Since moving to Denver some 45 years ago, I have mostly lived in the southeast Denver area. I have lived in several different abodes, but most in the City and County of Denver. I spent a couple of years living in Boulder while attending the University of Colorado, and I had an apartment in Thornton for a very short time. Other than those two instances, it’s been southeast Denver All The Way.

It’s funny (weird funny, not ha-ha funny) to move someplace where I don’t know how to get to the nearest Costco or where I’m going to have to figure out t,he location of the nearest CVS Pharmacy. There will be new restaurants, unfamiliar street names, and different hospitals. Our go-to freeway will no longer by I-25; instead, it will be C-470. Our light rail lines will be different letters. Our Chinese food will be delivered from a different restaurant, and who knows from whom we will order pizza?

The other night in bed, Bill admitted that he was apprehensive about the change. Me too. But we are both comfortable in our decision, certain that it is the right move for us at the right time. Our skittishness isn’t the downsizing aspect of our move. We have both said many times that one of the things we like best about our house in Mesa is its small size. It’s nice to have fewer places to search when you can’t find your phone. No more having to climb stairs when we leave our iPads in our bedroom. It’s just that both of us have lived in this area for over 40 years (in Bill’s case, over 50, and in this house for 30.

It will be nice to look out our windows and have a different view, though I will miss looking out my kitchen window and watching the squirrels and rabbits steal apples. We will no longer have a place for the grands to ride their scooters. The fact of the matter, however, is that they’re all really too old to ride the scooters anyway. They gave the scooters a good run on our big patio. They also gave the swing we had hanging from our honey locust tree for many years a good run. Every one of our nine grands used that swing, some when they were really too big to do so. It’s true that our youngest, Cole, didn’t spend as much time as the others. Still, he got in a few good swings before we had to cut off that limb that was nearly dead from over 15 years of swinging.

Our skittishness comes from change. They say that change is good for the brain, and I believe that is true. We are both very set in our ways. I read somewhere one time that it is good for your brain to shake things up a bit once in a while. I remember an example was to change the way you dry yourself off after getting out of the shower. Apparently we tend to always dry ourselves exactly the same way. I tried it then, and I have tried it a couple of times since. It really does feel uncomfortable.

All this is to say that it will take some time to get used to new places and things. Heck, it might even take some time to get used to finding the bathroom in the middle of the night.