Granny’s Landing on Fantasy Bay

01 Jul 2022 41 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in 2022, Bali, Mexico, The Farm Tags: , , , , , , ,

Where to begin?

It’s been nine months since I left Bali for my first trip back to the States in two years. I’d planned to return to my beautiful home in Ubud, my dear friends, and the amazing Ketut. I’d purchased a round-trip ticket. But as time drew near to go back, I couldn’t. The impact of Covid, lockdown, and ongoing monkey invasions tied my stomach in knots at the mere thought of revisiting that nightmare. The desire to be closer to my family had become the mantra of my existence.

So I diverted to San Miguel de Allende in the mountains of central Mexico where a friend welcomed me and helped me find a home to rent. I signed a one-year lease and settled in.

Needless to say, I had a lot to process. That’s what this blog is about, the process.

I’m astounded at where this journey is taking me and the doors that are springing open as the way ahead becomes clear. And I’m grateful to the bone for my morning practices. The guidance that comes through journaling, yoga, and meditation is uncanny and the synchronicities that accompany each step forward are beyond my imagining.

But backing up just a bit…

After several months in Mexico, I realized how far away I still was from family. To visit me required an international flight and passports. It was the same for me to visit any of them. For those of you who haven’t experienced air travel lately, it has become a brutal undertaking, and although San Miguel is a magical playground for adults, it isn’t set up to thrill pre-school grandchildren. What had seemed a possible long-term solution in theory, wasn’t adding up.

But I was meeting wonderful women, soulmates really, and loving the Tuesday Market shopping excursions where I pawed for hours through hundreds of tables stacked high with clothing of every imaginable description. Vendors shouting “Barato! Barato! Barato!” (Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!) made me giggle, but they weren’t lying! Some tables had signs that read 2 X 50 pesos. That would be two pieces for $2.50 US. For a clothes-loving bargain-hunter like me, the Tuesday Market was paradise. There were US labels with tags still on them, Express, Lucky, August Silk, and Coldwater Creek, to name a few.

To add to the fun, I found Bananagrams players. They were fierce competitors and challenged my abilities to the max.

I said fun. How long had it been since I’d had fun?

I relaxed into the high desert heat and spent days exploring, often with my new friends, but sometimes alone, following mouth-watering scents for some of the best food I’ve ever eaten anywhere. Even in Italy! (Please note – Mexican wine doesn’t compare.)

I felt alive again, yet playing on repeat in the background was the gnawing knowing that I was still too far from family.

By now I knew I would not be returning to Bali. I’d left everything behind, a paid-for house that still had a seven-year lease, furniture, appliances, clothing, jewelry, deep friendships – everything. How could I justify not returning, especially to Ketut. His management of my property and the B&B supported his family.

There was only one acceptable answer. I told Ketut that if he wanted Rumah Jelita, I would transfer the lease to him and hopefully, after Covid it would become a good business again. He said yes. I left enough funds so he could maintain the property until it became viable. (His first guest will arrive in three days. I’m over-the-moon excited for him.)

The issue of my personal items and keepsakes remained. There were hours of hilarious laughter as Ketut and I videoconferenced while he went through my stuff. He’d hold up a ratty pair of flip-flops, “You want this?” One by one my treasures were placed in ‘keep’ or ‘discard’ piles. When the task was accomplished, he took the whole mess to the post office and had it shipped. It took three months to cross the Pacific – or was it four? Doesn’t matter. It arrived intact. Once again, bless you, Ketut.

After putting Bali in order, I finally felt I had the mental and emotional bandwidth to tackle the question, If not Mexico, then where? I put it out to the Universe but in my heart, I knew there was only one place that made sense: Aitkin County, Minnesota. The family farm.

When I moved to Bali I said I would never live in Minnesota again. I told myself I hated winter, navigating icy streets, shoveling snow, no way! And the thought that I would ever make the remote corner of northern Minnesota where I was born my home, well, no. Never. And yet…and yet…

That’s where most of my family has been for five generations – Aitkin County, Minnesota. My sister, Gwen, and her husband have their home on the family farm. My brother has 30 acres adjacent to them. Uncle John and Aunt Joyce live about a mile away and a host of cousins and old family friends are all nearby. My youngest daughter, her husband, and my twin grandsons, now 4 1/2 years old, live in Minneapolis, as well as many relatives on my mother’s side. It’s a 3 1/2 hour drive.

How does black become white overnight? All those nevers turned to nows?

Gwen and I have been emailing back and forth every day for the past two years. When I tentatively broached the prospect of my move she grabbed hold and ran with it. At one point I asked her why she was so excited at the idea of having her older sister living next door. She told me that she and W, my brother-in-law, acquired the farm from our parents twenty-five years ago because she felt her purpose was to create a place of abundance and safety for family and friends in the difficult times ahead. My coming, she said, affirmed her vision. Goosebumps.

Before I was even certain myself, Gwen had spread the word. Then, as I was researching freight container homes a cousin offered me a cabin. All I had to do was build a foundation for it and have it moved. My next chapter was unfolding effortlessly, which has always been the case when I’m in the flow listening as the Universe clears the path ahead.

My 180-day visa expired in May. I found a woman to sublet my home in Mexico for a month and I flew to Minnesota. When I saw my gift house for the first time I had one word for it. Potential.

For three weeks Gwen and W and I, augured holes for 6″ x 6″ x 8′ posts and worked our sorry, seventy-plus-year-old tails off building my foundation. We contacted a house mover and made arrangements. A representative from the electric company came out to the site and, ouch! Running new service from the pole to my home was pricey but essential.

If potential described my new home, torrents of glowing adjectives tumbled from my mouth when I settled on a building site. Words like serene, expansive, majestic, peaceful, nurturing, verdant, unspoiled. This is my view to the northwest…

Soon, building materials were being delivered by Home Depot…

W kept a close watch overseeing the delivery…

Gwen and I took turns stabilizing the augur while W manned the controls. The foundation was in progress…

Just getting to this point felt like a major accomplishment. This is my view to the east…

The three weeks with Gwen and W gave me a peek into what life might be like for this new – maybe final – chapter.

I arrived just in time for spring planting. Gwen loaned me a pair of overalls and a straw hat. She informed me that I could have as much garden space as I wanted and they would share all they produced with me as there was always an overabundance. (The mask isn’t mandatory – it was the only protection against the nasty biting gnats!) I set about relearning how to plant seeds.

In the midst of the excitement, the goddess Freya arrived. It turns out that was a very fitting name for this fur-bundle of love.

I’ve never seen Gwen so smitten!

Hardly a day passed that some relative or friend didn’t stop in for coffee and, I’m sure, a chance to check out what cosmic shift had occurred to bring Sherry back to the farm. Gwen and I baked goodies to have on hand for those occasions. I asked if frequent coffee klatches were a normal occurrence. Gwen assured me that, true to our Norwegian heritage, they were.

Then, the witching hour. Come 5:00 in the afternoon, all work ceased. Out came the wine and cheese and several hours of cozy chit-chat and DPQs ensued. I love that about my sister and brother-in-law. They know how to contemplate, deliberate, theorize, and examine to death a Deep Philosophical Question. They not only know how, but they enjoy it as much as I do. We agreed that even after I’m living in my own place next door, 5:00 is sacred together time.

One of my last evenings there, we were sitting in the screened porch staring out at the sea of green meadow undulating in the breeze. My father named this farm Willow Island for the clump of weeping willows clustered between the house and the barn. A few years ago, I dubbed the meadow between the house and the forest Lake Imagination. Now Gwen and W are happy to tell anyone who asks that they have Willow Island Farm on Lake Imagination.

My house will overlook a different field. Gwen wanted to know if I’d thought about a name. As I pictured myself sitting on my front porch gazing across the landscape, the answer was there. “It’s Granny’s Landing on Fantasy Bay,” I said. “What else could it possibly be?”

We laughed and after a quiet moment she said, “Sherry, that’s perfect on so many levels!”

So it is. All of it. And once again I find myself manifesting a dream.

There have been times lately when I’ve looked in the mirror and asked myself, “Who are you? I don’t know you!” A five-year-old, blue-eyed imp with bouncy blond curls looks back at me and says, “You’re little Sherry Grimsbo, and we’re going home.”

What if….?

03 Jan 2015 9 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

Sometimes I wonder…

What if I’d taken that job with Pan Am Airlines and had become a flight attendant at age 19? How might my life have been different?

That’s a wasted What if. It’s in the past and there’s nothing I can do to change the outcome of that decision. But there is tremendous power in a What if that imagines something different in future time. A What if is the first step toward change. Often it’s fleeting, a mere shadow puppet that dances indistinctly through the mind. But it leaves traces of itself that bring about random ideas and a niggling discomfort that perhaps there’s something I could be doing differently? Perhaps there’s something waiting for me that will manifest when I realize what it is.

What if I could do something I loved instead of this job that’s killing my soul?

What if I could be mentally, physically, emotionally healthy?

What if I could get out of debt?

What if…?

The reason why those thoughts rarely change anything is because they’re overridden by old programming that sounds very much like, it won’t work, I’m too old, too young, too tired, it’s no use, I’ve tried before, I’m too broke, it’s too late, it’s a silly thought, I’m better off than most, why can’t I just be satisfied?

That programming is solid, unyielding, and unconscious for most of us. It grew out of our first impressions of the world before we were old enough to filter information. It’s buried deep in our subconscious and it informs every single decision we make. It’s the reason we have thought patterns, and patterns of behavior that repeat, sometimes beneficial ones, too often destructive ones. It determines the kind of people we attract to us. In a nutshell that programming runs the show.

To ask the What if questions and to allow them to become dreams before the programming shuts them down, requires help. Take a look at my life and tell me about patterns!

Married and divorced five times

Pulled up stakes and moved every two years or less

Rarely stayed in a job for more than a year

Lived from paycheck to paycheck

Accumulated credit card debt

Wore a happy face that masked the emptiness inside

Then three of my closest friends died within a year, all younger than me. It shook me to the core of my being. I asked myself, If you were told that you would die tomorrow, would you have regrets? In a terrifying flash I knew that not only would I have regrets, I would feel as though I hadn’t yet lived. That my years had been spent living someone else’s life.

That was then.

The journey from there to here was taken in incremental, logical, strategic, and sometimes serendipitous steps. As discovery writing exposed old programming and uncovered my truth I knew what to do and when to do it. I entered a kind of effortless flow that exhilarated and amazed me.

And it brought me to a dream that is bigger than anything I could have imagined back when I started to rethink my life. My definition of happy now looks nothing like what I accepted as happy before. I have connected with my path, a calling, a life purpose and the joy in that is indescribable. Utterly indescribable.

My dream is only mine. It isn’t everyone’s idea of bliss to move to the other side of the world and live on a tropical island. (How cliché is that?!) But it is everyone’s dream to be happy, to live a fulfilled life in tune with your reason for being.

Yesterday my daughter e-mailed my Tantric Numerology Reading for 2015. It spoke to thoughts that have been weighing in on my consciousness for the past few months. And it affirmed my desire to pass the information I’ve learned on to others:

You cannot accept and use your gift unless you feel that you deserve it. Remember, this gift is already yours. Relax, use it and enjoy it. Your gift is the ability to teach. You will find it easy and pleasurable to teach others through your actions and words. ( http://www.3ho.org/tantric-numerology-reading)

As I read this the truth of it settled into my bones. “Yes,” I said. “Of course.” And the inevitable tears trickled down my cheeks.