reminder from right now (for future reference)

This is for me to look at once I'm there and wondering why I thought I could just pick up and leave a place where nothing was broken.  I hope this will help.

I love where we live right now.  I love the plants and trees and views and my neighbors- the human ones and the coyotes, herons, and hawks.  I love the sea lions, pelicans, and wading birds with their little stick-y legs.  I love being in a place that so many people come to visit so we have seen friends and family from all over the place. I love that the kids spend hours outdoors playing in trees and dirt and with balls, sticks and ropes.

I want to enjoy it in the moment and appreciate how it's shaped my life while I've been here and how it will continue to shape my point of view once I leave.  I do not want to hold onto it so hard that it becomes a standard to which I hold all future experiences, an imaginary easy out from difficult situations.  I've had a couple of periods of my life in which I've done just that- pined so hard for a place I've left that all I can recall about that time was thinking about where I'd been and plotting how to return.    Then one time I actually did manage to return.  I had intended to get back within a few months, but days before getting on a plane, I ended up making a detour that took me around the world in the other direction and most of the way through graduate school. No surprise that by the time I finally got back there, the place had changed, I had changed, and I only stayed a cold lonely few days before heading out again.

Dear Maria of the future, remember that every time you had an internal conversation questioning the wisdom of leaving here, you always managed to convince yourself that it is in our best interest to go.  Most basically, we need the money.  Two layoffs in less than two years have left us more broke than we have ever been before.  Splitting our expenses by splitting our family across the world will only slow our ability to pay things off and limit our choices for a longer time.  Our minuscule shipping allowance is forcing us to get rid of or store most of the most familiar trappings of our lives- keep in mind that this is a good practice of letting go of material possessions.  After so many conversations about how family is the most important thing, it's time to live that. And we have moved before- it may not be easy, but we know how to do it.  This will be a new part of the world for us, an opportunity for us to meet new people and broaden our experience of what is possible.  We will be in a wonderfully central place from which we can travel and see friends and family that have always seemed impossibly far from San Francisco.  The kids have loved this place where we live now at least as much as you have and after a stint in the desert, they will never take time in green nature for granted again.  Raising them is not about having total control over their lives, their happiness and sadness, more about providing a base from which they will grow and make their own choices about what to explore.  We can all make the best of this.  Please remember this.