It is sunny. The air smells of roses. The dogs are outside in the sun with their tongues hanging out. I have dozens of terra cota pots with spring bulbs of dozens of different flowers. I played Mozart this morning on my fourth generation upright piano I finally have space for. I have the whole day to paint.

It is definitely a time of transition.

We lost our home. We lost everything I was hanging on for dear life for in San Francisco. But I left San Francisco a long time ago. Foreclosure wasn't on my mind when I was buying yet another plant to crowd our closet-sized patio. But as Martha Stewart said about living in Manhattan: "I was raising orchids in my bathtub. It was time to leave".

And here I am in my grandparent's home. There is an orchard my grandfather made. 10 fruit trees. There are forty year old rose trees. There's a forty year old fuschia. I am finding old photo albums everywhere. I am finally learning the faces of my long-deceased relatives. My father's mother, for instance, who old relatives said I uncannily resemble, holds her fingers strangely as I do.

I have cried a lot. Not only is it hard to take the onslaught of moving, the giving up of what I thought was "the dream", the adopting of a "new" life, but the pummeling history of what I am made of.

I didn't know.

This is the land of my chemical makeup. My parents graduated from the highschool down the street. My godmother is 10 minutes away. I am using my grandparent's things. I found a love letter from my mother to my father folded neatly in his old jewelry box someone packed when he died.

It is heavy. But I needed it.

I am changing.