What Now?

Eureka!  Car insurance is in place.  Fidelma the insurance broker is my hero. The car is purchased and sitting in front of our house.  The rental car is returned without incident.  We are now the proud owners of a 2007 Nissan Note named Gogarty.  The last of our practical settling-in details is complete.  

And so on this auspicious night, Maureen and I sat in our living room, in front of a turf fire, alone after the departure of friends Hannah and Rainen, after a lovely lunch with dear Patrick and Anne Towers, who helped us with the exchange of cars.  We relaxed.  We sighed.  We sat in silence.  And then we both realized that now the whole thing really begins.  Maureen said, "Are we nuts?"  I said, "What the hell do we do now?"

There is this slightly terrifying dimension to just picking up and trying life on a new continent.  In some genuine sense, we are more alone here than we have ever felt.  We already miss all of the people who are the almost daily touchstones of our lives.  This place is lovely.  We both enjoy the culture.  But now we have to figure out what to do with the expanse of time that I have filled for years with work and that we have both filled with family and friends and theatre and all of the familiar activities of Maine.  Now, suddenly this retirement abroad begins in earnest and we have to do the work of creating new routines and a new way of life.  This is a wonderful opportunity, but right now it is just disorientingly wide open before us.  We've worked so hard to make this new life happen and now we have to find out how to live it.

And so we are early to bed.  Tomorrow will be a genuinely new thing.  "What the hell do we do now?"