Yesterday, I met friend Arelene at work in Castro Valley and we went out for lunch. She had mentioned a good Indian place, and after we set out in my car, I realized the place was in Hayward, perilously close to where we used to live.



I have passed by the familiar exits a few times unavoidably on the freeways, but this venture into a familiar neighborhood set off new unsettled sensations. It was, I imagined, like visiting a crime scene, or the setting of some great recent tragedy. There was already a little of this feeling just being back in the Bay Area, and seeing familiar people and places like Alameda that have a more distant association with the old comfortable past.

Coupled with our recent expansion of potential outcomes to include new communities in Colorado, and a more rural domicile, messing around with activities that close to the old life was very unsettling. As I told Arlene, it isn't so much the exact components of the old life that I mourn the loss of (although there is still some of that), but the sense of stability and security that existed then. We agreed that such things are illusory anyway - that everything inevitably changes and evolves - but not knowing where or when or if I will be working, and what kind of home we might end up with or what city, state, or country that might be located in - is quite a shift from those innocent days.

Despite these occasional upsets of equilibrium as vestiges of the past encroach on my efforts to accept what each day has to offer and we pass through this time of transition and opportunity, I find that I am rattled less and for shorter periods of time. Probably as the whole story begins to seem less dramatic and the desire to know the outcome less desperate, a fine resolution will spontaneously occur that calls into question the need for all the angst in the first place.

Hopefully, the lessons learned through all this will make acceptance of the inumerable changes still to come more graceful.

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