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.

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.”

Unglued and unstuck

I think my definition of “bold and new and adventurous” has gotten a little tame over the years, but my next New Thing is still giving me the shake-up I need. I’ve always wanted to experience a year in New York City or London – going to theater, exploring the streets and sounds, being “in it.” Since it’s so expensive, the plan got shelved unless I found a job there (which I tried). Thinking about it now, I realize when a fantasy lingers but remains unrealized, some low-level disgruntlement can move in. You can ditch the fantasy or get a new one, but if you still dream of it, you can start feeling … deprived (if you are kind of immature and glass-half-empty).

Eventually, a new idea occurred to me: “What about doing it for three months?” This was a pretty revolutionary idea (if you’re pretty black-or-white-no-grays as far as fantasies go). I checked my calendar, but it had commitments sprinkled into the future. I looked again and – amazingly – I found four weeks free. I got online, checked out VRBO, and I have now rented an apartment in Manhattan for a month. In a couple of weeks.

I have to get a laptop. Yikes, I even have to get a cell phone! I have to make plans and plane reservations, tell my mother. I have to sign a contract, pick up keys, set up Wi-Fi in a new place. I have lived – with Tim – in the same house for 25 years; stuff that I once did annually suddenly seems intimidating. Where will I get mail? Will I need to get mail? What if there are bed bugs? I need to renew my driver’s license before I go!

I imagine walking the streets of New York all day, finding little nooks and crannies that intrigue me. Yes, I was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, but I can add up all my previous days in New York City on two hands; now I’ll triple that … and I won’t have to head home on the Long Island Rail Road. I get to visit my mother without having to sleep on her couch.

I have friends who have taken off to live in Poland or Malawi or the Peace Corps. I have been the person who takes off to live in Costa Rica. I have loaded my car and moved every year. I have spoken other languages and exchanged currencies. So what is all this ungluing that’s happening over visiting New York for a month? Isn’t this just another vacation? Have I become too set in my ways?

I think the ungluing is about the preparation for visiting New York. I am still congratulating myself over negotiating the VRBO (Vacation Rental by Owner). I’m sure they’re laughing in Manhattan over the security precautions that Alaska woman took, making sure she was renting a place that (1) really existed and (2) was really available for rent. (I’ve read stories.) My friend Mimi mentioned that she uses VRBO all the time. Who knows what will become possible after this first-timer hurdle?

I once noticed that when I went on vacation, I drove myself crazy doing nutty stuff like repotting all my house plants before I left. It goes beyond straightening up so it’s all clean for my return; it’s more like stopping time in a moment of supreme orderliness. For all the moments I am gone, order reins in my universe! I conquer entropy!

So, of course, we’re using this time for Tim to rip up the old carpet in my office and studio. That means I have to completely empty the room before I go, disconnect all the electronics, and deal with the clutter-that-can’t-be-tamed. Which means I will return to the utter chaos of an empty room and everything squished into the laundry room in boxes.

I was feeling unglued before we even came up with this idea.

I told Sophie about the apartment, and she said she’d visit and stay with me for two weeks.

Gulp.

Suddenly the fantasy was clearer: to be in New York City without adjusting my plans or bearing responsibility for someone else. It’s not just a regular vacation: it’s a Third Third gift of un-stuck freedom. Freedom means you have to get unglued from the familiar, even from the roles that give you great satisfaction. It might be unsettling, but mostly, I think I will rise to the occasion. I want to feel myself rise to the occasion. I want to see who I am on my own.

So I actually told my daughter, “Five days max.”

...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.

My house is in its Third Third, too

The carpet was the first to go. I’d meticulously cleaned every stain that appeared, every food item or glass of wine that found its way to the floor. Sophie’s weekly job was vacuuming, and she did it till she left for college, gleefully saying goodbye to the vacuum cleaner and spouting that “other mothers” had let chores slide over the years, why hadn’t I??

So the carpet was well-maintained and looked lovely…

                ...until it didn’t.

The first sign were little frays at intersections. Gradually, ripply waves started moving across its surface. It no longer fluffed up the way it used to after shampooing and vacuuming. Eventually the intersections became actual gaps.

The carpet is in its Third Third, too. No, it’s worse than that: the carpet is dying.

I decided the dining room carpet was going to reincarnate as wood laminate floor, like the kitchen. In fact, where carpet wears the worst, we’d switch to wood. Do the hallways and stairs, too. Look how great the kitchen is. Do it just like that!

Except that Pergo discontinued the color of the kitchen floor. If it’s all going to match, the kitchen has to be re-done, too.

This is what happens with remodeling. This is why I can only do remodeling every ten years or so, when the memory of the previous remodel has receded. Remodeling is like setting up dominoes: one job requires another which leads to a third. Soon your house is a demolition site.

First the tile guy did the entry way. I was trapped in the house till the grout set. Only that night did I realize, “Oh, we have a back door.” That’s what happens to your brain on remodel.

Last night, Tim ripped up a perfectly beautiful kitchen floor. I loved that kitchen floor. My hairdresser had installed it in her new salon and we got the specs and bought exactly the same stuff. It was indestructible, easy to care for, always looked great. Now it’s shards and splinters and I’m bereft.

The dining room bookshelves had to come out, too. Now all the books are piled in the living room. I’m thinking optimistically about how it will spur me on to further weeding and culling, taking books to the library as donations, putting the rest on the shelves all dusted and freshly arranged. I am trying to look on the bright side of piles and piles of books laid out all over the living room floor … but then the floor guys call to delay till next week. My optimism is fading.

After the wood floors, we’ll be re-carpeting the bedrooms and living room. Everything in them will have to be moved out … and moved back in. It’s all so daunting. And then it hits me: I had just switched rooms with Sophie’s old bedroom a few months ago. I’m going to have to move those dozens of tiny tea sets again!

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?

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.

A Room of My Own

For all the time we’ve lived in this house – 25+ years – my office has been a small room downstairs, off the laundry room. That’s where my drafting table, desk, and table sat. There’s a big window onto the back yard.

That’s where I wrote my newspaper columns, filed my papers, and scheduled radio recordings. That’s where I did calligraphy, kept my bookshelves, and stored my office and art supplies.

And every time I went down to it, I felt like I was walking down, down, down into a dungeon. Tim would turn the heat on early; didn’t help. It could be toasty down there, but it was still a dungeon. It was light and I had beautiful art on the walls, but it was still a dungeon.

When Sophie was five, we moved her to the neighboring guest room downstairs: a double-sized room with space for her “stations”: dress-up area, reading area, monkey bars across the ceiling. That made my downstairs dungeon a more pleasant place; I had company. I even set up the table in my room as her craft table to finish a project.

But it was still a dungeon. Eventually, a junk room. I’d just throw stuff in there because all I needed really was a little hole to get to the computer.

Five months ago, I decided Sophie-the-adult was no longer thinking of this place as home. So I moved in. I took over her desk, moved out her bed. Moved in my desk and drafting table – with no junk on them so they could actually be used for drawing and painting!

I even took Sophie’s tiny tea set collection in the display case and moved it piece by piece to my old room. I had to take photos of each shelf to make sure I placed them just so.

What I have now: three windows that look in three different directions; the computer, the printer, and the scanner all in the same room; a place to write and then casually walk over to the tables where I can paint.

I come down here when it’s dark, when the sun is shining, when it’s early, when it’s late. I come down here at three in the morning. I come down here because simply walking in the room stimulates my creative juices. I come down here when I have too many ideas upstairs and I have to start working on them … downstairs.

I am a conscientious shopper: I check Consumer Reports, I get references, I research and research. Except when buying a house: for that, the clincher is walking in the door and if it feels right and comfortable and welcoming, I know it’s right. Our house home is all that and more for me … except for that little room that was my office (but now which makes a perfectly pleasant guest room).

I love my new room! I love how it makes me feel. I can’t really empirically describe why, but it feels right and comfortable and welcoming. If in my Third Third I want to feel at home in my life and skin, then it’s only reasonable to feel at home in my room.

Best advice I ever got:

A hum is when your decision feels just right, when the choice you’re making matches with the whole universe. It’s a hum through your whole being.

A snag, on the other hand, is a kink. A stumble. A rough spot in the smoothness. You can try to ignore snags, try to pretend you didn’t notice them, but really, you KNOW. You know it’s not right. Period. A wise person taught me to listen to my hums and snags when making choices. They don’t lie.

My new room is a hum. My old room was a snag I should have listened to years ago.

The Third Third is a time to act on old, lingering snags and find the hum.