Moving Dreams

This week’s question: “Have you ever considered moving to a warmer/better climate? If so, where would you consider going?”

Oh, yes indeed, I have dreamt!

I would not have said that when I was young. I grew up outside of Washington, DC where the seasons there are well-defined and I enjoyed them all.

I seriously cannot imagine living in the Southern Hemisphere and celebrating Christmas in the Summer. I suppose it is second nature to those who have been there all their lives, but to me, I think I would miss every wintery-theme and the fact that it is a wonderful, happy break during the cold months.

In my late 20s, I moved out West; I first moved with family members to Idaho Falls in southeast Idaho.
A more dismal place I have not found. It was HOT or COLD; no middle ground.

I wasn’t there long before I moved to Denver to marry my old boyfriend. I got there the last week of November and we were married on December third; by December seventh, I asked him this question:

“Is there anywhere in the world where the temperature runs between, oh, say 50ish to about mid 80s?”
Knowing what I was reaching for, he said, “The Riviera.”
I asked, “And the likelihood of our ever living in the Riviera is…?”

He laughed and added that parts of California would also fit the bill, but the likelihood of being there was almost as great as going to the Mediterranean. I have been told that Santa Barbara would be in my particular ballpark, but would I be concerned about the constantly moving ground and The Big One, and Santa Barbara nearly burned down in last season’s wildfires, so No Thank You Very Much.

Before the choice of Idaho was made, I went with my aunt to Phoenix to scout for her move to Arizona. (I was not among the scouts who went to Idaho, or things would have been different.) Friends of hers had moved from Maryland to there and had convinced her that it was the place to retire. We went in February. While there we took a trip to Scottsdale, a wonderful place to be a tourist, but the temperature hit 92F; may I remind you that it was FEBRUARY. I vetoed a move to AZ, as much as I liked many parts of it. (If you have a chance to go and travel, please see it.)

“How can you bear the heat?” I asked the friends.
“We have our back yard pool, and we travel to the mountains when it gets too hot”, was the answer.
“We’ll have to work and my sister’s kids will have to go to school, so taking off and going to the mountains just any time is not an option” was my answer.

[And FYI, all the added backyard pools, lawns, non-native plants, trees, and grass-covered golf courses ,(which are everywhere), that the newly-arrived have planted have raised the humidity and pollen levels, so that parts of Arizona are no longer the healthy havens for sinus and lung diseases they once were.]

“If you think it’s hot here, they are building retirement communities in Yuma, where it gets REALLY hot, over a hundred and twenty”, the other friend answered.

I could not imagine. You know they blast their A/C units, sop what’s the point?

All that having been said/written, with arthritis and my more recent injuries, the cold has become painful to me here in Kentucky.

I have in-laws in Jacksonville, Florida where the weather seems nice. A friend returned to Pensacola and posts pictures of her shelling walks on the beach there that make me envious. I have an old friend in West Palm Beach who posts incredible photos that make me drool…until this last hurricane season, where they could have lost everything.

I want to go to a Caribbean island, but you have hurricanes there, too. I guess the South Pacific would be out of the question as well.

South America, Africa, New Zealand and Australia have the Christmas-in-Summer problem, not to mention bugs, sharks, exotic diseases, plus dangerous snakes and animals, as does Southern Asia.

Yes, I am a coward.

We were, after all, talking about making life easier, right?

No, it isn’t worth it. No, I am afraid that I also will never even visit my friends in Mumbai, who tells me to move there, for most of the above reasons. Its lowest temps they experience are beyond the upper level of my dream-scape preferred high heat-levels.

One of my sons really wants to go back west and asked if we’d consider moving near him if he goes. Yes, there is less humidity. However, it’s been nearly a quarter of a century since we left and I am not sure if the cold would still seem less cold to me now.

And Joe doesn’t want to move where he would have to shovel snow.

Looks like the Riviera is the right option…when I win a billion-dollar lottery and can take all of my family with me.

I am here and will stay here as long as I can see the grandkids. Frankly, as much as I’d love to move to a beach somewhere, I cannot fathom a move.

But I can dream.

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