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Two years ago, I decided to reboot my life and start over. That is, I gave myself two years to see my only child through university, sift through a small mountain of detritus accumulated over 40+ years of professional and personal junk, work through a long list of repairs needed in order to sell my house, and otherwise shed the life I have only occasionally enjoyed lately.

What seemed then a tall order has today produced a small stack of boxes that contain what is left after many trips to the Goodwill drop-off, after the furniture auction that yielded a wallet fattened by $1,426, untold weekend hours of scraping, sanding, painting, re-carpeting, digging, planting, cleaning, and lots of drinking.

Two years ago, I realized that the reduced circumstances of my longed-for retirement would, with careful budgeting, just about take care of my immediate needs. Hooray! I can keep living! If you call that living. I wanted to travel, paint, write, and enjoy all this lovely, luxuriant time I have craved and coveted. It was clear that I simply could not stay in the States with its high cost of living and still have a life worth living. I decided to go to Nicaragua, a country I knew from a project I had created there a quarter-century ago. I still had friends in Managua, and I felt I could live comfortably there on half my income. A short trip there last year confirmed that Nicaragua is still a country of warm generous people, people of extraordinary ingenuity and endurance, ever hopeful that the country's brightening prospects for economic growth will finally reach full flower.

Gabriel, the aforementioned child, is now poised to begin his first life. I do not know how he really feels about my plans to abandon him to his fate and focus on myself. He says he understands. He shares my wanderlust and he has, after all, a father and stepmother to provide a new home base. I hope the next few years will see the two of us in France, Italy, Botswana, Chile!  He himself is soon due back from Spain, where he has been wrapping up his degree requirements. A quick repack and then, we're off to Nica to find my new digs and settle some details for my planned relo in July.