CHANGES IN LATITUDE

“Come, my friends, ‘‘it’s not too late to seek a newer world.”

That line form Tennyson’s poem, “Ulysses” keeps playing in my mind in this, our first winter on the Delaware coast. Buffered by snow and frigid temps at times, taunted by the recent false spring, not under mask mandates as of a few days ago, but still feeling the need to use them, we’re yet able to socialize as widely as we’d like in order to meet new people in what we already realize is a welcoming Lower, Slower Delaware. The life we envisioned by upping stakes and leaving Miami, the city where I lived  longer than anywhere else, is still in its embryonic stages. 

But regret? Not a bit. 

Yes, it takes a while to get used to any new place, an emotional variation of Dorothy plaintively observing, ““Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” It’s a matter of changes, big, small and everything in-between. In any move, there are always new friendships yet to be made, new streets to be learned, new doctors to see and new hairdressers to check out. It can be as anxiety-producing as it is exciting.

Trying to do it while we’re still in the midst of a pandemic–despite the far right’s insistence that we’re not– is harder still. The delightful respite we enjoyed before the Omicron variant raised its ugly head was all too brief, and there are many adventures,still on hold as we wait for this latest wave to ebb. 

But it’s still wondrous, this looking ahead, this embrace of the notion that life doesn’t have to remain ““the same ole, same ole” in the years before we shuffle off this mortal coil. As Tennyson’s Ulysses also observed, “How dull it is to pause, to make an end/To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use.”

I take nothing away from those who feel otherwise, who prefer to stay happily rooted where they were first planted and who view the familiar with fear, not unslaked thirst. After all, even Dorothy awoke to cry, ““There’s no place like home!”

But that’s not everyone’s cri du coeur, not each person’s mantra. You can appreciate where you once were and still yearn for places far beyond. You can even land in a new world and still be ready to roam further afield.

Florida was, at one time, that brand new world for me. But my time in the tropical sun grew wearisome after my career, then my PT days, ended, after I entered the shadows of widowhood and an empty nest, after one too many hurricane seasons and after the authoritarian ambitions of our Trump With Brains governor became ever more obvious and onerous. It was wondrous for a long while, but disturbing when it began to feel more like paradise lost than paradise found. 

It was time, past time really, to push off to new horizons, to listen to my own heart and not to the words of those who, for their own reasons, begged us to stay put, to remain encumbered solely by the memories of what was and to turn away from any experiences yet to be. What still can be as long as we are open to it.

On Groundhog Day this year, Punxsutawney Phil, not surprisingly, saw his shadow, foretelling six more weeks of winter. But that doesn't mean that every day needs to be a scene from the classic Bill Murray movie. This is real life. While the snow may come and go, foot-high or in mere flurries, there’s a beautiful peace in the wintry landscape here and the promise of three wildly different seasons ahead, each one gorgeous and inviting in its own way. 

For now, we can only walk along the beach most days bundled up in layers we’ve not worn since ski days long ago, but that doesn’t dim our determination not to stand still as the golden years of our lives push ever more quickly by.

As Lord Tennyson described,it, like anyone lucky enough to make it past middle age, we have been ““made weak by time and fare.” But our hearts remain heroic, ““strong in will/To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”

So here’s to life, to the future, to winter, spring, summer and fall, and to all the seasons still to be savored.