/C went out in late August, and with fixing it not being a priority in my budget, my dad said not to worry about it since I wouldn’t need it in the next few weeks. Not that I didn’t believe my dad, but there was a little part of me that felt like he said this just to make me feel better. But the weather went from a hint of fall on the breeze in the evening to “I guess I have seasonal depression” overnight. This week the fog was so thick in the mornings that I couldn’t see two fence posts past my truck on my way to town.
People sometimes ask me if I miss Florida and of course, I do. That’s the place that raised and shaped me. Sometimes I have little flashback when I am doing something random in the kitchen or the barn. Something as simple as closing a gate can give me a memory or make me miss a little spot at our old house. Something familiar and comforting and for a moment I wish that I could go back just to visit my memories and lie in the grass for a moment and listen to the cicadas.
Change comes quickly, but so does adaptation. I have only been in South Dakota for four months. I feel like in a way I have always lived here and had the same bedroom my whole life. I have made new friends and memorized new routes. I don’t miss the traffic and the Florida heat, but I sometimes miss hearing the frogs at night and the outline of the dew soaked trees draped in moss on a foggy morning.
