I am a little apprehensive about this winter because my house is in disrepair, my furnace is old, and (unless I keep my water running) my pipes freeze when the temperature drops below zero.
I should really just sell my house and leave home.
I also feel an autumn restlessness that returns each year, a hormonal drive to find some final encounter, a primal urge to migrate to the warmth and be with other kindred creatures near the water.
When I was nineteen years old, I taught English at a little mission school in Puerto Rico. I fell in love with the tropics. I bought a Vespa and enjoyed driving in the humid air along the ocean roads. I should never have left, I tell myself in autumn moods, but I have rarely gone back.
Still, on the cusp of the deepest cold of the year, I am tempted to go and find that perfect beach and just be there and watch the waves forever. That is where I would go if I were to leave home.
I should go. I know that my wife of long ago would have wanted me to just give up and get over myself and finally go to the beach forever.
But when it comes right down to it, I’m not ready for the beach forever.
Maybe next year I’ll be ready.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the fourth week of Late Fall. In the meantime, take stock: Will you go to find the perfect beach ….if not now, …when?
