#Edwin warner park full
I missed full time pay and travel, but taking a timeout meant more time with Taylor who lives nearby and Mom who needs me now. Teaching as an adjunct gave me a season to prioritize writing though I still put in eleven-hour days commuting to two schools twice a week. I’d been in a classroom Monday through Friday since I was five. Trading the security of what we’ve always done for what we now want to do is risky. Career transition can be one of the scariest moves of all. I’m writing a memoir that will explain, as I continue to understand, all that happened there and in the Dominican Republic, and what is happening now as I repatriate and try to create a new life in Nashville.įor me, moving to foreign countries was easier in many ways than making a new life in what used to feel so familiar. Since moving home last June it has been a journey, and on it goes-a new season in a new life which a former coworker in Morocco called “the new new.” With all the change over the last 3+ years-4 schools and 4 addresses in 3 countries-I’ve not posted on the blog as much since I lived in Morocco. In stillness I’m moving in the direction of my dreams. But I believe I made the right choice and am where I need to be. I always will and still can’t bear to drive by. I still miss my home of 21 years which I sold in 2016. A covey of doves feed there, too, reminding me again that although I have no idea what 2018 holds, I have peace. Here I watch cardinals, bluejays, and finches take turns at my bird feeder and chipmunks enjoying seeds that they drop to the ground. The next day, Cole spied three deer while sitting on my living room couch. On Thanksgiving Day we saw a buck snorting through the woods not far for where we walked Ella. At the moment I looked up, peering past the pine trees, I saw on a shag carpet of burnt orange and brown leaves two of them staring back at me. A couple of weeks ago, after all the leaves had fallen, I realized I could finally see into the woods. But last September I managed to find a place where I now see deer on daily walks. When I returned to Nashville, I ironically found much of the same.įriends and family warned that Nashville had grown and changed. I craved green space while in Santo Domingo where my apartment had no outdoor area and was surrounded by loud, relentless traffic and high-rise condos. Minutes away is Percy Warner, Cheekwood, and the Harpeth River.
My “tiny home” is 785 square feet beside three quiet lakes where geese greet me each morning. Surrounded by peace, quiet, nature, I could hear God, my Muse, again. I was able to focus on writing my memoir of the three years abroad–why I went and why I returned. At the end of September, I finally settled in Nashville, where I call home. I am grateful for three months spent with my mom in my hometown as I job searched, then began teaching university and college English. Virginia Woolf was so right when she said women need a room of their own-or at least room, space- to write, create, think, breathe. I’ve culled and curated my material possessions which were packed into 1800 square feet for over twenty years, then a storage unit until I moved back. I’m learning to follow his advice to “Simplify! Simplify!” and after living in apartments three years while abroad I have grown accustomed to small spaces. Thoreau was the original American minimalist. Though I’ve never been to Walden Woods outside Concord, Massachusetts, I’ve been inspired by Walden and so have my students. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden or Life in the Woods after living in a 10’ X 15’ cabin beside a pond for two years, two months and two days. And I thank God that I spent much of it in my own Walden Woods. I’m grateful for last autumn-my first in three years. But as I walk Ella over crunchy leaves beside still waters at Edwin Warner Park, I remember not only being there with Cole and Brittany Thanksgiving Day, but how nature reminded me all fall I’m never alone. We blinked and only leftovers in the freezer were proof that the holiday really happened.
Determined to have everything done before they arrived so I could savor time with them and too excited to sleep, I was in the kitchen till 1 AM the night before, cooking and binging on Outlander. As much as we loved having my grown kids with us, we hated seeing them go.
The week after Thanksgiving had been quiet. Mom and I watched the geese from the patio as they picked through grass by the pond.
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