Goodbye, Toronto

I’m saying my goodbyes to Toronto. I’ve seen my last Hot Docs Festival film, and I’m just back from my last author program. I’ve probably had my last roti, checked out my last book at my local branch library, gone to my last art workshop. Horror of horrors, I’ve even watched my last play.
 
The thing about my Urban Infusion Months is that I get attached. I embrace my new city – even my new neighborhood – and then I feel such nostalgia over leaving it. I leave little bits of me and my experiences all over.
 
When I first arrived and wrote my last post about the thrill of being a little bit scared, a little bit curious; my friend Helen replied, “How are we friends when we’re so different?! Reading this one made me realize how much I now like creating new routines and avoiding confusion!!”
 
As I told Helen, “I definitely create new routines. It’s just that they’re new routines, not the same old, same old for the past 35 years!”
 
So I’d start off every morning checking blogTO to see what new things they’d found for me. And I’d stop off at my Riverdale Branch Library where the librarian posted a new poem every day of April for Poetry Month.

Many nights, I’d catch The Great Canadian Baking Show – four seasons’ worth! – after I figured out the TV remote. I learned that Montreal-style bagels have bigger holes than New York bagels and they’re boiled in honey water instead of plain water. They look scrawny and burnt as opposed to New York’s plump and golden, but that honey water holds a LOT of garlic and onion. So when blogTO announced the opening of Kettleman’s Bagels, I headed down there to check them out and watch the bakers in the window. I do that a lot. A half-dozen bagels are coming back to Alaska with me.

I learned where the Apple store was when my external hard drive crashed, so I knew where it was when Tim lost a cable. Around the corner, Yael has put the recipe for my hair color in the files so she can repeat it. When I discovered that Nova Era Bakery in Little Portugal has a wonderful little café in back, I took Elizabeth and Tim there, too. It’s my new “Spot,” right near Galo de Barcelos.

I have my favorite FreshCo, my favorite COBS Bread, my favorite Bulk Barn, even my favorite Dollarama with my favorite licorice. I have my favorite streetcar (although Tim insists I’ve never met a streetcar I didn’t love). I have a tried-and-true walk up the hill to the subway, and I know where the bad puddle exists permanently in Riverdale Park. I even have a favorite spot on the couch in the apartment living room.

Still, no one sits next to anyone on the TTC yet, and there’s even distancing spaces in theaters, so my salvation has been Meetup: Walking Adventures with Deb. Several times a week, Deb leads us through the nooks and crannies of Toronto to the glorious greenery of the ravines, paths, and rivers. We’re outdoors and unmasked and walking and talking. Siobhan, Penny, Anna, Phyllis, Janet, Alison, and so many other welcoming folks made such a difference. I see what’s ahead on the calendar, but I won’t be here.
 
On Sunday afternoons, the Danforth Jewish Circle let me be a part of their Jewish community and their art workshop to create a print for a tapestry for the sanctuary. Now I’ll only see photos when it’s finished.

In all my reading and conjecturing about parallel lives and multiverses, I think about all the branches of my lives that take off after I’ve left them. There’s the Anchorage Barbara, the Toronto Barbara, the New York Barbara, the San Francisco Barbara, and even the Costa Rica Barbara. If I’d stayed in one place, I could hold my life close and let it continue. But by starting new lives in several places, I have to let them go.
 
This is the sweet and sad part. I have to let them go.
 
Because there’s another part of me that wants to lie with Tim on our back deck in Anchorage and look out over the yard that’s held barbecues and potlucks, croquet games and badminton games, Sophie’s playhouse and once-healthy spruce trees. To bask in all the history of 37 years in one spot.

My Car/My Covid Self

My car and I are experiencing Covid in parallel. Not “together” because mostly, I don’t go anywhere so I don’t drive anywhere, but we’re still tied up with each other, both liberating and traumatizing each other.

Sophie tells us that the Covid experience is markedly different if (1) you have a backyard and (2) you have a car. I am incredibly grateful to have both. So my car meant I could Get Out and About. I was free! Thank you, car.

 

I’ve already explained here that this is a car with gizmos, that it has “features” that are supposed to enhance my driving experience. That’s what happens when you replace a 1998 car with a 2017 car.

One of the “features” of this car is that it goes dead. When I go away for a month, it is dead when I return. But with Covid, the car was going dead every other time I got in it. We were Tim was constantly jumping it.

When I take my car into the repair shop, I tell them I am a woman who mostly drives alone, so it’s up to them to make sure my car will NEVER break down, never leave me vulnerable in some dark, deserted place. That works. I have only had very reliable cars.

Until mine started going dead. A lot. Mostly, it went dead in the garage, but then it went dead at the grocery store.

Barbara/Car Covid Parallel: Both of us are having trouble leaving the house. No matter how much we may want to be part of the world, we’re retreating. We just don’t go.

Apparently, according to the battery man, I have to drive my car enough for it to recharge the battery. Driving it once a week, maybe to the grocery store five minutes away for pickup is not enough. I have to drive it at least eleven miles.

Barbara/Car Covid Parallel: It seems that neither of us is getting enough exercise.

So I take a Big Excursion to Target, which is only 7.3 miles away, but I stop at the library and keep the car running during curbside pickup, so I think that counts. I happily find birthday cards for my sister … and in the parking lot, my car is dead as a doornail. It is dark, cold, and far from home.

Barbara/Car Covid Parallel: We are both traumatized, paralyzed with anxiety.

I ask the friendly Channel 2 News anchorman who has unluckily parked next to me if he would jump my car. I pull out my handy dandy jumper cable case with the instructions on the outside.

Nothing doing. I phone Tim and stand in the now-vacant space next to my car, waving away all the other people who want that space and who think I am an asshole. I explain and one guy offers to jump it.

 “No, thank you, my husband is on his way.” (I want my husband!)

Tim conquers 7.3 miles of rush-hour and bad weather, arrives, hooks up the cables, and sits with his engine running, giving my car an infusion of energy. I vibrate.

Barbara/Car Covid Parallel: Little by little, both of us calm down and can now direct our nervous energy toward Getting Home. We can start. The clock in the car is now two hours behind. I am not sure what day it is; my car is not sure what time it is.

Once home, Tim says, “Tomorrow we can take your car in.”

Barbara/Car Covid Parallel: Now that we are safe in the garage and safe at home – kissing the ground! – we are not leaving.

Days go by, and I eventually take the car into my trusty Subaru mechanic. J-T tells me that these newer cars have so many security features and special electronics, that they are always draining energy. The little red light that’s always blinking is the sign that the car is monitoring itself. If you don’t drive it enough, it won’t recharge enough to be able to start up.

Barbara/Car Covid Parallel: I am constantly ruminating over every little issue, monitoring my mental health and my awkward social interactions. Now I know that my car is doing the same thing! Are my fluid levels good, what about my tire pressure? Did I embarrass myself on that Zoom call, how can I feel purposeful again?

But J-T has a solution: he installs a little Battery Minder in my car. Kept plugged in, it sends a little trickle of energy to my car while it sleeps. My well-rested car is now happy and eager to start up and go.

I need a Battery Minder.

The Other Inhabitants of Bear Land

I’ve entered another parallel universe. This one was populated by bears.

But that wasn’t even the parallel universe that amazed me the most.

Tim and I are back from five wonderful days in Katmai National Park, where the bears hang out in Brooks Camp. They catch returning salmon, hoping to gorge out and get fat for their coming hibernation, and there are lots and lots of bears.

Katmai is the bears’ domain; humans are only the visitors. If a bear is roaming around – it’s called a Bear Jam – the humans have to get off the path and scurry into the woods so the bears have a clear path. It’s their path. We get to look at them from platforms (if everything is working right) and up close (if the bears get curious). Mostly they don’t care about humans because there’s lots of salmon.

We get to watch three “subadult” bears playing in the river every day, bears trying to catch salmon jumping upstream, bears sitting in the foaming “jacuzzi” at the Falls, bears just sitting in “The Office.” The bears are so busy with their fish-catching that they stop seeming ferocious. You could almost forget that they could tear you apart in seconds. It’s Bear Land, and they’re just calmly going about their business (tearing apart salmon in seconds).

Around these bears are Bear People. Bear people know a lot about bears. They know which bear is dominant and grabs the best spot at the Falls, which bear has a scar around her neck from a wolf snare once removed, which bear has a big hump. Which bear has widely spaced ears, spade-shaped large ears, blond tipped ears, upright ears, triangular shaped ears, large and round ears, short and round ears, tall brown ears, ears perched high on head, round peg-like ears, etc. etc.

It’s this universe of bear people that I found so … startling.

Some bear people are park rangers. Others – the really compelling ones – are just bear fans. They’re volunteers who come to Brooks to help out, perform tasks, and watch bears. They work long hours and spend their days off … watching bears. If they’re not at Brooks, they’re watching bear cams. They know each other through years of commenting on the bear cams; they have created a community of bear people. They talk in numbers: Bear #435, #910, #284, #410, and they know each of them individually!

This is a whole parallel universe of bear people that I never knew existed. Thank you, Naomi, for introducing me!

Parallel universes lurk undercover in unexpected places. My friend Robin discovered the universe of dance competitors. Angelo introduced me to the universe of train travelers. Jim occupies the universe of Winston Churchill buffs.

While I read lots of Sherlock Holmes and derivatives, I don’t solve international quizzes on the Holmes “Canon,” I don’t follow a gazillion blogs, and I’m not even a Baker Street Irregular. Sherlockians wouldn’t call me a Sherlockian. I study Time (physics and literature, time travel and Einstein), but while I may be more than a dabbler, I’m not an expert. I’m only a tourist, a visitor to those universes.

I’m a little jealous of parallel universe people (and not just because they have an escape from this one). They have such passion! They have such motivation! My friend Connie says that’s not all: they have a focus for learning and development of expertise, and they have affiliation. They belong to a group of like-minded folks who are interested in exploring the same thing. Really interested in exploring the same thing. Deeply.

At one time, I guess I was utterly and completely fascinated by waterparks. But even that doesn’t count as a parallel universe because it was just me.

Lots of people can have interests, but it takes a roomful of them to become a parallel universe. Parallel universes are in the eye of the beholder, the outsider who stumbles across them, marvels at their intensity of fascination, and can’t believe there are that many of them.

So which one do you occupy? Which ones have you discovered?

Adventures in Guy-land

It all started with a broken rivet for the strap on my Crocs.

Apparently, Croc used to mail out replacement rivets for free, but not any more. Maybe I’d just have to glue the strap in place. But then I found this nice guy on YouTube.

He said I just had “to go down to my home improvement center and buy a bag of … Chicago bolts.” I asked Tim (the holder of countless little plastic boxes of nuts and bolts and screws) if he had Chicago bolts. He looked it up on Google and said, “Oh, sex bolts.” Well, I guess so. One end does screw into the other end. No, he didn’t have them.

So off I went to Home Depot. Where I confronted the hardware aisle with its zillion little bags and drawers of nuts and bolts and screws (Oh, my!). [Aside: when Eagle Hardware first came to Anchorage, Tim walked in, spotted the hardware zone, and dubbed the place “Doodad Heaven.”] I had no idea where to begin searching this Doodad Heaven.

One guy looked like he knew his nuts and bolts and screws. I asked, and he pointed me to some drawers. When that proved fruitless, he recommended Fire and Fastener. Another guy, down the aisle, called out, “Yeah, Fire and Fastener.” So did a third, a Home Depot employee. I didn’t even understand what they were saying: Did I have to fire something? Did he say First or Near? They were in the hardware aisle; they mumbled.

Finally, they clarified. Fire and Fastener was a store on International Airport Road. I’d never heard of it. They named stores it was near, but I’d never heard of them either. So off I went to … Guy-land!

Guy-land – that stretch of International Airport Road – is full of stores where most women never cross their threshold. (Of course, that’s where The Bush Company is.) I had to stop in at Young’s Gear Driveshaft Specialists (past Motion Industries and Alaska Bearing) to ask where Fire and Fastener was. Entering a Guy-land business is like entering a magical, foreign world.

Last year, I’d needed a replacement washer for my backpack. At a Guy-land little shop, the guy at the counter found one, took off my bent one, struggled to get the new one on, and said, “No charge.” This is what happens in Guy-land. Guy-land is a world of solutions! There are doodads to solve every problem and guys who know their doodads.

John in Fire and Fastener was no different. He pointed me to the exact little plastic bins with Chicago bolts (one for the screw and one for the home, the “male” and “female”): #128 and #134 (in case your Crocs have a broken rivet, too). He got a screwdriver and helped me screw it in. It was a little wobbly.

Randy, behind the counter, said, “Washer, John,” and John ran in the back room to come back with an OSP. It fit the Croc indent perfectly. They were very proud of themselves. Randy said, “Y’know, we call this a sex bolt.” “I know,” I said. “My husband taught me that.”

“How much?” I asked. “No charge,” they said. How does a place like that stay in business? These guys gave me personalized attention for a long time. John even took me on a tour of their Guy-land wonders. There was a whole wall of carabiners and springs and pulleys, spools of wires of all different colors. Multicolored plastic tubes of all sizes.

I was gushing about some of my favorite Guy-land stores – Alaska Rubber is a total treat, especially their remnants – and I wanted to mention the store that saved my backpack, but I couldn’t remember its name. I could describe the layout perfectly. I searched the Yellow Pages, went in and out of stores that might be it, but no luck. Finally, I checked my diary. Last year, on June 1, I got my washer at … Fire and Fastener.

I would worry – really worry – about my memory, but I think it was the magic of Guy-land. When you enter an alternate reality, you don’t come all the way back.

Roads Taken and Not

Do you have regrets? By the time we’ve reached our Third Thirds, are there things you regret?

And what is a regret anyway?

This was today’s rambling café conversation. I was describing a lunch of many years ago. An older woman at that table had said she regretted not putting money in her IRA when she was younger and adding to it every year. All the older people at lunch had repeated that same regret, and today’s café table shook their heads in agreement, too.

But then we got to talking about roads not taken. Or wrong roads taken. Yes, I spent a horrible year at Cornell in graduate school, but I came away with some friends-for-life, an awareness of how I really wanted to spend my life, and some inner resources about making things happen.

Basically, then, I tend to believe that if you like where you are, you have to appreciate the bumps and detours that got you there. We don’t have to like them, but we do have to recognize their role in forging our lives to get where we are now in our Third Thirds. Yes, there were probably easier ways to get here, but they didn’t emerge or they wouldn’t have provided all those Valuable Life Lessons.

Is regret something you only feel if you’re inherently constructed that way, some pessimistic orientation? Why do we all know the expression “mired in regret,” usually preceded by “hopelessly”?

Yet I can imagine big, giant regrets that can color a whole life with a sense of “what if.” I think of them as Before and After moments, how your life can change on a dime and your Before life ends, never to be retrieved again. Teenage recklessness figures big here: a car accident, a stupid prank that goes bad, a burst of mischief with terrible consequences. To think of these is to shudder at the thought, at the narrowness of escape and the sheer luck of it all.

What if the guy who picked me up hitchhiking wasn’t a nice guy after all? What if I hadn’t blown out the candle before I left the house one night? So those are Big Regrets that I don’t have … luckily. Parallel universes that never happened … but could have.

Little regrets? They’re more like lost opportunities, unrealized fantasies. I wish I hadn’t dropped out of the Venceremos Brigade to Cuba when I was accepted in 1977. I wish I hadn’t canceled that boat trip down the Seine in France in 1985. But they’re idle wishes, adventures not taken, and other adventures took their place.

We realized we were all talking about regrets from the distant past, as if that’s where regret originated. We couldn’t do anything about them any more. But what about that bag of potato chips we finish in one sitting? Those things we immediately regret? And then we got off on willpower, on delays of gratification. We could have moved on to beating up on ourselves – with regret – but Colleen said, “We’ve learned we do the best we can.”

Nevertheless, I do regret moments of missed kindnesses; times I could have been nicer, more empathetic, more caring. We all do. Is regret guilt? Remorse?

I’m thinking regret is a signal. It’s a sign saying, “Learn from this. Make amends. Do better next time.” Are we motivated by regret? By regret avoidance?

And then I just happened to come across this in a book I’m reading on another topic: “…research has also shown that the regrets about exercising restraint prove much stronger—and can also last much longer—than regrets about yielding to temptation.” Hmmm, what’s to learn from this?

A line connects two dots, right?

A couple in Anchorage – Meg and Zach – gave an incredible gift to the community. They bought the house across the street from theirs and turned it into Anchorage Community House. There are classes there, an art room, a tool check-out library – it’s a great idea.

My brain needed a rest from political ads, conversations, and coverage; so a couple of weeks ago, I took a class to make a plant stand. Not only would I learn how to make a plant stand, but I’d actually end up with one. It could lift the schefflera off the new carpet and be USEFUL.

Zach had the wood and tools, and my job was to cut the pieces and screw them together. We measured and marked the wood with pencil. Then I used the circular saw to cut along the lines. I learned the word kerf, which is the cut the saw makes.

The thing is, it’s hard to keep the saw exactly on target. Even harder when you have Third Third eyes and you’re not exactly sure – once you have the safety goggles on – where the line is anymore. The cut – the kerf – has its own dimension. So every now and then, Zach would say something like, “You’re missing it” when I guessed I was in the right spot. Zach compared all the post lengths and worried they weren’t exactly even. And I would tell him not to worry, that the plant stand was going to stand on carpet after all.

A couple days later, I read the book A Tenth of a Second about how measurement had to develop if science was going to develop. The author, Jimena Canales, starts with astronomy and how different astronomers got different measurements for when a star was in position in the sky. This caused lots of problems for mapmaking, even for determining the exact length of the meter (which is based on the earth’s circumference). It all comes down – among other things – to reaction time, how long it takes a person to see, process, and note a star’s transit across the sky. It was a huge international mess in the 1800s.

In 1835, an astronomer named Francis Baily showed that even normal, everyday measurements fell victim to the problem. Some people measured from the middle of a line, some from the top edge, some from the bottom. Even if you just have to connect two dots, it matters whether you’re starting from the inside edge of the dot or the outside edge, from the middle or the side.

The dictionary calls it the “personal equation,” and it affects just about everything humans try to measure.

Why am I telling you all this? Because there I was trying to escape all the election coverage: this opinion piece, that editorial; this article from one newspaper, that article from another; NPR vs Fox News; one pollster vs another … a million different viewpoints. And there’s no way Zach and I could have agreed on where a pencil line “began.”

It puts a lot of things in perspective when you realize there’s inherent bias in even using a ruler.

But even with all that, my plant stand still holds my plant up just fine.

A tale of two cities

Every day I’m in New York City, I’m astonished that class warfare hasn’t broken out. This city is filled with places, stores, restaurants, activities – you name it – that I can’t afford. There are plenty of free things – free night at a museum, pay what you can at an event – so I am having a great old time, but the expensive things are WAY OUT OF RANGE.

Sophie, whose New York is a world I’d never find or know existed except she tells me, happened upon a trendy gathering and they took her along to a club. The cost to sit at a table was $2,000, and that was before drinks! I walked into a store and won’t even tell you what the shoes cost.

The thing about New York is that you see EVIDENCE of rich people. Somehow in Alaska, it doesn’t feel so in-my-face as it does here. I move in my own circle back home (which, granted, doesn’t mean I encounter poverty on a daily basis). Sure, there are restaurants I don’t frequent, gear I don’t own, but we all shop at Fred Meyer. Here I’m wandering around, crossing economic boundary lines every day and popping my eyes at the prices. Popping my eyes!

The Village Voice had an article about the gardeners, plumbers, and service people in Long Island’s Hamptons. How they’ve been waiting 40 years for Reagan’s trickle down, how their lives have changed over the years. One income used to support a family; now two are required. They’re fed up and see the people who hire them – and treat them poorly – getting richer and richer.

So they’re supporting Donald Trump. That confuses me. I see the things they do, and Bernie Sanders speaks to me. Like a billionaire is going to revamp the economic system that has lead to this wider and wider divergence of incomes?

But this is what worries me: the Leo Frank exhibit tied his lynching and the resurgence of the KKK to how the South felt after Civil War reconstruction. Everyone ties Hitler to the deprivation of Germany after World War I penalties. When people feel excluded from prosperity – excluded, not just passed by – they get angry. And demagogues can channel that anger better than calm explainers.

The people who are angry are not stupid. The stupid, stupid people are the ones who thought they could get away with this indefinitely, that they could keep impoverishing people while they lived higher and higher on the hog. Did they think the waitress wouldn’t notice that they were throwing down $2,000 to sit at a table? I can see why the Occupy movement began in New York. I’d be camping in a tent on Wall Street, too.

Friday is the 105th anniversary of the Triangle Factory Fire where 146 mostly young women garment workers died. 62 of them jumped to their deaths and splattered on the pavement. The owners had locked certain doors to make sure the workers didn’t take unauthorized breaks, and they made more money from insurance than they were forced to pay in compensation. No one went to jail. Banker bonuses anyone?

On Friday, I will chalk Yetta Goldstein’s name in front of the building she lived in when she died in the fire at age 20. We have to remember the price regular people pay when they’re taken advantage of, treated poorly, and seen as the means to someone else’s prosperity. I’ve met wonderful people in New York who remember this, who organize those regular people to make productive change for health, safety, and wellbeing. Who draw the community together with those goals.

There are two New York Cities, one for the Haves and one for the Have Nots. I’m worried this isn’t going to end well.

The Mystery of the Corn Fritters

There is a sequel to yesterday’s story of my mother’s fricassee. I didn’t even remember it till I did a search on my computer for “fricassee.” It came up with this 2009 email I sent:

So there we were at a Sugar House in Massachusetts, eating pancakes and corn fritters with fresh maple syrup, and Elizabeth said, “These are different from the corn fritters you make.”

I stare at her. “I never made corn fritters.”

“Yes, you did. Aunt Selma taught you how, and the first batch you made were pretty hard, but the next batch was great.” (or something like that)

I say, “I have never made corn fritters in my life.”

I am on the edge of turning 56, and already I’m denying I ever made fricassee!?!

 I am worried sick. Has anyone else ever eaten corn fritters from my efforts?

My other sister, Allison, replied: “I don’t remember your making corn fritters OFTEN, but in fact I have the nuggets with kernels of corn in them rather clear in my memory and I do remember they were made by you. I don’t remember them being from Aunt Selma. I thought they were from a friend of yours (from high school?).

(supposed to be corn fritters)

It gets worse. The next email is from me again:
       “Okay, who set Mom up? She just called to ask for my recipe for corn fritters so she can bring them to Phyllis’ house for Passover (never mind that they have flour in them, I think.) ‘I think’ because I have never made corn fritters so I don’t know what’s in them!”

Allison denies involvement. She’s still one step back: “I’m still trying to delve deeper into my memory and see if it was really YOU who I associate with the fritters. In my memory they look great.”

And finally, the culprit sister surfaces. Elizabeth emails, “OK, I have to admit it, it was I who put Mom up to it. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think she’d remember to do it, I’m impressed!”

If we’ve reached the point where my mother’s memory is impressive, we’re all in trouble. All I can imagine is that I must have taken my sisters out to Sourdough Mining Company on a visit and those are the corn fritters they’re associating with me. I can’t imagine deep-frying in my mother’s house; she’d have had us cleaning the stove for hours. (Do corn fritters require deep-frying?) And what was Aunt Selma doing in our kitchen anyway?

The thing is, when we were packing up the old house when my mother moved, I came across the large souvenir program from Dreamgirls when it opened on Broadway – with all my little notes and travel directions clipped to it. The startling coincidence: I had just seen it in Anchorage for the very first time. I also came across a paper I’d written, something about existentialism and the writings of Sartre and Kafka. I checked the bibliography; lots and lots of Kafka entries. Yes, I’d done my thesis on Sartre, but I have never read any Kafka. Nothing. Not even the one about the cockroach. 

Tim is making cracks about 50 First Dates, but I’m thinking of all the parallel universes that exist. How one branches off from another and in one, I’ve never done something while in another, I have. And every now and then, the universes overlap and things get confusing. Or one universe for my sisters collides with a universe of mine that doesn’t synch. There is just so much complexity in time and space!

And I do remember reading all of George Orwell, John Steinbeck, and Sartre. Maybe Kafka just isn’t that memorable.

Identity Crisis #314

So what's the Third Third anyway? My mother is 90. So at 62, I'm looking at things in thirds. First 30 years, second 30, and now: the Third Third. Looking at my life, I see a timeline of decisions debated and decisions made. They're like the points in my life where a life can branch off and generate a whole new parallel universe. The kind where I married that other person or took that other job or moved to that other country. I have crowded the world with parallel universes, but I like where I am so even the bumps got me here.

My thirds fall into groups, with themes. I call my first third Preparing for Adulthood. My second third, that's Parenting, and that includes both the preparation and the adaptation to no longer needing to be hands-on. (She's launched.) It's also, as my sister added, Professional Life.

So what now? What's the Third Third?

You can see my timeline, but first some history....

Back when I was in college, back when I was agonizing over what major to select, I was consumed with identity issues: "Was I a philosopher?" or "Was I a physicist?" "Was I an artist?" or "Was I a writer?" Life loomed in front of me, and it all hinged on that MAJOR DECISION.

The thing is, I'd thought I'd figured out this future bit. (I was a teenager.) I had decided (excruciatingly) where to go to college, where I would be a student. I had become THIS student in that place. I thought I was finished with deciding who I was, where I was, and how I would become. I had walked through those doors to my future, couldn't it just be lived now?

Yes, they were doors to the future, but also doors that slammed shut on alternative futures. My friend Helen pointed out that this was only Identity Crisis #14 (but who remembers the actual number). They kept cropping up!

In between, there were other decisions, other doors, too. They kept appearing, relentlessly. Some repeated. Some were more dramatic than others, but the philosopher in me won out and all of them were EXAMINED.

All those doors, all those parallel universes, this is my life:

Why is this Third Third such a big deal? 

1.  It's colored by mortality. It's the Last Third. This one leads to decline. No matter how positive I might be, eventually my times in a half-marathon will get longer.
   


2.  This one involves accepting that some options can't be picked any more. I can't be a farmer. Okay, I can, but it would take A LOT to make that happen. (Raising the big question: would I want that enough to make it happen?)
   
   
3.  I'm really, really good at some things now, but I'm also sort of tired of them. Do I follow my expertise or my curiosity?
   
   
4. How far do I go to follow curiosity? How much uprooting do I want to insert in my life? Do I want to move? Do I want to "start over" in something?
   
   
5. What legacy do I leave behind? Do I want to cement that, alter it, or branch out?
   
   
6. I don't have a passion. I'm not so in love with gardening that I deliriously welcome the idea of having the time to garden. I haven't waited my whole life to ... write a cookbook or visit all 50 states. I already crossed the country by visiting 25 waterparks....
   
   
7. I need a theme, an over-arching meaning to this part of my life. I don't want to just add up the days, and I don't want to relax or play or travel without something larger illuminating those days.
   
   
8. I am consumed with de-cluttering, but how much of my shit do I discard? I RECYCLED my journals! More on that, but de-cluttering involves deciding what part of your past you keep.
   
   
9. How do I re-insert creativity into my life? For years now, I haven't been doing creative writing or art, both of which were necessary parts of my life. What gives?
   
   
10. How much money do I need to make? Of course no one knows how much money they'll need, but there's also the bit about salary being life's report card, the measure of our worth. Women do seem to suffer from Bag Lady Fantasies, but this valuation thing still plays out with me.


So how am I doing with this Third Third business?

Maybe not floundering, exactly.

When public radio in Alaska used to announce my commentaries, they identified me as "Barbara Brown, whose daily collisions with life leave her with great stories and a grateful heart." So I'm still colliding, I still have great stories, and maybe I can gain some clarity here (and force a little for #9).