Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
I knew deep in my heart, through these past few difficult months, that this was all happening for a good reason. To give up my beloved home, leave our friends, come to a place I don't know and live in a house that isn't home -- it was all so hard and yet I knew I had to do it. Like Kevin Costner's character in
Field of Dreams -- I gotta do this even though I don't know why the hell I'm doing it.
Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Now, much sooner than I expected, comes the payoff (there had to be a payoff, right?): Antonio and I visited
Magdalena, New Mexico, last week, just to get away, and decided it was time to move there. To seal the deal, we bought a run-down old store in "downtown" Magdalena. Yes, we've officially gone off the deep end and are checking out of the rat race for good, moving to a dusty small town in the middle of nowhere. Lazarus has already charmed half the town so we had to promise to take him back soon... That house back in California that I've been missing so much these last months? It gave us either the windfall we needed to finally do what we want or enough rope to hang ourselves. Perhaps both. But we get to go back to New Mexico, finally, and we're finally doing what we've talked about for years and never had the courage OR the chance to do.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost
We have a LOT of work to do on our little store (starting with a new roof, then plumbing, then heating...), but I'm more excited than I've been in a long time... I know because I'm watching those HGTV home renovation/decorating shows again and conjuring all sorts of mischief. We do have a "tenant" who owns all the stuff in the shop (mostly books, some antiques and artifacts, and some nice local arts); if he decides to stay, we'll probably split the store roughly 50-50 and add a coffeeshop/thrift store/crafts store. A few community-building ideas we have include kids' arts-and-crafts days once or twice a month, weekly story hours, and book clubs for older kids. Since we own it outright (doesn't take much of an outlay in Magdalena), we can take time to learn what the community wants and needs instead of worrying about making a big profit right away -- just enough to renovate, pay the utilities and taxes, and feed ourselves.
So you wanna see? Okay, first the front exterior, facing south on 1st St./Rt. 60 --
Here's the left side (from the front), facing west:
and here's the right side, facing east and telling a story of the building's construction (an older woman built it herself years ago; she started here on the east side, where you can see she hadn't yet mastered bricklaying, but by the time she got around the back and then to the front she had gotten the hang of it):
Here's a small front room display, and a view from a back room looking toward the front:
For this we sold our beautiful house???? Damn straight. I can't frickin' wait, and I can't believe how lucky we are.
Oh, and we'll be living in William's lovely little house on Spruce St., where the view from the kitchen window goes something like this:
