Need for Beauty/Quiet

When I was eighteen I moved into New York City from the New Jersey suburbs.  It felt as if my life was about to begin.  I loved the hustle/bustle and all the activities I could engage in, even though I lived at the 92nd Street ‘Y’ because my parents were afraid to rent an apartment for me: who knew what I would do there?  I never told them that condoms were often found on the stairs between the girls’ floor and the boys’.  When I moved to my own apartment on 10th Street, I was in heaven, even though I had to stick my head out of the window in the main room every day, even in the winter, to see what the weather was like.  Later, my husband and I moved to Los Angeles for his work, and then for mine, as a scriptwriter.  After our kids were grown, and Hollywood showed its true colors vis a vis hiring  women and older folks, I began to contemplate moving. Much to my surprise, the criteria that most mattered to me were quiet and beauty, two things I hadn’t given a thought to at eighteen.    By that point I was not only writing articles for magazines, but had also begun a second novel that I entitled “The Girls & Me”.  In my new town and new house  writing that book made me feel closer to the daughters I had left behind in California, even though I had put one of them in prison in a country I called ‘Nicador’.  My first house looked out on Puget Sound and the lighthouse, with huge floor to ceiling windows in the front room.  When a new neighbor tore down the house in front of those windows and replaced it with a two-storey monstrosity that totally blocked my view, after coming to look to make sure that wouldn’t happen, I started to look for another home.  It took me a year and a half to find a property with a stunning view in a different neighborhood.  There isn’t any window in the house that doesn’t overlook plants, trees, flowers or water.  Every morning I walk to the front of the house and glance at the Sound, sighing with contentment.    If we do move to Bend, Oregon to be closer to my daughters, I know what I look at is still the most important thing to me.  It won’t be water, but I will need trees, a park, a view back or front on a field, the high desert – something that soothes the soul.   A friend suggested I look at this new experience as an adventure, rather than worrying about how it will play out, and that seemed a very good suggestion.  I already seem to be in that emotional space.