I've been looking inside myself at my feelings recently. Made easy by going down to spend two nights with my eldest son. Been talking about my future and why it is alternately exciting and horrifying.
As it happens it doesn't matter which it is at the moment, as no-one is coming to look at my house. I'm not taking it personally, none are selling round here at the moment. There was a flurry in the summer and now nothing. But that is okay as everyone needs to get Christmas dealt with first.
It felt however important to deal with me though so that I'm as prepared and happy with my choices when there is other choice.
The excitement is easy to understand, a new start, the seaside, new friends to make locally, a whole new area to explore. And not forgetting the friends I already have down there who are so important to me.
So I dream of going to places and doing things. One of the first on my list is a place called Appledore. It was where the Golden Hind was built, Sir Francis Drake's ship. And I have always loved the name of the place. Even if it isn't as wonderful as my imagination, it won't matter. It will just be a place to tick off on my list of places to have seen before I die.
As I've said so many times before, I can't wait to have my friends to pop and have coffee with, not something I have any longer round here.
Now, I know that moving to Devon I will find it no doubt just as insular and parochial, as I find living round here. But it's taken me years here to work that out,and by the time I really know that about Devon I'll be too old to care!
I am a very friendly person so meeting new people will not be a problem. Nor I hope will be getting some work.
So all that is good, so what's bad?
Well it's leaving here. Not because I have a job,I've had it for 16 years and it is time for a change anyway. It will be tough letting go of the stuff I'm involved with at school. As I so enjoy that.
The real big reason is, I'm smashing the family home. Now my sons are men and are more or less making their own way in life. So in one way wherever they are is their home. But there is always the security of being able to come home if they need.
Home for them will always be where I am, the thing that scares me is although I will live in a new house with all the things they have grown up with, it won't be the place they have called home for the last 13 years.
There will be no memories of life having gone there before. The room that they will stay in when they visit won't be their rooms, they will be guest rooms. Now I don't think that for one minute that will stop them coming to me, especially at Christmas till they have their own families. I will also have the attraction of being near the sea, something I couldn't get much further away from in the part of the UK.
I talked all this over with Kit, and it was the first time I had articulated what my fears were about. He didn't have any solutions,nor did he have any criticisms of what I want to do. He understands totally my need to make a new life for myself.
He agrees I need to do it. And although he is understanding, my guilt button is pushed as I think about what it means for my sons, for me to up sticks and start again.
That said the one thing I can't do is live my life vicariously through my sons. They are their own future. I am not. I am and hope always to be a safe place in times of crisis for them. But I did not have my sons to look after me in old age. I had them to let them go to be the men they are capable of being.
After all Mr Newton didn't discover gravity, his son Issac did! Mr Einstein didn't discover the theory of relativity, his son Albert did!
So I know that all I am doing is letting them go, same as any parent, but because I've not lead a conventional life, I'm not letting them go conventionally either!
But moving on I am, as soon as I am able, as I know now what has been holding me back.... my fear of change, nothing more or less. Same as everyone else. I just lead a bigger life so my change was bound to be different from the norm.
Thank goodness!!!
