Ready to jump, though not fear-free

December 10, 2007

My wife and kids are leaving for Minnesota in 2 days. I’ll follow them 9 days later.

So we’re cramming on authentic Tex-Mex. And my wife and I had a little time to reminisce about our favorite memories of Texas.

It’s funny, there isn’t a lot that makes me sad to leave Texas. True, there are some friends who are tough to say good-byes to, but other than that, I am looking forward to cleaning the slate and starting anew.

That said, as the day approaches I am also feeling a bit apprehensive. It’s a normal pre-jump jitter. Even the best decisions can’t be executed with 100% fear-free. I had really loved Austin, still do. And as my wife and I discovered, we had so many adventures and memories here.

I won’t take the time to explain the background of this experience, but we once lived outside Austin, in a rural area. We didn’t have an indoor bath or hot water, but we had a horse trough we bought at a local Home Depot, which we put on a few stacked cinder blocks. Yes, you guessed it, we used it as an outdoor bathtub. We built a wood fire beneath it to heat water. It took 3 hours to heat up the bath each time. It was a major effort, or PIA. Some nights when it’s cold or wet, the water wouldn’t warm up even after hours of trying to keep a good fire going. It was one of the many things we were struggling with.

But when we did get a bath, it was magical. On a good night, we’d be taking a bath under a full starry sky. And the sensation of getting in a bath where the bottom is the hottest was amazing. (We had to sit on some wooden boards, as we couldn’t sit directly on the metal floor of the trough, with the fire underneath.) It just heats you up and eases your weariness like nothing else. I’ve always liked hot baths but those were so rewarding — heavenly, especially after a long struggle to get there. We didn’t miss much about the life in the country after moving back into town, but that bath was something I did miss, and still do. I don’t want to do it every night, but I’d love to own a cottage or a cabin somewhere, where we can make a wood-burned hot tub out in the open — again.

That was one of the many memories we dug up. We had so many, that I couldn’t help but reconsider my impression of the last decade. I thought it was filled mostly with painful struggles — but we did actually have our share of fun, too.

10 years is a long time in anyone’s life, and we spent that in Texas. Crawling, bleeding, bemoaning, we slowly but surely found ourselves in this great state. I know that the moment I leave, the concept of being a Texan will feel so foreign, that I’ll have a hard time believing that I ever was one. But yet, Texas will be with me always — for the rest of my life.

And it feels OK to leave it at that, and close this chapter. The voice that’s asking “are you making the right choice, to leave here?” is not gone but very, very faint. This move is shaping up to be the latest in the long series of jumps we made, without knowing exactly where we land, or how. But we’ve come out OK every time — and so we will this time.

I’m not fear-free, but I am ready to go. Life is good.

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