Profiles in Third Thirds: Mia

Mia’s house is on the market. She’s already bought a condo in Portland so forty years in Anchorage are about to come to an end. In our conversations, she uses the word “wrenching” a lot. But once we’ve moved past moving sales and real estate, finances and de-cluttering, archives and shipping – the to-do lists of moving – the words she uses become “novelty” and “footloose” and “unfettered.”

The word I use to describe Mia’s moving is “bereft,” as in how I feel. Mia goes back almost to the beginning of my arrival in Anchorage. No matter what direction my life took, somehow we always intersected. I can always count on her for thoughtful consideration, new ways for thoughts to turn, and the remarkable ability to follow ideas through to their twists and turns and implications. I’ve always hoped that maybe sharing the same birthday gave me a leg-up in aspiring to her wisdom. (sigh)

Mia was visiting friends in Portland, heard there was an opening in their building, and bought the condo right then and there. As she put it, “I’ve spent more time buying a pair of pants.” But really, she’d been talking about it for years and her son had moved there. But she still just thought of it as a “vacation home,” like a cabin. Home was still Anchorage.

Until Anchorage kitchen renovation and then the leak and then the renovation re-do. It’s amazing how many relocation decisions hinge on a major house headache. So Mia and Pamela have spent the summer de-cluttering, selling, packing, coming to terms with how much they’ll leave behind. And how much they’ll discover anew.

Mia can’t walk into a community event or gathering without running into her own history: friends from way back when, friends from past jobs, friends from past community efforts. She was one of the founders of Childcare Connection – her contributions to Anchorage are still part of the fabric of our community. Mia’s thread is woven throughout – Understanding Neighbors (a conversations dialog project), Anchorage Film Festival, a whole series of public initiatives to gain and keep protections for LGBT Alaskans. Severing these threads are … wrenching.

But practical matters intercede: “What to do with all that embroidery thread? I might have time to do embroidery again; it comes with us. What to do about the yarn? I might take up knitting again; it comes with us.”

“The hip waders, the XtraTufs, the tent? No, I’m looking for new adventures.”

And so all these decisions are really the practical side of the big question, the one Mia calls “How to be in the world?” (Oh, do you see why I’ll miss her!) Will she volunteer to be an usher so she can see performances and make new friends? Will she become a volunteer docent at the Japanese Garden?

Mia practices, teaches, coaches mediation. She’s brought her skills to warring couples, bickering organizations, struggling community efforts. “How can I use my skills in a different way? Which organizations are the ones to connect with? I’ll have to learn how things work, who’s doing what. It’ll be fun to figure this out,” she says, and now it’s clear we’ve moved past wrenching.

“I have some unrealized ideas to work on. I think we need to face more conflict in our everyday lives. We need to get comfortable with it, learn how to handle it well and productively, and we can’t do that if we keep shying away from it. Broach that subject, figure out how to disagree. I haven’t found an outlet yet for that kind of idea,” Mia says, but I can see her wheels turning.

She says all these moving sales and giving away, all this letting go, has opened up a desire in her to be footloose and less fettered. She doesn’t know what’s next, and suddenly I am jealous of how wide open she is, right now, at this moment. She’s launching into her Third Third.

“Maybe,” she says, “I’ll have a bigger life than I’ve imagined.”

Profiles in Third Thirds: Sharon

Let me tell you about Sharon. Sharon is my hero (and role model). For all the time I’ve known her, she has put her energy into improving the world. She just reminded me that we first met when she was teaching workshops on training nonprofit boards and I was in one of her classes. But after that, Sharon went on to start the YWCA in Anchorage. She took it from a tiny, little one-person operation to a major force that owns its own building, positively impacts thousands of women’s lives, and is thoroughly sustainable even when Sharon left after many years.

During all this, she served on the School Board for 7½ years and, not to go unmentioned, was a BizBee judge for TEN YEARS. (We both love spelling and grammar.)

So now Sharon is 75 and retired. Her Third Third? Pursuing her domestic hobbies: mostly wool appliqué and cooking. She has a sewing room dense with projects and hundreds of cookbooks (a thing which totally mystifies me – I can’t even imagine how one would begin to peruse that many cookbooks. Sharon says looking through a cookbook at the end of a day is her reward for getting some of her to-do list done.) Sharon even batches all her out-of-house appointments and errands so she can stay home most days with her projects.

As Sharon puts it, “I gave up trying to save the world and being personally responsible for ‘empowering women and girls and eliminating racism’ and am content to play a very small part.” But she still registers new voters at citizenship ceremonies and donates her sewing work for nonprofit auctions. Friends receive her gifts, and I love her rhubarb chutney on salmon.

During her professional life, I tried to learn how Sharon balanced it all. Now, in our Third Thirds, I’m trying to learn about contentment from her. She says it took her seven years to “come down” after retiring and give herself permission to enjoy it. She tells me wise things like:

“What is the rush? Have you taken some days to just do nothing since being employed? Taking a day with no goal in mind usually ends up being a day where you end up doing something that you like to do….”

“I’m learning to accept that there are only so many hours in a day and what doesn’t get done today, bar some catastrophe, will get done tomorrow.”

“We realize that we gave it a shot but we can’t save the world so it’s now OK to focus on what makes us happy….”

This is what I’m trying to learn from Sharon even though I still hear a nervous calendar clock ticking away in me: I still don’t know what my next Big Thing will be. What passion will drive me? Do I even know what makes me happy? And besides, is that too selfish to pursue? What makes for contentment?

But Sharon knows – and now has the time for – her passion. Her passion is sewing. She calls it her dessert. In the fall, she’s teaching her first class on wool appliqué at a local quilt shop, but she’s always experimenting with new techniques and tools. She couldn’t show me any of her work – she gives it all away – but we went through photos together.

Sharon made this purse out of ties for her husband’s daughter. She said, “It’s made from his old ties (since he doesn’t wear ties anymore). She loved it and I cried when she told me that she could smell his closet on them when she opened the present.”

Her sewing connects Sharon to the women who came before: “My grandmother had her own little sewing shop and my mother at one time did sewing to bring in extra money.” She’s made pincushions that fit in vintage teacups, folk art designs, and wall hangings. She’s made table runners, placemats, and many, many pillows. She’s even made a crown for a princess. They’re all given away as gifts.

Yes, Sharon finds that her time often just dribbles away with projects getting deferred by the “shoulds,” by errands and appointments and watering the garden. And now, her time is getting squeezed because two big tasks have been added to her to-do lists: cleaning up her sewing room jumble of projects and purging her cookbook collection. It’s the de-cluttering albatross. As she puts it, “I don’t want to leave a mess.”

Sharon tackled the big jobs in her Second Third and is now devoting her Third Third to more personal pleasures. Is it so different? Sharon thinks she’s run out of steam, but she’s still giving of herself. Maybe before she used her talents to empower, to fight racism, to save the world. Now she’s using them to add affection and kindness to those around her. The world is still a better place for having her in it.

Profiles in Third Thirds: Allan

When the last son started college, Allan retired, hopped on a bike, and turned his fantasy into reality. That was 14 months ago. Since then, he’s biked 9,817 miles through the United States and Europe, returning home every three months or so for visits. After the winter, he’ll be back at it (when there’s more light and less cold rain). But for now, he had a chance to reflect on the whole experience, what it’s meant, what it does for him.

Allan’s living the life of a nomad. He bikes 40 miles per day on average and spends 98% of his time alone, carrying 80 pounds of gear (with tools, clothing, extra food). He isn’t a “go where the wind blows” kind of traveler; he does tons of planning. He knows where he’s going to make decisions – to go here or go there – and when he expects to stop each day. He has no particular destinations, looking instead for what he calls the “in between” experiences: going through back alleyways, trying to pick the best strudel each morning in Germany, guessing which sausage will taste best.

Why?

Yes, it’s being outdoors. Yes, there’s the realization of how very many nice people there are in the world (a real plus after years in code enforcement). Yes, there are moments of pure exultation, of flowing well with the universe, of immense gratitude for all the people who’ve helped along the way. Allan says sometimes he emerges from dreamland, miles down the road, having been pleasantly “off” somewhere. No, he doesn’t really aim for museums; he suffers “museum fatigue” after having worked at one for many years and secondly, that requires stopping for two days so he can make sure his bike is secure. And yes, he does make wrong turns, ends up in terrible mud, has to push his bike.

After many months doing this, Allan notices how it becomes his life. His life home, in Alaska, becomes “that other life.” His wife and son are keeping the home fires burning, with the oldest son now able to handle home maintenance and enabling Allan’s fantasy to come true. As Allan puts it, he was and remains a dutiful son, a dutiful husband, and a dutiful father. Now he has no responsibilities “up until the next phone call.”

Does anyone want to join him on this adventure? No, Allan said, his wife turned down the invitation and his sons are busy with their lives. Besides, right now, it’s a solo, self-supported trip; his one vote makes all decisions unanimous. If he vetoes one of his decisions, there’s no over-ride. And, Allan says, you’re on your own for so long that the whole experience “induces thoughtfulness.”

I can imagine a Third Third life that’s a break from responsibility, from the expectations of other people, from the likelihood that tomorrow will match today. Most of the Third Thirds I know are extensions of desires – more travels, more volunteering, more creativity – but they remain within the confines of their “regular” life. Allan’s is a fantasy realized. To do it, he had to leave his regular life. He – and his family – had to take a big leap and adapt. I think of my fantasy – a year in London, a year in New York City – and I wonder what (other than money) is stopping me. Did Allan just really, really want his more?

Allan had taken a previous long bike journey when he was younger. Now, he says, he’s not 25. He has “weary leg days” – days off for when he just loses his oomph. He tries not to go past 80% of his personal limit. If he does 100%, the next day he’s only at 60%. Recovery takes longer at age 60. Besides, Allan says, “There is always another day,” he can get there tomorrow, and “being tired all the time isn’t fun.”

He’s a stickler for safety, doesn’t ride in the dark. The first time he had to ride on a divided superhighway was scary, but now he realizes riding on the shoulder with cars 12 feet away from him is actually safer than having them right up next to him on a narrow country road. But what about when things go bad, those days of mud or freezing rain or worse? “You always get through it,” Allan says. “There’s nothing I couldn’t do again.” Allan was a professional firefighter: riding a bike in civilization isn’t the hardest thing he’s had to do in his life. As he puts it, it’s not even wilderness.


So where’s he gone actually? He started in Chicago, reached the Mississippi River and headed south. He crossed along the southern border of the U.S. to California and up to San Francisco. After family visits, he again took off from St. Louis, this time east to the Atlantic Ocean via the Erie Canal Trail and Massachusetts. After a summer bicycling in Alaska, Allan flew to Europe, where he’s bicycled along the Rhine and Danube Rivers, stopping in Serbia for this winter’s return to the U.S. Total miles since retirement: 9,817.

Allan’s story doesn’t just push the Third Third envelope; it bashes the concept of an envelope, period. So now I’m sitting here thinking: What if? How far? How big the dream?

Profiles in Third Thirds: Cindy

I ran into Cindy at our college reunion while I was harassing everyone with my question, “What are you doing in your Third Third?” Cindy handed me her business card – for her photography. For more than 30 years, she’d been a lawyer.

Now she’s readying things for her first solo exhibition at the UCLA Fowler Museum. One of her photographs was also just selected for the Metro card when the Expo line opens in 2016 in Santa Monica! (My transit-lover side thrills at this!) You can see her incredible photos at www.cindybendat.com.

So I thought, great, I’ll have Cindy tell her story of switching from a legal career to photography. But it’s not like that at all. For one thing, it’s not like Cindy discovered photography in her Third Third. It’s not a New Thing at all.

“One of my most interesting photographs is of Mick Jagger – taken with my trusty Instamatic when I was 12 years old!” *

Cindy took photography classes in high school and college and later joined a local group of photographers, but while she was working as a lawyer, she did most of her photography when she traveled. (Her friends got to see the slide shows.) Digital photography meant learning a whole new, more technical world, so she’s still taking classes.

As Cindy puts it, she and I were “cause people” in college and in our jobs. So she’s still a “cause person” as a photographer. One section of her exhibition is called “Legalize L.A.” It’s “documentary photographs of immigrant rights/amnesty demonstrations in downtown L.A. with what will be a clear pro-legalization message in an election year.”

If she were just a lawyer and then just a photographer, this might be a story about switching careers. But it’s not. When Cindy tells you what else she’s been doing with her life, it’s almost overwhelming. A Santa Monica resident, she served on the Santa Monica Pier Board, and she worked with others to save the palm trees in her neighborhood and to save an anti-war political art sculpture from destruction. Now she’s hoping to shut down the hazardous Santa Monica Airport and convert that public land into a beautiful park.

Being involved in so many other causes not only made her life interesting, it left her standing on many legs. Thinking about it this way, Cindy readied herself for ultimately leaving her job by having so many other things going. One leg could be removed, and the table would still stand.

Despite that, there are still some things that go when the steady job ends. I, too, have had a lot of “gigs” going, but steadiness – and all the things that go with it – disappears when the one bigger job ends. For some, it’s the paycheck or health insurance, sometimes the access to a professional world. Cindy misses the staff camaraderie and her clients.

“I thought that my longstanding interests would sustain me, and to some extent that has been true, but there are times projects have ended, and I’ve needed to figure out what is next in order to find meaning in how I spend my time.”

As she puts it – talking about the Big Three – “While I don’t always have Structure, I do have Purpose and Community.”

Like the rest of us, she also has aging parents, house repair stuff, and errands. But she also loves to travel, and with many years of photographing cultures and festivals around the world, her destinations have become “more and more obscure.” But as she says,

“It is also possible to travel and experience vibrant cultures while at home in L.A. because of the extraordinary diversity of the people who live here. It’s just a matter of choosing to explore.”

“It’s just a matter of choosing to explore.” Yup.

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* Cindy was on a boat to Copenhagen when she spotted Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and got their autographs. Her brother yelled “Mick,” he turned, and she snapped the photo. She was that close! Trust me, that photo would make any Third Third woman sigh….

Profiles in Third Thirds: Sherry

Sherry and I have been friends since high school. Last summer, she and her husband quit, retired, sold their house, and moved to their cabin in the Yosemite area. When Sherry read my blog, she sent me a note with phrases like this:

“I learned that I love and need a schedule of activities to help me organize my days.”

“I learned that I need to be around other women and I need to exercise!”

“I also need to be around children and help in a classroom!”

Uh, oh, I can read between the lines: all that learning meant Sherry had figured out life wasn’t so good without those things. Sure enough, she said they’d never really planned any of this to happen, but when the ball started rolling, it went unexpectedly fast, and she found herself without “a job, a schedule of daily events, or close friends to hang out with…. After retiring and moving, there was an abrupt halt after a life of movement. I did visit … friends and we also did some traveling, but when we were home all day, I was lonely. I didn't know exactly what I needed or wanted.”

Sherry had been a much in-demand tutor and had a very full schedule. Now she was asking, “What should I be doing? What is my purpose?”

Oh, she and her husband had spent the last year “getting our lives in order: our cabin, our finances, our cars, our travel, our health insurance, our digital & paper files, our photos, our old clothes, our furniture, our recreation, ad nauseum!”

So cleaning out the detritus of our lives doesn’t count as purpose…. But this is a very happy story because Sherry discovered Silver Sneakers!

Silver Sneakers is a gym class “with a boisterously funny and warmly welcoming group of women our age. Talking to the women in the silver sneakers class taught me a lot about the area, like shopping, hiking, swimming at the high school, local events, and that, in turn made my life richer.”

She’s now working with a personal trainer and filed an application to volunteer in a kindergarten class. “We bought kayaks and go out to explore our lake in the early morning before the boats are allowed to tow skiers, between 7 and 8 am. At the top of one of the tallest trees is a huge eagle’s nest and sometimes we get to see the mother and baby eagles up there.”

What a happy Third Third story! Is there a Silver Sneakers in your life?

Profiles in Third Thirds: Rick

Rick was an IT guy. Upon retirement, he became a sailor. No, a Sailor with a capital S. Rick took three different sailing classes. He bought a boat and a slip in the Seward marina.

Rick has a big list of things to do to fix up the boat. He has made selected panels on his boat gorgeous by varnishing the teak. To do this, he has to apply twelve thin coats of varnish. He only does this on small sections that he can bring home and work on in his garage in the winter.

Rick wants to install some shelves and take out others the former owner had installed. Turns out, there are two versions of the glue that attaches them to the walls: 5200 is permanent, you need a crowbar to remove it. That’s what he’s removing. But he’s using 4200 which is strong but not a killer.

He’s created repositionable curtains for the windows. He coils up his lines just so. He got a terrific deal on a $500 bumper which he is incredibly proud of, and he is involved with the local yacht club.

Are you getting the drift here? Rick is passionate about this boat and sailing. He has taken a new direction in his Third Third. He’s not ho-hum about it at all. I am so jealous of his finding this Thing. He is doing the Third Third so right!

We went out on his boat. The first day was sunny and gorgeous, and it was just Rick and me, and he said, “Hey, let’s take her out.” We motored slowly out of the harbor. This is how Rick looks when he is at the wheel. See the confidence, the smile, the beaming happiness. He is in the place he has picked in all the universe.

Then Rick said, “Take the wheel” because he had to mess around with the sails. No, Rick’s boat does not have this many sails. That is how many sails it felt like the boat had because I was at the wheel and the wind was blowing and sails were flapping and the boat was tipping.

I learned how to watch whether the sails were luffing and steer so the wind came in the right direction, how to watch my speed. But this is how I looked when I was at the wheel and too many things were happening at once. “Rick,” I said, “I am millimeters from hysteria.”

Once I went on a roller coaster (by mistake). At the end of the ride, the attendant had to pry open my hand on the iron bar to get the ticket out. That’s how my hands felt on the steering wheel of Rick’s boat.

Ultimately, we came back in, and the wind was behind us, and things got calm, and I fell asleep on the deck in the harbor and this is a pretty cool way to go into your Third Third if sailing is your thing. And this was a New Thing for me so I felt brave and … enriched.

The next day, Tim and Patti, Rick’s wife, arrived, and we went out again for a longer trip. Now we could spread the labor around so it was a lot more relaxing. Patti or Rick was at the wheel or they were both flailing and flaking with the sails or tying things down or readjusting things. Periodically, Rick would beam and happily say, “Patti and I are a real team” (and they are). A few times, Patti would say, “This really isn’t one of my favorite things.”

Uh, oh. What if your Third Third requires a buddy but your buddy isn’t really into your Third Third? What if that buddy is essential but that buddy doesn’t want that life? What if your buddy wants to volunteer in Africa and you want to take cooking classes in Paris? What if buddies arrive at their Third Thirds at different times? What if you don’t have a buddy at all?

What if your sailboat requires a crew?