Hilton Head Island; transplanted

 

The bamboo plant is wilted as am I after two days confined in an SUV, and I was not even tied up as the bamboo was.

Carol tells me that the bamboo turned pure white after its transfer of only twenty miles from Evanston to Lake Forest, but it recovered.  How it will respond to a thousand mile move from 42N to 32N I do not know.  I am not sentimental.  The plant does not have a name but I admire it for needing almost nothing from others beyond a little water from time to time and oblique sun light and growing in a graceful form.  Do any of us do better?  So we have given this plant a chance.  I hope it survives.

Obviously I am on Hilton Head Island and very glad to be.  The Midwest, where I was born by a cruel jest of the nonexistent gods, is behind me.

Many of the men I most admire came from the Midwest:  Lincoln.  Grant.  Clemens.  Truman.  

I was born there, but I am a creature of the open ocean.

It all came right.

I found my way to the coast and taught myself to sail, apparently well.

Chicago is a great city.  Lake Forest is a wealthy and pleasant place.  But I do not belong there.

As we turned off the Interstate for the last few miles to Hilton Head Island I felt a heightened joy, which increased as Carol drove us over the two span bridge to the island, and was greater when we were beyond the mainland, and greater still when we were in our condo and in our own space.

If I remain alive and healthy for a few more years, I will leave this place and expose myself to the ocean and time and chance, but for now I am so glad to be here, having breakfast and drinks and dinner on the screened porch, watching squirrels and birds dart between the branches of the live oaks.  The silence.  The tranquility.

I will enjoy what I can.  Then I will gather my strength and try to push on.

L’Chaim.