A New Home

My family has moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington!

Leaving Cupertino was hard because I had to step down from my job as the Cupertino Poet Laureate.  I will miss the opportunities and connections it brought me, and I'll miss being able to give to the writers and poetry fans in that place.  I had the privilege to lead a Poetry Memoir Class full of active, caring, talented poets who became a community, a group of friends.  That was my favorite part.

My CPL successor, Ann Muto, will do an awesome job, I am sure.  She will continue the Poetry Memoir Class, and she has graciously allowed me to continue participating.  I get to send her ideas and exercises for the meetings.  But I know she will lead things in her own wonderful way, and will bring new ideas to the city.  Win win, except that I'll miss the Cupertino writers very much!

Life on Bainbridge Island will be balm for that.  It sure is beautiful here.  And it is joy it is to be in a green, lush forest instead of a city.  No offense to you, Silicon Valley.  You are amazing.  There are many cool things about living in the epicenter of innovation.  It was exciting and fast-paced.  And it had everything:  fancy boxed, organic, meal delivery services (competing companies!); organic flower deliveries that were so organically-composed that you couldn't choose the flowers; oodles of niche childcare choices such as language-based, religion-based, academic-subject-based, educational philosophy-based, dietary choices-based, rote learning-based…. Everything....  It was hard to find a daycare where my kids could just sit on the ground and eat a little dirt.  You know, just relax and be kids.  (We did find a wonderful place like that, except for the dirt-eating.)

Silicon Valley seems to have everything, but I'm meant to be in the country.  I need space.  Space for my brain.  For my heart.

I'm now living on two and a third acres.  That's the first thing I noticed in the real estate advertisement when searching for a new home.  It looked like this in my mind:  "Nice house for sale, blah blah blah, sits on TWO AND A THIRD ACRES."  Growing up, I measured prosperity in acres.  It seemed like an important thing to which to aspire.  Do you have any acreage?  Why, yes, I do.  It's not very many, but it's plural.  Hot damn.  I couldn't ask for more.

One acre is cleared for the house, and the rest is part of a forest.  My kids, ages 7 and 4, have made a trail (with my help) by wading through sword ferns and cedars.  I clipped a few fern fronds but felt morally ambiguous about it.  As a kid, I stomped trails into existence without any garden tools.  But I decided to use clippers here because the ferns are taller than my daughter.  Woo!

This place is so alive.  There are deer and frogs and birds and squirrels and salmon and elk and otters and whales and orcas.   And banana slugs.    More on that later.  Long story short:  We love our new home.