Longing

 It's that time of year again:  Coming up on the Christmas season, with Thanksgiving just days away, and the longing for Santa Fe (and home) settling in like a heavy weight on my heart.

I've already started crying to "I'll be Home for Christmas" playing on our local radio station when I'm out in the car.  During the day I avoid radio.

A half dozen times a day I think about farolitos, and fretting that there would be no place to place them on this balcony, unless I could figure out some way to attach them to the cast iron railing, and of course only the electric ones, and I'd be the only person who had them, and it would likely just look lame and make me want to cry more.

I remember all the reasons I came to California.  Health insurance. Whales. Nudibranchs... well, mostly health insurance, but right now we're coming to a point where the cost of living has increased so much during the pandemic that I've now fallen so far into the hole financially that I may be better off paying for my healthcare than paying for food and gas in the Bay Area.

And I miss the Community College, and I miss The Ranch, and I miss having maybe a little snow at Christmas time, and the dry desert air, and my friends back in Santa Fe.

My friends and family never believed I would want to stay in New Mexico when I moved there in '07.  I was there for a little over a decade, longer than I stayed anywhere for a long time.  I wasn't done with New Mexico when I left. I was missing the ocean, and struggling with the cost of health care. 

And if I hadn't moved, I wouldn't have had the wonderful experience of being a docent at Cabrillo, or a whale watch naturalist.  I wouldn't have gone to Dicken's Christmas Fair with Ellen.  Cailin would have never met Patrick, and might still be a cashier at Office Depot instead of fulfilling her dream to be a barista. 

Every journey has it's good points, wonderful little stops along the way. Every destination is just a stopping point for more adventures.  But a part of me feels done with Petaluma.  I'm pretty sure if I end up staying in California, I'll end up moving a little farther north to Santa Rosa, where there is more for me closer by: a couple colleges, a YMCA with a warm water pool, a church I rather like, an art supply store I love, and closer to a senior center that's much more active than the one near me now. 

But I don't know if I'll ever stop longing for farolitos sitting in a dusting of snow, and people gathered around the luminaria on Canyon Road, singing together on Christmas eve.