Right Here, Right Now, Right Where My Feet Are.

I've spent a lot of time wishing I lived in Colorado; I still wish to die there. My fondest memories take place among those purple mountains, with my favorite friends.  I imagine people there rising every day with a smile, greeting the sun with joy as it crests the mountains and beams happy rays through their open windows; I’m certain they burst into song.  I know in my head that this is fantasy, that even in my memories people were occasionally lugubrious or angry, but my infantile heart leans hard toward the West, anyway.

                Instead, I live in North Carolina, which has charms of its own, but like C.S. Lewis’s dwarves, even the sweetest days here taste like straw compared to days in my imagined paradise.  When people ask me how I landed in Charlotte I jokingly tell them “through a series of terrible choices”, which is true.  I live in Charlotte because I thought the grass was greener down South, only to find sticky red clay; I stay in Charlotte because my wife and boys have dear friends here and cry in despair when I hint at moving.  I took them to Colorado a few years ago, hoping to infect them with its charms; they liked it, but it wasn't their home, which is how I feel about North Carolina.  We’re at an impasse, and as the patriarch, it’s my responsibility to see to their best interests, not mine. 

                I live right here, right now, right where my feet are, because I was tired of the military and my friend told me he needed help with his mortgage business and I could make a ton of money.  My wife’s family also lives just two hours away and she’s quite fond of her family.  The mortgage company folded and the years passed on, filled with church, and scouts, and homeschooling co-ops, which the rest of my family threw themselves into while I held back, unwilling to tie myself to a place I didn't want to be. I tried my hand at running a bookstore for a few years then returned to the medical field for lack of better things to do.  Now I find myself with a house, two cars, a cat and boys who have no connection to anyplace other than this upstart, tree-filled city on the banks of the Catawba river, half-way between the mountains and the ocean.  I find myself deeply entrenched in a profession that I seem to be made for, yet loathe for its pious-cloaked gluttony.  Every day I ignore the saying, “if you find yourself in a hole - stop digging” and scoop my pit a little deeper, until I can barely see my beloved Colorado over the rim.

                To be fair, though, I have achieved a small modicum of success as a nurse, and my profession shows the occasional glint of compassion under the film of greed.  Did I learn nothing from longing for that greener grass?  Maybe I should leave Colorado to my misty memories, and appreciate this forest-city with the its red clay right here, right now, right where my feet are.