Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us.
And black are the waters that sparked so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, no shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.
– Rudyard Kipling
I think both of us must have gypsy blood. No sooner do we move somewhere than we start planning our next move somewhere else. We’ve been here in Washington for seven months. Moving here in December was a bit of a shock, since we’d moved from the eternal spring of San Diego to interminable rain. However, December, January, February, March, and April showers did bring May flowers. The spring here is nothing short of spectacular. Everyone seems to have their entire yard planted to flower newly every few weeks. First it was the daffodils, then the hyacinths, then the tulips, then the irises, and now roses. To say nothing of the trees. We go walking every evening (with Axa in the ergo and Raj in the didymos) and talk about how beautiful it is here. We’re looking forward to the autumn. But we have no desire to spend another winter here. Even to watch the panoply of seasons unfold again in our backyard.
We’re moving back to Utah. Not because we want to raise our family there. Our excuse is that the business needs to move. Of course, that was our excuse for moving here too. Really, we just like to move. Really we just want to be in Italy. Piemonte, we think, although we’ve never been there. There’s no real way to say this to normal people and say it seriously. So I think I always sound a little flippant. Sometimes I think our entire life must seem like that to people–like we’re just trying to be as strange as possible. Really, we’re not. We’re just trying to do what we feel is best and most enjoyable and most authentic for us. Why it is that I know no one in my real life who feels similarly is a mystery to me. After all, why would you not want to move to Italy? Why would you not name your baby Raj? Well, everyone’s different. Only, as Orwell would paraphrase it, some are more different than others. Or as Thoreau would echo, we seem to march to the beat of a drunken drummer . . .