I've really got no answers today either but I need to write. Got that call today. Chef in WV offered me a job cooking at Mountain Creek Dining Room, the place where my culinary journey really began fifteen years ago. I've been lobbying for this position for about six months now but slacked off during this final month. Told myself "If he calls. He calls." Well, he called. So what's left for me to do than bite the bullet and tell my mom what I'm gonna do. Everything except for her is telling me this is right, this is the path, this is the way home, this is it...And what can I really do for my mom really? I try to be there for her but no one can take her pain away. No one can make her start living her own life without my dad. It's on her shoulders. I wish I could take some of it on for her but that wouldn't help either of us in the long run. Christ how much I've changed. Used to be I'd go flying off anywhere for practically any reason just be going somewhere. Now there is an opportunity to live and work somewhere that I really want to be and I'm fighting it, feeling conflicted. I guess that shows signs of maturity or something. Thinking of others and how my decisions will affect them. God knows it's about time. I'll be 38 years old in a few weeks. If I do decide to go and I've pretty much decided to I will be returning 19 years after my very first attempt to live there as an adult (when I was 19 years old.) Exactly half my life ago. I love symmetry like that. 19 years after my first attempt and 15 years after my second attempt. Third time's the charm? Maybe.
Over the past several weeks I'd pretty much written off the idea of making the move this year. And then this afternoon the telephone rings and it's on. Just like that. Bounce and recover. Adapt. Shift and change. I've always been pretty good at that, over the years that is. I know I was born for this. I know this is my path. Now it's time to put up or shut up. Do it or don't. What I'm talking about here is literally a lifetime's worth of thought,planning and dreaming. Ever since I became an adult I wanted to do exactly what I'm fixing to do. I thought I'd be there by now. I thought things would be well underway by this point but oftentimes life has different ideas. I thought I'd have apple orchards already producing fruit. A house on the hill. Maybe even some little ones running around the land with me. I don't regret my path or wish to change a goddamn thing. I own the path I've taken. It's my life. I have to.
All this BIG thinking is one thing but the nuts and bolts of it are other matters. Trying to figure that out right now. Brainstorming. Best I can come up with is that over the next 2 weeks I move my belongings into a storage unit near my mother's house. When she returns from a ten day trip to MN to see my sister I drive up to WV with a bare minimum of things I'll need and start work at the restaurant. On June 2nd I'll return to do a luncheon I had scheduled on June 3rd and a wedding on June 5th. I'll do the final moving out of my apartment that weekend and return to WV the following week to resume working at the restaurant and beginning my life on the farm, planting a garden, preparing the cabin for winter, chopping wood, making contacts, etc. It's a lot to take in and I've kind of been in a daze all day.
Writing helps. Writing always helps.
No comments:
Post a Comment