Leaving Anacortes

Anacortes is the place I came when I left my old life. I drove away from two decades of friendships built and communities connected. I left behind the homes and parks and hiking trails where I had raised my babies and I headed west. 

Skagit County had received my mother, my brother and I after her marriage ended before my fourth birthday. We lived on the beach and tromped through muddy sand. We lived at the lake in a drafty cabin just up the driveway from my first best friend. We lived in small town LaConner where I walked to kindergarten and feasted on raspberries in my mothers garden. My life grounded in the saltwater beaches and evergreen forests of this land.  It became the place that has always felt like home to me. 

Marriages, first my mother's second and later my first, led me away from this place.  I was away most of a decade before I came back the first time.  When I left again I made sure to come back often. Maybe that's why I never rooted in Atlanta despite living there longer than I've lived anywhere else.  

Of course when I finally let go of my marriage, it was Skagit that drew me home. 

I got to know Anacortes as part of a dream that was not to be. I dreamed of community here and of  hiking the woodlands and beaches, of living in a sweet small town, of gazing out across the water to the islands and mountains beyond. That particular dream died away, but Anacortes remained. 

In the end it was Ryan that prompted the choice of Anacortes. Not that he wanted to move. What he wanted was a normal public school experience.  Anacortes offered that, on a scale that wouldn't swallow him, with every class he could ask for. 

So it was that after lifetimes, mine and my kids', of loving to visit this area, Ryan and I moved to Anacortes three years ago. I thought I would love it here, but also wondered whether the charm would persist through full time living. I figured I had the three years until Ryan's graduation to find out. 

We were welcomed into the long time family home of dear people who became dear friends. It took me too long to realize that the arrangement that worked beautifully for me and for our bank account would never feel like home to Ryan.

We got Ryan registered for high school. He liked his classes and his teachers. He performed well, if quietly in his classes  I couldn't have known that just as his robotics team seemed poised to deliver local friendships, Covid would confine him to his room, making the beautiful new school building and potential friendships meaningless. 

Three years later I know for sure that though this natural beauty continues to feed my soul day after day after day, it isn't enough to displace my dream of community. I know that though the high school was everything I had hoped it could be, it wasn't enough. Ryan needed something else. 

Ryan is gone. Community appeared in Eugene. So I'm leaving this place that I love. I'm leaving saltwater and sailboats. I'm leaving familiar beaches bounded by evergreens, and the trails of my childhood and of my children's childhood. 

I'm leaving the last place Ryan ever was. I'm leaving the freezer that held his pizzas and the kitchen where we laughed together. I'm leaving the dining room where we sat together making a meat and cheese tray for Thanksgiving and Ryan engineered a notching system to keep the pepperoni in rolls. I'm leaving the stairs where he sprawled the lean length of him and the living room where he watched TV.  I'm leaving the room he scattered with dirty clothes and heated to a sauna and used as a hide-away where video games and Netflix could makes the days go by when he couldn't stand to live them.  I'm leaving the room where he laid his head that night and where I found him that last morning. I'm moving far away from the beautiful place where we scattered his ashes and remembered how he loved to run ahead and explore.  

Next month I'll settle into a new life with new dreams and so many good things, but today is about leaving.  Today is about goodbye and loss and grief.  November is hard.