Further on "love of place"

 I think I have always wanted to make the best of wherever I lived, but not overtly, not consciously, not (as Susan would observe) acknowledging that sort of feeling, and not usually with much success.

Yes, I miss the ocean as well, but my discovery of the videos on the diving women of Jeju Island caused me to think more clearly about diving.  I bought the book I referenced, Moon Tides: Jeju Island Grannies of the Sea by Brenda Paik Sunoo.  Sunoo's title may be a bit off-putting to many.  It doesn't seem to have sold well on Amazon.  I bought it not because I saw them diving, but because many of them are still diving at about my age.  The lady for example who is 80 and plans to dive until she is 85 was interesting inasmuch as I'm now 86.  Of course I no longer dive, but I think about it.  Diving was for me a "place" that I loved.  But I couldn't avoid the impracticality of it.  I admired the lady who had her left arm bitten off by a shark who has figured out a way to keep diving and seems to enjoy every minute of it.  I sympathized with the 91-year-old lady who stumbled on the rocks, fell down, and yelled "I'm going to die."  I wonder if that was the correct translation of what she said.  I suspect she was intending to go on her first dive after the two month hiatus that was mentioned elsewhere.  She had deteriorated in those two months, but she probably thought that if she could make it over the rocks and into the sea she would be okay.  When she couldn't she may have concluded while she lay there on the rocks that if she could no longer do what she had loved to do for so many years, that she may as well die.

The rocks they had to traverse were worse than what I normally had to contend with. 

As to this house in San Jacinto being a place that is "the best place for [this] time of [my] life," I can't really say that.  It was always a compromise.  Susan and I negotiated where we would live until her parents died.  But I admit that it is comfortable, and the view out my study windows is better than that from any house I've ever lived in.  It also is close to the river in which I still enjoy hiking.  Also, with 2,000 square feet, a three car garage as well as a storage shed, and just the dogs and I living here, it has as much room as I can ever imagine needing. 

Several years ago a family moved into the house across the street, a man, wife, a passel of kids and some relatives.  The mother of the kids once looked at me, then looked at my house, which was larger than hers, shook her head, and observed,  "All that room and just the two of your living there."  Alas, there is now just one.