You can go home again.

Yes, it is possible to go home again. It’s just littler.

I remember the first winter break I came home from college. I’d left my dormitory shower room, with its wall of sinks and room of showers and came home to my parents’ house … with its single, tiny, little sink and shower. The counter seemed made for midgets as I had to stoop over to brush my teeth. Were college counters higher because there were no children there? The whole return home experience seemed like a voyage to Lilliput.

In our last visit to New York, my sister Elizabeth and I decided to explore New Jersey. I lived there from age four to eight, and she was born there. We actually drove up to our old address. We had not been back there since 1962. 56 years.

Yet I knew the curve in the street! I knew where my friend Karen used to live! I knew this place!

Except that almost all the houses had sprouted second floors or additions. They were bigger, swollen over their lots. But not ours. Ours was the little ranch house I remembered. From the outside.

The current owner, Jen, let us in.

How could a family of six have lived in that house? Where did we eat? In the itsy-bitsy kitchen?? I do remember we couldn’t open cabinets or the refrigerator when we were all seated at supper, but how did we even walk through the kitchen? How did my mother cook in there? Did we ever have relatives over for Thanksgiving or Passover? There was no way a single other person could have sat at our kitchen table.

How did we ever fit? The dining room was our living room. That’s where the couch, TV, and Dad’s chair was. How did it all fit??? Even Jen couldn’t imagine it. I’m pretty sure I watched TV from the floor.

No wonder our main play area was outside or in the basement.

The full basement was acres and acres of interesting stuff to play with. My father’s workshop, my mother’s laundry area (with her ironing mangle!), the place where old interests died (the fish tank, for example), and my own personal area: under the stairs, with my father’s old electronics (an oscilloscope!). The basement was our domain.

If you asked me, I’d say we had to go down twenty steps to get way, way down to the basement.

At Jen’s house, there were seven steps.

I can still describe the bookshelves with the Golden Book Encyclopedias in the living room, the pink cement patio we used to chalk whole cities on (which is still there, under Jen’s deck), the Book of Knowledge bookcase behind the couch, my mother’s philodendrons climbing to the ceiling and serving as a room divider. I can close my eyes and remember Home.

So I sat on my couch, in my Anchorage living room, and looked around. I looked at the bookshelf full of books and the other full of games. At the pottery from Mexico, the painting from a silent auction, the flea market couch that’s been reupholstered twice. The lamps that fall over, the beanbag chairs and pillows I made years ago, the ivy that climbs up the fireplace wall. The three different colors I picked for the walls.

“Guess what I’m thinking,” I said to Tim.

“That our home is homey,” he said.

How did he know that? That was exactly what I was thinking.

It must have been the smile on my face.

Someone Else's Adventure

In your Third Third, the idea of relocation gets bandied about. Maybe you want to be nearer family, maybe nearer health care facilities, maybe you just want an exciting change. You look for good spots, but maybe you decide you really like the spot you’re in after all.

The danger of all this relocation talk is that someone else may take you up on it. Someone else may decide to relocate. And if that someone else is a good friend, suddenly your good spot at home is changed. It’s missing that good friend.

Jinnie moved to Idaho.

Jinnie and I go back to my Second Third, but that was sort of peripheral. We just cruised by each other’s lives. It wasn’t till my first venture into Third Thirdism (?) – taking a fiber arts class together – that we moved into each other’s lives. The class led to playing art in each other’s houses which led to my introduction to all sorts of new materials and ideas which led to monthly art group meetings which led to movies and double dates and playing games. She introduced me to unbelievable hot chocolate and glow-in-the-dark 3-D miniature golf.

And now she went and moved to Idaho.

Compared to Jinnie, my art is cautious. I think and think about it, grapple with how to get my ideas to take shape. While I may have interesting ideas, without experience I’m weak on execution. Jinnie throws everything she has at the paper. She has jars and bottles and tubes of things that she experiments with, tries, plays with. While she’s on layer #6, I’m still planning my first brush-to-paper. So, of course, she ends up with art while I end up with … plans.

When I learned the word bricolage in New York – “something created from a variety of available things” – we adopted it for the monthly meetings Jinnie organized. We put ideas into a jar, and we draw one out monthly. One month: things made from corks. Another month: things beginning with a poem or quote. This month: paper dolls.

And now she went and moved to Idaho.

Jinnie lived near enough I could bicycle to her house. We’re from different decades, religions, health concerns, and political awareness; but all those things were topics for discussion, not topics for dissension.

When I went to London, Jinnie thought I was brave, but I was just doing my usual quest for new-ness. She’s leaving family, home, friends for the challenge of new opportunities. She is doing a big, brave, leap into New-ness. I returned to discover her house was sold, the date set, and the airplane ticket purchased. Once the packing had overtaken her house, she was “Done!” And yes, I’m jealous of her big, bold, adventure.

The bricolage group is continuing, and Jinnie and I are starting some sort of long-distance simplicity challenge she came up with, so I know she’s not “lost.”

Alaska is a place where people move in and out, but if you’ve lived here a long time, your friends have, too. Our kids grew up here. We talk about the difficulty in relocating, in leaving lifelong friends behind. But Jinnie taught me that you can make a friend three years ago and they could become Good Friends. That the friends of our Third Thirds are special because they are the friends of our new creativity, our new interests.

I wish her only to grow where she’s now planted … but I still wish that didn’t leave a hole in my garden.

How do you say "panic" in Japanese?

I think most of the things I’ve learned in my life have been absorbed gradually. I noticed, became familiar, picked up new information: a nice, steady process of learning. But every now and then, I’ve received a sudden burst of knowledge, a direct infusion to the brain, a BLAST of realization.

I speak two languages (Spanish also) and have, in previous Thirds, spoken two others: German and Hebrew. (I have trouble keeping more than two in my head; the extras just get pushed out.) I’ve lived in a Spanish-speaking country, traveled in countries that spoke other languages. I teach English to refugees and immigrants. I thought I was pretty aware of what goes into language acquisition.

But a couple weeks ago, in a class at the Alaska Literacy Program, Polly demonstrated how she’d begin teaching English to someone who didn’t know a speck of English. She had to start with pointing to herself when she said “I,” pointing to us when she said “you.” We got it. She held objects up, said it was a “bird,” a “dish.” We got that, too. And we got it when she wrote on the board “bird.”

And then Polly pointed to herself and said something in Japanese! She pointed to us and said something else. We had to repeat.

Repeat? I wasn’t even sure what I’d heard. How could I pronounce what I couldn’t even hear right?

And she didn’t stop. She kept saying things in Japanese. My heart rate went up. I think the bird was a “tori,” but there were other sounds around it. Did those mean “This is”? Or is there some suffix that goes with nouns? How could I figure out the grammar when I couldn’t even be sure what I was hearing?

She just kept on. Everything was Japanese.

Then she pulled out some charts:

That was the bird. That sound in front was the T sound for that “tori” sound.

Polly pulled out cups and dishes and horns and her hand and said a lot more Japanese. They jumbled up terribly in my head. If I learned one, I forgot another. So Polly put them all in sentences:

By then, I think I’d describe what I was experiencing as “panic.” But deep down, I also knew it would end. Eventually, Polly would stop talking in Japanese and she’d return to English. My world would return to English and I could breathe easily again.

But Yousef in my class can’t return to Sudan. Muna can’t return to Iraq. They left war-torn countries and had to leave their languages behind. They had to land in a world of English and ADAPT. Street signs, TV, magazines – wherever they look, it’s English. And the remarkable thing is, they’ve learned it.

I am in awe.

Researchers say that immigrants have a greater forward focus than other people, that they’ve opted to make a future for themselves, to tackle the major changes that future requires. They’re motivated. They’re brave.

And what do they want to do? They want to volunteer, to contribute, to do something helpful while they improve their English. They want to make friends who’ll have the patience to let them speak English and get better at it.

It’s been two weeks since my Japanese trial by fire, and I can’t remember a bit of it. I haven’t tried because … because it was uncomfortable. It was a New Thing I was glad to ditch … and I could.

But it was a major blast of awareness, a staggering recognition of how very, very hard it is for our new immigrants. That’s the New Thing I’m glad to re-learn over and over again.

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.”

Shaking and quaking back home

The wonderful thing about travel is all the excitement that gets added to your life, and the wonderful thing about our Third Thirds is that we get to travel more.

So why was our wonderfully exciting trip to New Orleans so totally upstaged by an Alaska special as we landed back home? A special 7.1 shaker of an earthquake to be exact.

We were coming in from Seattle about 1:30 in the morning. I was wrecked, jet-lagged, tired, and the turbulence was rough. I was thinking how living in Alaska means you’re always flying home wrecked, jet-lagged, and tired. I hate turbulence. It’s just such a relief when we land on firm ground and taxi in.

Except then the plane went cockeyed. Bumping and wagging, flopping and bucking. It felt like it was jumping and kicking. I thought the pilot had a heart attack or something. And then he announced it was an earthquake. The airport had lost power so we couldn’t get the jetway hooked up and the door opened. So we sat.

When finally power came back, it was dark in the jetway so the pilot asked people to use their phones to light the way. I pulled out my trusty headlamp (so pleased it had a use other than not keeping Tim up when I read in bed).

At home, the parrot was on the floor. The wooden parrot. He sits atop the bookshelf and is our too-late warning system; when he falls, we’re in the middle of an earthquake. And all the kitchen drawers were open. But since I’m such an earthquake preparedness fanatic, all our shelves, water heater, etc etc are braced so we’re good. (Remember the Great Alaska ShakeOut?) But I’m sure we’ll be finding cracks and little relocations over the next day or so.

This trip to New Orleans was not a relocation reconnaissance trip; it was just a fun vacation. And I’ll tell you all about the fun, the music, the curiosities, the eye-openers. But it’s interesting what feelings the trip and the earthquake have left me with.

We spent time in the Louisiana State Museum’s terrific “Living with Hurricanes” exhibit in the Presbytère, and it convinced me I didn’t want to live with hurricanes. There were all sorts of facts like how Louisiana is losing a football field of protective wetlands every 90 minutes, and how people are realizing now that the flood control structures they put in place decades ago are the source of the problems today. While we were there, the river was 17 feet above normal, and it all seemed so unsustainable. And our river guide told us about having to strip his entire house in order to rebuild the drywall and there was just so much muck and devastation after Katrina.

And then, of course, the East Coast was just getting pounded by blizzards and they were folding up streets and transportation and battening down the hatches for the siege. I thought of our last trip to Colorado: Sophie’s iPhone interrupted our drive with a warning to take cover from a tornado expected in 8 minutes. All I could think was, I don’t want to die in a tornado.

I didn’t even need to hear our New Orleans river guide tell us that during the summer he has to change his shirt seven times in a day because of the humidity or how our B&B hostess rests after a shower so she doesn’t work up a sweat toweling off.

So there I was, reflecting on hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards for which people are unprepared (like lions and tigers and bears) … and then I land in the middle of an earthquake. And I’ll tell you I was … relieved! I was glad to get home to the place where snow isn’t an enemy, where we know just what to do with what Nature throws at us because this is what our Nature throws at us.

Is this just a really odd way to say “home sweet home” after a trip?

Not dark: glow-in-the-dark

I found a New Thing, a really new, New Thing. Sure, it was in the dark, but it was right under our noses, here in Anchorage for five years, and I didn’t even know it was there. What a discovery!

My friend, Jinnie, and her husband, David, invited us to glow-in-the-dark miniature golf. I’ve done neon bowling, but miniature golf was new. I was ready. Six of us were ready. Well, as ready as you can be when you have to weave around industrial buildings to get to the right spot, and you’re sure you’re lost, but then it’s there: Putters Wild. Hidden treasure!

It seemed a little confusing at first: why were there 3-D glasses at the sign-in desk? Oh, it’s indoor, blacklight, 3-D miniature golf! Oh, this is getting interesting. We have to pick out two color balls and decide whether we’ll do the Pacific course first or the Polar 9 holes. We start with Pacific.

Yikes, it’s black – except for the glowing walls, fish scenes, underwater-looking sculpture things. The rims bordering the holes are glowing, seeming like they’re elevated in the air. You’re positive you can roll your ball under them, but it’s all an illusion. It is all so disorienting, you love it.

Picture this: six adults – sort of lost in the dark – bumping into things. Realizing the walls are soft canvas, painted with spectacular 3-D underwater scenes, but that the next time we stumble into them, we might fall through. Putting things down and not knowing where you put them.

And six adults, all of whom have a different understanding of the “rules” of miniature golf: one closest to the hole putts second, one furthest from the hole putts second, putt until your ball goes in, putt in order, keep the same order for each hole, change based on how you did on the last hole. But you’re all in the dark, bumbling into bumpers and incredibly disoriented by the dark and the illumination and the 3-D. And someone has to see in the dark to keep score.

Tim has an orange ball. It looks like it’s floating in the air. Julie can’t figure out how he ever hits it. I feel like someone has put a sack over my head and is steering me from adventure to adventure.

And then we get to Humpback Hoop-Dee-Do, and the ball whirls around and shoots out. I try to take a photo, but I can’t use flash and it’s very dark, and it all glows and so you can’t even imagine how you’ll translate this into painting without blacklight.

At Beluga Bend (but I can’t be sure because I’m keeping notes in the dark), the ball goes in a hole, up an elevator, and then down a glowing path whirling all around before it lands on the green.

And Jinnie says she loves miniature golf so much that just as I’d crossed the country visiting waterparks, she wants to cross the country visiting putt-putts (which I think is a regional thing; what did you call them where you grew up?) And we reach the end of the Front 9 and the joke-telling hole takes our first balls while Tim sticks his head in the Killer Capture. It was that kind of night.

And afterwards, we talk to the new owner, who says, “No, this place has been here for five years.” And you can’t believe it because you’re in your Third Third, ready to relocate from Anchorage because there’s nothing new under the sun here and you always thought of yourself as the kind of person who could sniff out anything that was fun. And look, here was something incredibly fun and you didn’t even know about it!

Something fresh and new – and disorienting and goofy – and suddenly you light up with freshness and newness and having the friends to enjoy it with and you think “what else is out there?”

Old, frightened, and far away

When your 90-year-old mother gets sick and feels afraid to sleep alone at night, none of her four far-flung offspring can sleep either. The last few days have had us telephoning, emailing, researching, investigating, and contacting. Worrying, pacing, talking, and fretting.

But not sleeping.

My sister, Elizabeth, the only one within driving distance, drove down to Long Island. While she tried to sleep in my mother’s living room, my mother repeatedly called out – about every minute or so – “Elizabeth, are you there?” Distraught, Elizabeth checked her time zones and figured it was safe to call me at 1 a.m. It was. I was busy worrying and researching.

My mother knows that something is very wrong with her cognitive abilities and memory. When she’s drifting off to sleep, the problem is worse: she’s not sure when or where she is. Are her parents still alive? Is she home? She gets so frightened, she can’t bear to be alone and has lately taken to wandering the halls, seeking out anyone for human contact.

During the day, she’s alert and active enough to participate in lots of activities. Her assisted living place is friendly, welcoming, and familiar. And there are things going on all the time. But at night, it’s another story.

So what are we to do? If she moved nearer to one of us, she’d lose the familiarity that is the anchor to her comfort right now. She knows where the dining room is, what she gets to do at 10, 11, and the movies at 2. She knows where her bingo chips are stashed and what to look for in her local newspaper. All these things are the bedrock of her functioning, and she doesn’t want to give them up.

But if she’s ill or tired, frightened or upset, we are all hundreds and thousands of miles away. All of us have reached the point where we check Caller I.D. and our hearts lurch if it’s her area code. We exist in a state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. And they seem to be dropping at a faster pace.

Oh, the world offers such promise in exploring wide open spaces, tackling new opportunities in new locations. My mother’s four kids split to the corners of the globe, but now the law of unintended consequences is playing out all over our age group as we deal with far-away, aging parents.

As I vibrate with the anxiety of “what should we do” and have trouble sleeping, Tim says, “That’s why we’re going to move to be nearer our kid.” So the relocation question for us – which had pretty much resolved in favor of the life we like here in Alaska – is now an open question again.

Eventually, I might be an old person. (I must admit, this whole business has me reflecting on just how old I might appreciate getting.) But just like I’m de-cluttering so our daughter won’t have to clear out my accumulated junk, I don’t want her to have these tortured moments of being far away from something that absorbs her emotional energy. So does that mean we move? Or at least get nearer?

Oh, that’ll have to wait. I can fret about decisions for only one old person at a time, and right now, that’s not me.

...and the other's gold

Years ago, my friend Marj moved to Fort Collins. On a visit back to Alaska, she walked into a local art gallery and a woman recognized her and started a conversation. Marj burst into tears because that never happened in Fort Collins. So when the thought of relocation reared its head, I called Marj.

Right away, Marj said something like, “Erase that story from your memory banks.” It must have been early on because now she has lots of friends and loves her new life. “You will find one thing that interests you. Probably by fluke. That one thing will lead to another, and other people, and then you are off and running, and soon you will have to eliminate some things from your life.”

My friend Julia moved to Denver. Julia takes tons of classes and says she always extends an invitation to have coffee. But both Julia and Marj say the sooner the better. Or, as Tim says, no one wants to be your friend when you’re 80 and in ill health.

I remember a woman moving to Anchorage a few years ago. She said it was hard to get incorporated into friendship circles because most people were overextended already. They were busy with kids or jobs or whatevers and didn’t have time to regularly see the friends they already had. Even Sophie, who has tons of friends in San Francisco between both college friends and new work friends and new friends’ friends, said at one point they were chanting “No new friends!” because they were over-extended socially.

Chris thinks that in our Third Thirds, we aren’t so busy with kids or jobs so we’ll have time to put into those new friendships, and that those friendships will grow out of our new interests. But Mimi says even though his parents moved 30 years ago, their close friends at the end of their lives are still their friends from 30 years before, in the old place.

When I went off to college, I was excited about starting fresh, recreating myself. In a new place, I could be a whole new Barbara because no one knew me. (On the plane, back when they served meals, the flight attendant spilled creamed spinach on my white sweater and I had to meet all the new freshmen with a green splotch on my top. The old Barbara was not to be left behind.) Back then, I wanted a whole new future life – no history.

Relocation in the Third Third offers excitement, challenges. Marj said, “I knew my brain would appreciate the challenge of learning how to find places, learning which restaurants would become my favorites, learning what doctor I wanted to use, learning to ask everyone I met who they go to for eye exams, etc., etc.” I agree with her; I find that deliriously exciting. Tons of New Things to explore!

But when Tim and I visited Portland – and it was exciting – we were anonymous. We could go everywhere and never run into anyone we knew. When I say that Anchorage theaters mean you know everyone during intermission, I don’t mean you’re friends with all of them – maybe some – but that many of them are familiar. Our world is populated with familiarity.

I have been in the same book club for about 20 years. I have friends who were there when I met Tim. I have friends I knew when they were single, when they were pregnant, when they were married to someone else. I have reconnected with old friends when life circumstances changed. I have brand new friends and more recent friends, but they’re planted in a well-tended garden. I don’t think I’m an easy friend-maker, but I am deeply rooted in Alaska because of my friends. Thirty years of a slow and steady gathering together.

So the subject of relocation came up, and Ivy said she hates discussions like that. “But I don’t want to be an old person in Alaska,” I said.

“I’ll bring you casseroles,” Ivy answered.

Yup, that’s a big deal.

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?

They shouldn't have had to wait till their Third Thirds

Yesterday, Jay and Gene were married for the fourth or fifth time. But only now – finally, finally! – is it legal in all its details. Their first marriage in Anchorage was commitment-only, not legal. The Portland marriage was nullified by the State of Oregon. In between there were Canadian and South African weddings, but those were either missing some certification or only led to civil unions. (I may be inaccurate on some of these; it’s very confusing.)

So a love that blossomed in their Second Thirds had to wait till their Third Thirds to finally be legal. It’s a terrible shame … and yet finally, a fabulous victory.

I can’t remember exactly how we met. Probably theater. Not only did Gene offer me my favorite role of my acting career (Janice in Italian American Reconciliation by John Patrick Shanley) – the role responsible for the present color of my hair) but together we staffed Out North. In fact, if Out North were their only legacy, it would have been enough.

Right off the bat, I must have met Jay, too. As one woman put it, you learn very quickly they’re a package deal.

Jay and Gene were married in a Quaker wedding, which was a New Thing for me to experience. As weddings go, it’s between eloping and hiring the hall, but a lot more meaningful. It’s silent. Everyone thinks about marriage, about Jay and Gene, about commitment, about things. And when they feel moved to share, they speak up. Then everyone silently thinks about what was said. Until the next person feels moved to speak.

Tim and I eloped. I’m uncomfortable with being the center of attention (unless I’m on stage) and so I’m not very good about celebrating life passages. Someone once told me that attitude doesn’t give the community a chance to celebrate with you, and I guess I never understood that until Gene and Jay’s wedding. We all wanted to be there. We wanted to witness this finally-have-the-opportunity event.

This is what was right and fitting about this whole milestone: Jay and Gene were the first step in the quest for same sex marriage in Alaska. They were the actual pioneers, the ones who filed the first lawsuit after their marriage license was rejected. When the battle became too wearisome over the years and years and years, they moved to England.

Only at the wedding, when Taylor spoke, did I realize the hurt that went into leaving. Somehow I’d always thought of it as another political statement. Somehow I’d missed the emotional toll. But Taylor reminded us that Jay was raised here, that they were embedded in the fabric of this community. Only now, when I’ve looked at relocation, at how wrenching it would be to leave where you’ve built a home, do I understand how hurtful the process of feeling you have to leave could be.

It was a right too long delayed, this marriage of their Third Thirds. Who knows what else they could have done if they hadn’t had to expend energy on this hard-fought, well-won road to legal marriage? But Gene and Jay crossed one off the “to do” list. That’s a capstone for anyone’s Third Third.

A Love Affair Reawakened

I’m back! Tim and I took a rescheduled trip to Portland, highest on the potential-relocation-over-the-next-years-if-we-relocate locations. It’s high up there for a number of reasons, but this trip was a recon mission to see if it would survive inspection. With Mimi’s generous offer of a place to stay, we got to see it close-up.

Not a fair test: It only rained once when we were there and never soared above 80°. I’ve been really worried about this summer’s 90-100° days. They’ll have to refrigerate me. And I’m not too comfortable with grayness absent the bright reflection from snow.

I will have a lot more to say about Portland in the next few days, but

What I liked a lot:

• all the almost-self-contained little neighborhoods with their own distinct characters


• Art in the Pearl – an outdoor festival (crowded, too!) and the programs and speakers and interesting things I kept finding on a daily basis – New Things!


• the front porches on most of the houses – I could imagine sitting on one and saying hello to my neighbors or just reading.

 

But on all those porches, we only saw two people actually occupying them. It reminded me of a Bay Area essay I read once: a woman bought Adirondack chairs because she had visions of having lemonade, sitting the glass on the wide arms, relaxing and enjoying life. She got rid of them years later, having never sat in them. A story that just stuck in my brain.

Now, what I loved about Portland: the MAX and buses and streetcars and 1-day Passes and Red Lines and Blue Lines and the #19 bus and the #12 and the #83 and the Washington Park Shuttle.

As we got in at 1:30 a.m., I said to Tim, “Thank you for a terrific time,” and he said, “You’re just happy because you got to ride buses.” Yes, yes, yes! Lots and lots of buses and MAXes.

I’ve liked soccer in my time, but it faded. I’ve liked gardening, but that faded. I even liked cheesecake, but that faded, too. But it is so thrilling, so affirming to see that my love affair with public transit is still thriving, that it still brings me tremendous joy. Here I am, in my Third Third, and a great love endures.

When I first moved to San Francisco and got my first monthly Fast Pass (unlimited rides!), I felt like I was given the key to the city. I would ride buses from one end to the other on a Saturday just to see where they went. I marveled how at 7:30 a.m. all the people were Here and then, by 8:30 a.m., they were There. Ultimately, I was a founding member of a citizens’ group to support public transit and then eventually, I went to work in the transit field. That’s what brought me to Anchorage, too.

Since then, I’ve done a bunch of things, but whenever I travel, I ride transit. When I realized Portland had a 1-day Pass, I was delirious: the key to the city again! I don’t think Transit Joy is explicable: is it the view from the window, the figuring out the schedule and the map, the order in the universe that’s affirmed when my transfer is right there when I get off my first bus? I try to figure out the logic of why a bus is routed here and not there: what’s it connecting? what’s it missing? I watch the bicycles being loaded on and off and wonder what happens when a third bicyclist wants on and there’s no room?

In San Francisco, people used to try and schedule meetings on top of meetings, and I would say, “No, I can’t get there at 5:30 if I’m not finished till 5:15 here.” And people would say, “It’s only 10 minutes away,” but they’re traveling by car and they’re forgetting the time it takes to get in the car, park the car, walk from the car. So the bus schedule reinforced the pace of life I wanted to live. (And yes, I know all the things buses can’t do well: taking kids to child care and school, schlepping stuff, doing ten errands in one afternoon.)

But bus love – it’s not really a thing with reasons.

Into the Light

If you guessed #3 yesterday, you win. It is easy to get depressed when you don’t know what you’re doing with your life.

So after moping a lot, finding a ton of faults in Tim, noticing every time I wasn’t included in a social event, and sagging deeper and deeper, I decided I was clinically depressed. I went to a therapist, Linda.

She had me artistically illustrate what gave me pleasure.

Drawing this gave me no pleasure. Only DVDs gave me pleasure. Lots of DVDs. A constant supply of DVDs from the library.

Let me tell you about Golden Moments. Golden Moments are when the universe lets you know that you are in the right place at the right time and all is good with you and the world. I can still close my eyes and picture the time I looked out my doorway and my friends were playing pick-up football on the green and one shouted, “Hey, B-squared, come out and play!” The sun was shining. All was good with the world.

Golden Moments happen when I’m in my living room, and my eyes survey the whole scene of what makes our home, and all is right with the world.

Intellectually, I could say, “There is always a period of restlessness and turmoil until it reaches critical mass and a creative period surfaces. Just wait for it.” Instead, I huddled with that restlessness and turmoil in my living room and couldn’t move with the paralysis of my unknown future. No Golden Moments there.

And Linda used that word, that elusive but oh-so-enthralling word:

Yes, that’s right! That’s it! That’s what I want. How could I bring joy back into my life? Not with me sitting here whining.

That’s when Linda told me about “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” (See this blog post.) In college, friends would call that a P.G.I.O – Penetrating Glimpse into the Obvious – but I took it to heart. I also visited my sister and we took a road trip to Burlington, Vermont. Burlington appears on every list of “good places to retire” so if you’re thinking relocation might solve your problems, it was a reconnaissance trip, too.

Burlington failed, but the trip succeeded. By crossing relocation-to-Burlington off my list, I had taken action. (Yes, it worked that way.)

Then I started this blog, happily sitting in my nice new room. Writing but using my hands to paint. And one day I sat in the living room, surveyed the scene, and felt comfort wash over me. And I thought maybe this is my Third Third. Maybe this is not a detour on where I’m supposed to be; maybe it is where I’m supposed to be, detour or not.

I have spent a lifetime whirling through the turbulence of my emotions, the bedlam of choices to be made, the ups and downs of events and tides. Arrhythmia was the rhythm of my life. I’ve collided with life.

This new thing, is this the wisdom of the Third Third?

Gasp.