I
don’t know if anyone has really missed me, but after a long hiatus I am back to
writing and very happy to return to the keyboard. A lot has happened since my last entry in
October. That was written in Birmingham,
Alabama. The new year has seen me return
to Colorado. I now live in Denver and am
settling back in. There is a lot of news
to share, but I think I will do so over the course of several entries rather
than all in one blow.
First
let me say that my return to Colorado was not done without consulting my family
in Alabama. They all supported me in
this, but I have realized that the bonds which I renewed and formed were very
strong. Seeing my siblings and mother
again was wonderful. I was able to get
to know my four nephews and two nieces, three of whom had either never met me
before or did not remember me from prior visits. Now that I am back in Colorado, I find that I
miss the frequent contact and conversations with everyone, and not just my
immediate family. I loved talking to
aunts, cousins and childhood friends.
Neighbors and family friends who remembered my own childhood and even
infancy were good to me as well.
I
spent more than nine months in Alabama recovering my mental, emotional and
physical health. I discovered that I
really needed the down time. As one of
my brothers said to me, “Raymond, you need to recharge your batteries and
regroup before you venture back into the world of employment and normal living
again.” He was right. I arrived in Birmingham at the beginning of
the spring. Roses were blooming in my
mother’s front yard and everywhere I saw lush growth and every shade and tint
of green that Nature can make. Spring
was as wonderful as it could be, especially when I contrasted it with what I
knew was going on in Colorado where a drought had firmly established itself.
Spring
then gave way to summer. Colorado’s
Front Range was being ravaged by wildfires of unbelievable ferocity and
destructiveness. In Alabama, song birds
started each day with an avian chorus.
The evenings featured musical concerts put on by crickets and tree
locusts. But it was definitely hot and
humid, the kind of climate that made me most grateful for the central
air-conditioning my mother’s home had. I
did not get around to see many of the sights I wanted, but I did enjoy the long
summer days which passed quietly by. I
started to think about getting back into the work force once autumn arrived and
the kind of work I thought I would like to pursue. While I wasn’t in a big hurry to find a job,
I was starting to grow restless. Three
years of unemployment will do that to you and I knew that going back to work
would be important for me financially as well as physically.
September
brought what most in Alabama considered the most important part of the year:
the college football season. I am a big
college football fan, but my enthusiasm for the game was nothing compared to
the fanaticism I saw in Alabama. I had
to remind myself that once upon a time, I was just as devoted as the many I saw
now. My life in Colorado had given me
different things to value, focus upon, and pour my energies into. So while many followed the triumphs and
travails of the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide and Auburn University’s
Tiger football squads, I found myself looking to see how autumn would present
itself.
It
started out in summer green. September
and October looked much like July and August.
Hot days persisted into October and very little fall color was to be
seen. The most visible sign of the change
in season were the lengthening nights and the departure of summer’s song
birds. I thought about the flamboyant
colors in Colorado’s high country and how I would have been enjoying them. Homesickness for Colorado, which was a
persistent problem, was particularly strong and I wondered when and if I would
ever see the state again. But I was also
determined not to simply pine away for something that was beyond reach. I wanted to discover what autumn could bring
to me in Birmingham, and eventually I saw how it displayed its bounty.
Autumn
wears a different robe in Alabama. As I
tramped through Birmingham’s different neighborhoods and communities during my
daily walks, I saw that while bright tints of orange, yellow and red were not
present, other autumn traits were there.
My feet crunched on the kind of November bounty I had never seen in
Colorado. Acorns, hickory nuts, pecans
and walnuts covered yards, sidewalks and streets. Then, some colors began to appear. Brown was the dominant one, but orange, yellow
and even red put in appearances. Then, a
few nights before Thanksgiving, we got a frost!
After that, leaves began actually falling and covering the different
neighborhoods with a carpet I did not
think I would see. Autumn actually did
exist in the Deep South, but its guise was much different from the one I had
grown familiar with in the Rockies.
November
was passing when an old Colorado friend surprised me with an invitation to
spend a few weeks in Denver with him. I
jumped at the chance and arrived in the last week of the month. My friend Paul lives in south Denver and that
was the beginning of a new set of Colorado experiences. I had never taken the time to get to know
Denver during my previous life in the state.
Now I was finding myself driving along streets and roads whose names
were certainly familiar but which I had never actually seen before. I got back in touch with friends I had left
behind and saw that I had no difficulty adjusting to either the climate or
elevation. It was almost as if I had
never left.
Paul
and I talked about what would be a good course of action for me. While in Denver, I contacted different school
districts to investigate the possibility of working as a substitute teacher. The answers I gave were clear, direct and
very encouraging. Basically, I was told
that I would have little or no difficulty teaching again. By contrast, when I asked the same question
of educators in Alabama, I was told there would be a series of hoops I would
have to jump through first before I would be given any consideration for a
teaching job. Substitute teaching would
be a good way to generate cash flow as well as provide opportunities to
continue to look for work in other fields.
Colorado educators told me to contact them again in January to get the
ball rolling.
So,
after staying with Paul for three weeks, I returned to Birmingham for the
holidays. With the exception of the
weather which turned uncharacteristically cold and rainy, they went by
smoothly. Again, it was good to celebrate
with friends and family and to see the love and joy the holidays can
bring. But seeing I had better job
opportunities in Denver than in Birmingham, I told my family that I had decided
to go back “home.”
So
I am back in Colorado, only living in Denver now. But even though I have returned, my life here
will not be as it was before. I promised
my family that I would not let more than a year go by without physically going
back to Birmingham to see them. I also
pledged that I would maintain much better contact with my family through the
telephone, snail mail and the Internet.
There won’t be months of silence and no communication anymore. I’m glad to say that even though I have been back
less than a month, I have kept that promise.
And my family has done its part by calling and e-mailing me as well.
So
what lies ahead? Well, I feel good about
my plans to do supply teaching. Living
in Denver is also very exciting as the city has much to offer me. Plus, I can resume my exploration of Colorado
and the West. As for my blog, I will do
a much better job of maintaining it. I
will keep the title “South By East” because I am living southeast of my old
Boulder stomping grounds, so I feel the title is appropriate. Also, as I began to do while in Alabama, I
will incorporate photography into the entries.
I’m excited to be resuming my endeavors in that field as well.
I
hope my readers will continue to look into my little corner of cyberspace from
time to time. I don’t know if I’ll have
a lot of exciting and/or wonderful things to share, but I am excited about what
does lie ahead. Thanks for all your
support in the past for which I am very grateful. I am now eager to moving forward and enjoying
your company as I do so.
