“You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving in foam you can still believe you are doing fine.”

– Wallace Stegner, “Crossing For Safety.

A friend told me on the phone last night that my closing on our new home today was the biggest day of my life, and that startled me. I think of my daughter Emma being born, of my marriage to Maria, of my decision to break away from my old life and become a writer as being big days in my life. Yet I thought my friend was right. In many ways, all of these things, all of the other big days, big decisions, books and photos, dogs and donkeys, ups and downs, breakdowns and counselors, terror and spirituality, all led to this day. To finding my true self, living my true life.

I have lived a hard life at times, and an easy one at others. I was not born rich, and have never been rich, although many people assume even minor celebrities are. When I came to the farm, I lived a big and illusory life. Having a movie made about you can mess up your head, fuzz your perspective. It’s like all the “likes” on Facebook. It’s easy to stroke a keyboard, but it doesn’t always mean much. People love your writing, but few of them actually buy books. People tell me every day that this or that photo ought to be a notecard, but I know they rarely buy them when they are. People tell me every day I have a perfect life, even as I know I do not.

Part of the search for an authentic life is to find your own reality, know who you are, come to terms with your life. What you think, not what people tell you.

That’s what this closing feels like, that I am finally coming to terms with my life. I am buying a house with Maria, the love of my life, and that is the big thing. It feels as if this is where I belong, this is where I was meant to be. This is the last house I will ever buy in my life, I believe, the house in which I plan to die. And I have never thought that before about a house. I have struggled for years to find out who I am, and it has led me to this day, this house.

This  is crossing to safety to me, a great plan that may turn into foam – I know that is possible. But more than that, it feels like the place where I will have the best of times, a place where love and friendship has its home and happiness its headquarters.