Saying Goodbye to Whidbey

In the end, after much discussion of the pros and cons, we put our place on Whidbey Island up for sale. We had an offer after one day on the market. Then that fell through because the other party got heart palpitations. Within two days we had another. Added bonus: the buyer wanted all the furniture. We'd purchased that home furnished, and we had fervent hopes that we could sell it that way as well.

But even without furniture, it's amazing how much we're having to take from there and put in our suburban home of modest square footage. There's no more wall space here for our art, and in fact we had to take the largest and most expensive piece that we'd ever purchased - hung horizontally at the cabin - and hang it vertically at home in order to keep it on display. I actually think that I like it better vertical, and the subject matter allows for it.

Once mother died, the cabin became the depository of all of her things that we didn't have the heart to toss, including her. Her ashes sat on a small china cabinet that she'd played with as a girl and kept as a curio holder. Old "Look" magazines from the thirties were stuck in the bookcase, topographical maps were stuck behind it. Grandpa was a pattern-maker and dabbled in his own art, and flying birds and fish that he created now swim and fly on the spare walls here.

There's an old saying that the happiest two days of a boat-owner's life are the day that he buys it, and the day that he sells it. I'll admit to the happiest day of that equation in regard to the cabin. It was probably one of the nicest things that we ever did for ourselves other than falling in love with each other and having a masseuse come to our house every two weeks. I'll also admit to a certain relief in letting it go. We paid people on the island for upkeep and yard work. When the winds blew down the throat of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, they took a slight turn and then headed straight for our place, so when we watched storm warnings, we always took special note of central Whidbey conditions and would wonder about electricity and roofs and trees.

If Mother were still alive, we would have kept the place. She adored it, and loved taking friends and relatives there and pretending that it was her own. But she's gone, and the grandkids are in their teens and into other things, and the kids are in their thirties and into their careers and traveling further afield than Whidbey. And we are in a different place as well. It was once a retreat, and in fact when we wondered what to call it (another family member has a cabin on Whidbey, so to say "the cabin on Whidbey" was not enough), we decided on "The Sanctuary." I was a sales and marketing manager, a position of high stress. The Sainted One owned a business. We used to stand on the fantail as the ferry shuddered away from Mukeltio and laugh and say, "Try to find us now!"

But these days we're self-employed and have no need or desire to escape in the same way that we used to. "Escape" now has a tendency to mean places with strong February sun.

Whidbey will always remain special to us. We've made friends there. I had a column there in a paper for six years, and still send things in to it periodically. I'll always attend or present at the Whidbey Island Writer's Conference. And I will have mussels at Toby's and the occasional dinner at the Oystercatcher in Coupeville. We've given up the place to lay our heads, but not the right to still claim these things as ours.