In Case You Need Me, I'll Be Here

By any measure, last winter was rough. It snowed on and off for seven months, burying the fall leaves in early October. With drifts piling up around our house that were waist-high, things looked bleak because they were. My car got stuck in my own icy driveway and it took a day and a tow truck to get unstuck. It was well below zero many days and nights. My husband and I came to the same conclusion: We're outta here!

So we started looking for houses back in our old stomping grounds, Washington, D.C.  We still have many good friends living there who we'd love to hang with. The climate is much better -- they actually see flowers in late February whereas here in Maine it's not until late April or early May that a daffodil shows up. Aside from the preponderance of knee-jerk liberals and a simmering undercurrent of racial tension (the city is 43% white, with African-Americans, Hispanics and a host of other ethnicities making up the balance), life there can be pretty sweet.

Except, as it turns out, the real estate market in D.C. is so hot that every house sells for between 50 and 100 thousand dollars over the asking price. Bidding wars abound, even for a crummy dump. So our enthusiasm began to wane, considering how much we love our current home and could never come near anything as nice ever again, certainly not in Washington. Still, our wonderful old friends! The Kennedy Center! All those theaters, so many museums, the fabulous tulips and cherry trees! Beautiful parks everywhere! Movie theaters of every ilk, showing everything from indies and oldies to brand new IMAX blockbusters!

Cherry trees in bloom around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.

Then last week, that simmering racial tension boiled over.  A wealthy white family of three plus their housekeeper, living in what is arguably Washington's best neighborhood, and certainly its most secure since the Vice-President's home is but a few blocks away, was robbed, brutally tortured and then burned to death in a fire set in the home by a black man. They caught the guy a week later, tracing his DNA from a leftover pizza crust found at the scene. (Imagine, he ordered a pizza while he was holding people hostage.)

Back when I lived in D.C., which I did for 30 years, I had friends who were murdered too. And others who were raped, and many who were robbed, and lots who were mugged -- you name it, it happened to someone, even us. Since moving to Maine six years ago, the worst I have heard of was a cell phone stolen from the front seat of an unlocked car and an ice dam on a neighbor's roof.

Fresh fish for dinner every night!

So you know what? We're staying in Maine. I'm making new friends, lowering my hoity-toity standards concerning "theater" and "art," and sleeping soundly at night. And no small thing, what with all the talk of omega-3's, the fish here is to die for. And speaking of death, I'd rather freeze to death lost in a snowstorm than meet my maker at the hands of a crazed lunatic with an axe to grind.