What next?

I haven't written anything here for a while - been preparing for and giving a very successful author's event at Garrison Kiellor's book store and two very fun and successful days at the Shepherd's Harvest in Lake Elmo. That is a great event for anyone interested in the fiber arts and the animals (sheep, lamas, rabbits etc.) that provide fiber for the beautiful yarns and crafts on display. My daughter went nuts and bought a carder - which allowed her to produce the yarn that brought the best price in the charity spinning event.

But back to our story. So I'm spending sleepless nights wondering what to do next. By summer we will be homeless - so we thought we'd better get someplace to lay our heads come fall. We wrote to our friends Wilf and Wendy in Coigach and they said they could think of a few places that might have a house available for a long let. Oh goody.

Jack had a film script he was working on and couldn't get away, so I found a friend who could go to Scotland with me to look for a house. We would fly to London, then take the train to York and on to Inverness. Wilf and Wendy would pick us up in Inverness and drive us over the mountains to Polbain (our small village in Coigach). Nancy had never been to Europe and was enthusiastic about our trip! I was both excited and apprehensive. Would any of the available houses make a good home for us?

Breaking the news

We contacted a friend of ours who was now a real estate agent and told him to put the house on the market on April 1st. In the meantime we had to break the news to my employers (also dear friends) and our respective families. Jack's mother was delighted. "It's about time," she said. She'd had dreams like that herself. Had she disapproved, we wouldn't have changed our minds but we would have worried a lot more about the wisdom of what we were doing.

My parents looked at us as if we were crazy. They knew we'd done mad things in the past, but this was beyond the pale. They were products of the depression years and safety and security were important above all - and spending the equity in our house seemed like the ultimate folly. Our girls had some trepidation about being out there on their own, but they did their best to hide it and never were anything but supportive. In the end our whole family menage came through and did everything they could to help us make our dream a reality. I bless them all.

Our friends were excited, some envious, some completely flumoxed - what can we be thinking of? We knew we'd be missing each other - but at least it wasn't going to be a permanent move. We'd be back - and then - who could tell?