One of our tenants believes in the “good old days.” He is young. He thinks the fifties and sixties and seventies were times of idyllic freedom. I look at his long hair and think: You’d have been beaten half to death living around here in the 60s; you’d have been jailed for what you smoke. Times were only good in some ways and for some people. I had to wear a skirt to school every single day and had the bloody knees to show for it. School counselors, aptitude tests, and my own mother assumed my primary role in life was to get married and stay home with children. Gary was nearly expelled from school because his hair touched his collar and was not encouraged to pursue . . . anything beyond 9-5 employment or perhaps death in the war. (Gary graduated with honors from the UW and Phi Beta Kappa. He dropped out of grad school to care for his family while his father was dying of cancer.) Our opportunities were limited by gender and class and the draft. And we are reasonably smart and able white people. (So is our tenant, which might be another reason he’s nostalgic for a time that only looks good if you don’t look too closely.)

My 50-year high school reunion was this past weekend, about 200 miles north of where I’ve lived since soon after my undergraduate years. I did not attend. The group photo shows a fraction of my 600 fellow graduates standing shoulder to shoulder. Only a handful wear masks. A friend said she could not recall the events reported to her about shared high school experiences. But I wonder who of us can remember all events important to other people? In the group photograph she and her husband are the only people I immediately recognize.

My husband and I first met in 1969 in the summer before my senior year. He had recently flunked his draft physical (“It was June 5th, 1969. It was a Thursday.”). He was working at the University Book Store and kept me sane through that last long year of high school. Then in the fall of 1970, we both started college. I used to make a point of assuring my high school students that there was nothing wrong with them if they did not enjoy the high school experience. It is a painful age, in my experience, and for many people. It was not the best time of my life, not even second best. Not even in the top ten. (By way of contrast, college was wonderful!) We married in 1974, forty-seven years ago yesterday. Since 1979, my husband and I have lived in paradise, and we raised our sons here. Now we walk the shore every morning and are grateful. Despite the pandemic, we treasure where our lives have taken us so far.

Time for a shift.

We have bought a condo in Portland in our favorite building, the Embassy, which is on the National Register of Historic Places c.1925. I’ve been watching units in the building for fifteen years or more since it was renovated, and we’d placed an unsuccessful offer on a studio unit about ten years ago. (Our first agent was less interested in selling little studios than mansions.)This time we worked with Jessica Gilligan, a former student of mine, who actually works in an outlying community west of here. She took us on as a favor, I think. We could not have managed without her steady good humor, common sense, and patience. The sale was protracted (over three months from sale to keys!) due to the poor health of the seller. Our agent always listened to our concerns and assured us she would do whatever we needed her to do. She has been amazing. Thank you, Jessica!

We kept this process secret, not even telling our sons. Delays kept happening and until we got in the door with our own key, we felt that everything might fall apart. The advantage was that I had plenty of time to weave a blanket. Plenty of time to sort through what kitchen tools I would need, what I could do without for a dozen days a month.

I already knew the building well enough to know what I liked. My favorite units were the one-bedrooms on the east side, which is what we purchased. It was incredibly decorated with art everywhere, a great deal of furniture, and carpets that did not leave until less than three weeks ago. We walked in on the 6th and imagined what we might do. Our new part-time home is tiny (less than 600 square feet), but the seller had gutted and restored walls, woodwork, and put in an elegant bath and kitchen, so we are only doing a partial repaint and sealing the stone floors in bath and kitchen. The new bathroom is small but exquisite, and breaks with the original layout and finishes entirely. The frameless glass shower alone! The 257 screws in the new oak floors that failed to silence the squeaking is another matter—short of tearing up the entire wood floors and redoing them, we are stuck. We only hope the creaking and squeaking do not disturb our neighbors.

We have furnished the unit from vintage furniture and extra sundries cluttering our home on the coast, ordering only a bed and sofa (and a coffee-maker, which should arrive late this week). The bed frame should be here soon, but the sofa will not arrive till December. So we are trying to do justice to a beautiful space.

The building is on a quiet street in a lively neighborhood, a few blocks from three grocery stores; near many, many restaurants and taverns; far enough away from the freeways; and a reasonable walk to both Powell’s Book Store to the east and west to the Portland International Test Rose Gardens (more about them later), Japanese Gardens, and all of Washington Park. William Sonoma and Pottery Barn are just up the street and around the corner, a hardware store in the other direction, plenty of shops for running gear nearby, a hospital, and the finest bakery in Portland (now that Pearl Bakery has closed) is up at the end of our block. We have deeded parking, so we will be parked and walking.

We are not moving to Portland, but established a “foot on the ground.” We now have a place to stay in the city so that we do not have to drive over and back in a single day, which pre-covid we did at least twice a month. We’ve talked about this for many years. We expect to spend two or three weekends there each month. So that is the most immediate reason for this extravagant dream-come-true. (A former student says I was talking about this in the 90s.)

The other reason is theoretical. When my mother’s health was failing and she should have given up driving years before, I thought about how living here on the coast would not be practical forever. We are not “walking distance” to anything other than our favorite landscape. The nearest grocery store is five miles north. So is our mail. FedEx struggles to find us—generally adding two to four days to delivery time just to travel the 75 miles from Portland! Access to medical care is not great. Someday we might have to move. The condo is a step toward finding out if we can live in the city again. 

How can we afford this? I wonder myself. Many of my friends from high school have second homes and weekend places, but they had higher profile careers or an inheritance to spend. I used what my mother left me to pay off our sons’ college educations, and Gary and I have only modest retirement income between us. On the other hand, because we had pets we could not leave behind, we have had two actual vacations in the past twenty-odd years. (We used to joke that driving to the Portland Farmers Market and then back in the same day was our “vacation.”) We saved our money. So you could say that about twenty stay-vacations paid for our condo, the down payment anyway. And I am selling my jewelry to pay for that new sofa.

I began planning for retirement when our first son was born. This is another example of practical preparation for a realistic future. Now we’ll have a second site for our staycations!

Most people I cared about in high school are still in my life or have responded to my online queries. Some have visited us. A few have simply gone, moved on. That’s totally fair. “Be here now” goes the saying. Good and bad experiences move us one way or another. We cannot always choose. Things happen. Perspective requires objectivity. And objectivity requires that we be willing to look both back and ahead to recognize where we are going, and to recognize what we cannot control.

Unless there is distance and recovery, unless there is gained insight and wisdom, unless there is forgiveness and renewed hope, there seems little point in dwelling overmuch on experiences in our past, joyful or otherwise. And little sense in worrying about the future unless we’re willing to do something to prepare.

Time to move on/be here now. These days are good.

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And a final and terrible fact: the deaths of four people from Tillamook County south of us were reported yesterday—there had only been eleven deaths in the county till then. Gary worked in that county for many years, and he predicted this when he learned the county fair was scheduled. The fair was held two weeks ago.

Starting Aug. 27, masks are mandatory in all indoor spaces and most outdoor spaces in all of Oregon. Fauci says we can expect improvement by spring of 2022 if more people vaccinate.

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