how freakin' gorgeous are these leaves? on fire!
As the cramped little Delta Express flight I was a passenger on descended over Roanoke, Virginia last week, I peeked across my seat mate and out the window at the Blue Ridge mountains, spotted with fall colors, and at the big old colonial style homes that dotted the ground below us. I felt a funny warm sensation that wasn't physical... it was more emotional, I guess. Like a place in my heart was being reunited with a place it fits right into.
I grew up an Army Brat, you see, and we lived a lot of places. New Jersey, Georgia, Virginia, Germany, and Texas, and a couple moves within several of those states, too. The feeling of belonging somewhere is a luxury you're not afforded when you've been carted along from state to state or country to country during the years of your life that many others spend growing roots deep into the ground. I call that a luxury, but at the same time, I wouldn't trade my experiences growing up for anything. I think it's a different kind of depravation if you grow your roots too deep and never see the way things are apart from them.
Texas, though, is now the longest place I've lived. Fifteen years, to be exact. More than half my life, though it wasn't until I moved to Austin just a few years ago that I started to feel at home here. Texas is seeping into my blood. But still... I think the traveler in me - the one who grew up never really "from" anywhere - always wonders where she's best suited, and imagines growing deep roots there, raising up children there. A bustling, buzzing city like New York? A beautiful town at the base of some snowy mountain in Colorado? Quirky, fabulous Austin, where the seasons drive me bonkers but the city steals my heart? Ooorrrrrr, maybe Virginia. In all its history and natural beauty and apple orchards and real, defined seasons...
I don't know the answer to that question, and only time will tell where we end up, I suppose. You don't always get to choose, do you? Matthew will be done with law school within a year, we hope, and then all bets are off the table. These days, you go where you find a job. I hope he finds a job in Austin, because that seems like the safe thing, and I really do love it here. But I couldn't help being smitten with Virginia, and I could see myself living there one day, too. That's both the frustration and the beauty of this life: the not knowing. It sure makes for one big adventure.
What about you? If you could live anywhere, where would it be? If it's right where you are, then I applaud you. I am striving, too, to be happy here and now and to embody the cliche that is "blooming where you're planted...." Like I mentioned here in a similar post, I've really made strides in that lately! Or I WAS making strides.... until last week back East. ;)
Can't wait to show and tell you more from the trip. Check back soon!