We are leaving the cabin for the Pacific coast in a few days and there is so much I have yet to discover. I have seen one full year gone by. I know how the seasons change in this oak den, I have seen how plants can thrive and be eaten by caterpillars and spiders within an hour, I have felt the blasted heat of summer insulated by plywood walls and the frigid chill of a winter with minimal heat to speak of. I received mail for a variety of people who have dwelled here in the past: underpants catalogs, knife and hunting brochures, political literature, and super savings clippers. I wonder what trace of junk mail my existence here will leave behind. I still don't know how big the Tokay gecko is really, from head to tail. I still don't know what it's like to sleep under the stars and mosquito nests here. The cabin has been a conduit for happiness, a stifling nuisance (crumbs everywhere!), and a safehouse for fun and sadness both. I don't know if I will ever experience anything close to what I have felt living here, but I know I will try for the rest of my life, remembering not to compare apples to oranges, or plywood to drywall. Most homes are inhabited as a fresh slate, even if previously lived in, they are entered as a new home with clean drawers, empty shelves, no bedding on the sheets. Matt and I began our lives here by sorting through whose things we wanted and didn't want: the former tenant left most of her belongings for us. And now we are doing almost the same, leaving behind grandma's furniture, a mattress, a confiscated mirror and half a dozen lamps, a spice rack…….and the spices that sit on it. It seems appropriate to leave in the same way we came. I cannot imagine the cabin empty. It does not befit it to have no-one living here, and as far as I know it has been inhabited since the inception of wood to nail to floor to wall, 1976, whether it be by cock roaches, geckos, or brave humans. A bittersweet farewell to Florida and the home I have always known, but a sweeter and more bitter goodbye to the cabin, the home I feel like I have always known.
