NEXT?

/ janpriddyoregon

Gary and I are working on our future. Eventually the upkeep and isolation of the Arch Cape house will be too much. Our sons do not seem attached to the coast—oh, they say they miss it, but they seldom come out to visit. Once a year, or twice. They lead busy lives. That means we’ll be on our own for day to day assistance with what we’ll need if we try to stay there forever. Shopping, repairs… No simple workaround in our unincorporated community and no fewer local political issues. In our 70s and in good health, we manage fine now. We did, after all get the new roof on and Gary spread compost. We drive to Costco once a month. I’d like to think we might become ninety-something-year-olds who manage on their own till death takes us. But as a compulsive planner, I’m not counting on that.

We are working up courage to let go.

We enjoy our two or three nights a week in Portland. We shop for groceries the day we eat them. We can choose from many stores that are a few minutes away on foot. I prefer to cook, but we have many options for food, entertainment, parks, and shopping. I found a dentist o walk to. A hospital is blocks away. Our view is to the east, and while nothing like as stunning as watching the weather move over the Pacific Ocean, here we at least see sky. The street trees below our windows are in full bloom. Even when all the trees are leafed out, we will be able to see Mt. Hood on a clear day, and the wooden dome of Beth Israel any time, the steel bridge, and sadly the newest tower a bit south in downtown Portland. When I go for a run, my toes do not go numb. There is a bookstore across the street and the bakery. A good Thai restaurant three blocks west and every other cuisine under the sun. They all deliver.

We have walked a dozen miles in a day, but we will not be able to do that forever. There is so much stuff in our two homes, and, other than my favorite green glass candlesticks, no one wants any of it. The condo would be better if it had a little terrace and one more room, but there are ways around those challenges, and Gary and I really do well together. We would manage fine here if we decided we couldn’t manage the hour and three-quarter drive each way. We could stay in one place, right here nearer good medical care and all the services of a city.

So what to do about the beach house? We both think we could let it go. And maybe we should. Just sell it, most everything in it, and have done. Let go.

It is my imaginary future with our grandchildren that I find hardest to abandon. I imagine my grandchildren spending entire summers at the beach as my mother did as a child, or at least weeks as I did myself. I imagine semi-outdoor sleeping in what we call The Cat Room because it has an antique hex angular window with a cat. It was designed with that use in mind. I imagine teaching them to cook and bake and sew—skills I barely had time for when our boys were little. Our sons both surfed and I imagine we would again have wetsuits hanging in inconvenient places.

None of that is ever going to happen.

Our sons are good to us. One calls nearly every day and sometimes twice. The other is always available when we really need help, moved our furniture into our condo, set up our wifi, lists on Ebay for me so I can pay for the beach house roof, found and formatted our cell phones and even pays the bill for them!

They are good sons. It is only my imagination that fails me. I am a planner, and according to one friend, I should have planned daughters. Would girls have spent more time with us? Would our grandchildren be more determined to visit the beach if we were their mothers’ parents. I’ve considered, and I somehow doubt that.

My mother wanted me to do what she wanted to do herself, and not too much better. I imagine I disappointed her too. We can only do our best in the moment for both our parents and our children. Looking back and looking forward, we are not omniscient, not even slightly all-powerful. Our children get to make their own lives. Parents too. Gary and I were there for my mother for many years, doing what we could to help her. Mom thanked me in the days before her death, “You always did what I asked even when I know you didn’t agree.” She smiled that sweet smile of hers. That is surely true. Mom knew she was being difficult sometimes. It’s not just my imagination.

In the mean time, I am making progress on revising the novel—got through the first section (the easiest part) and then the second section which I thought would be hard and wasn’t. I’ve pasted in the next POV character and discovered that I have well over 24k words from her. I didn’t think I needed more than 5k here. I’m probably wrong about that. The early draft of her story is rambling and winds back on itself, but then that is what she does in her story. She’s smart but her whole life meanders unexpectedly. Her voice, history, and goals are quite different from the first two. Maybe I’ll break this into two sections. The risk is the story getting more and more confusing as I work from and through the various drafts.

This Saturday I meant to go to a write-in at a library 8 minutes from our Portland home, but I’ve been asked to host a breakout room at the virtual OCTE Spring Conference. I’m excited about the conference, and even though I hope to get most of my work done early (I start between 4 and 6am) I will likely go back to work on the novel after that.

My progress as of the 6th day of NaNo: 22,886 total words revised as of this morning. I am making my goals and have plenty of raw material waiting for my attention over the next week. Then I will move on to character #4, Yun’s story, and that will likely give me nightmares. I do not know enough about her. Not yet.

LAST WORD: I was reading about the incredible Marie Theresa, born in Vienna, 1717, and crowned a Hapsburg monarch at the age of 23 while pregnant with her fourth child. She led various east European nations, most of which not longer exist. She inherited a bankrupt state and like most women rulers in nations that really, really only wanted kings, she had been poorly educated as a girl. I discovered the obvious about her successful 40-year reign—she managed and did some good, some harm, supported some atrocities and ended others. But three surprising things: As soon as she knew vaccination for smallpox existed (in England) she demanded vaccinations for all children because she lost four of her 16 children to the disease (all 16 born during a 20-year period!) and nearly died herself of the disease; she was the mother of Marie Antoinette, something I didn’t notice until I’d been reading about her for an hour; and she instituted free public education for both boys and girls in her country, all of them rich or poor, from ages six to twelve. I had no idea that free public education had been around that long.

Do I have to tell the bad stuff? No, I do not. You can go look it up for yourself. I love history.

25 thoughts on “NEXT?”

  2. I feel the grieving in the letting go. If you do let go of your beach house, you will never truly let go. You will drive by it, and your heart will ache for the ghosts you’ve left behind–though perhaps I am projecting. I’ve never had a beach house nor a family house, yet I know loss, and I feel it in your post. We have our memories, though, and we have the moments we are in. Much love, dear Jan.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. How much I wanted to live in the big city, and had a fabulous 15 months in San Francisco, giving it a try. But costs prohibit such a final move. We will remain in the central San Joaquin Valley, in a house that is paid for, level, and well appointed for an elderly couple just as it was good for a young family all those years ago when we moved in. Our friends, our medical people, our history are all here in this town that we know so well. I wish you well on your final decision.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I hear you and wish that were true for us.

      Our coastal home has stairs down from the garage and up to our bedroom/TV room/work space. The way my grandfather set it up was better suited to aging in place but my step-grandmother and then we changed that to accommodate our family. The worst is that we cannot walk to a store and access to medical care is not the best. Our condo is tiny, but we can afford it and it has two elevators. I lived in Portland as a child, and before buying the condo we typically drove into town twice a month and them home to the coast the same day. At least now we can break the drive over two days. 😉

      [My aunt lived in San Francisco and left her fourplex home to my mother. I begged Mom not to sell it since it was self-supporting, one of the very few times I disagreed with her out loud. I still regret that she let it go. It is an expensive city to live in but we might have retired there.]

      Like

      Reply

  6. I was afraid of that…you both leaving. Decide next year…Travis and Irene hung around this place into their nineties. You have me excited to read about Marie Theresa! It seems that Marie Antoinette did not learn much from her mother. If you had girls would they have visited more often? Yes. My answer comes from observing my brothers.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Marsha and Eva, not having seen us in a while, asked us if we’d become Portlanders when we saw them on the beach the other day—Oh, no, they said, you would never do that! We’re not so sure.

      Yes, Travis and Irene and Mrs Christie 😉 all managed. It is an odd thing but I feel safer in Portland. Yes, homeless people and ugly camps, but I have never been threatened by a homeless person, and I have been bitten and thumped and knocked over by loose dogs—never even an apology from owners. At least in the city I can go out at 7am and trust that the pits will be leashed and I can cross the street to avoid them! Ha!

      We’re still thinking, but thank you Mary Jo. You are such a good neighbor!

      Like

      Reply

    • And yes, I have a brother too. Useless. Mom used to call me and cry (literally cry and I talked to her on the phone every day, even though we saw her most days and then several times a day) about how he never called or visited and was impatient with her when she called him or simply would not talk to her. When I tried to encourage him to visit more often, he was horrible to me. sigh

      Like

      Reply

      • We are sad about that too. We just walked past and the windows are all papered over.

        The old 23rd Avenue Books left long ago. I used to drive over for readings… did a reading myself there once twenty-odd years ago. But we still have Daedalus Books right across the street. Both our best local bakeries sold, but to their own best bakers so the quality remains. Music Millennium moved across town and Huck+Budd moved into the space abandoned by Dazzle. Thaiphoon (Not sure about the spelling) used to be the very best Thai restaurant in Portland, but now we have Thai Bloom right up the street with sa couple of the original chefs from the restaurant where we “had lunch with Art Alexakis from Everclear,” as Gary likes to say. Different tables and no actual conversation, but…

        The world changes despite everything I might wish.

        The powers that be should never have allowed Churchmouse Yarns & Teas to close. It was the only reason we went to Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. That was true for many people (seriously, we were asked by a man on the street if we came mostly to shop at Churchmouse), and then we ate lunch and shopped the rest of the street. They lost a lot of business when Churchmouse closed their brick and mortar store. I shop them online now.

        My alumni magazine from the University of Washington ran a nostalgic article about businesses that had closed in the U District, but I discovered that these stores all came and went after my time. I am still missing La Tienda, The House of Rice, Cerulean Blue, and Arabesque. Shiga’s Imports is still there, but the great Andy Shiga died in 1993. He was only 74. Mrs. Cutts has passed too and her Puss and Books is long gone.

        Oh, my, you did get me going!

        Like

  7. Aging, even when doing well, makes us look at things differently. Loved the history stuff. I listen to Noble Blood (a podcast) and Marie Antoinette was covered in an episode, and I think her mother had an episode.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • It seems Marie Antoinette’s mother frequently did—she was a bit of a dragon when it came to her children, but having birthed so many time, I can’t help feeling she was somewhat entitled.

      That is so true about aging. And watching how older members of our families managed, or didn’t.

      Like

      Reply

  9. There are people who come into your life at times you really need them. They haven’t a clue the long term impact that they’ll have on shaping who you ultimately become. Jan Priddy is one of them. She’s been a quiet and largely anonymous inspiration to generations, most certainly she has to me. Thank you for being someone that has shaped me for the last two decades. If I’m lucky enough to be half the woman you are when I grow up, I’ll be very lucky indeed.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. Sometimes you have no choice in letting go. Several years ago, a flood destroyed my childhood home and my neighbor’s home (where I spent a huge amount of time when I was young). All that remains now are weedy lots. So, the fantasy of ever moving back to one of those two houses is gone. So it goes.

    But it sounds like you have a nice setup in Portland. What I wonder about is noise. Is it noisier at the condo than at the beach house? I desire to live in the country again, my desire growing with each increase in the decibel level of noise around me here. But living in the country wouldn’t be practicable, especially since I suspect that someday I will want to give up driving. Hell, I’d give up driving now if my town had any resemblance of mass transit 😉

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Our granddaughter once asked us to “turn it off!” because she though the ocean’s roar was a white noise machine. The noise is different in the city from the coast, not less noise but different noise. No ocean, no rain beating on the skylights. I sleep though the night screamers, and we are five stories up, with only a 12′ wall adjoining a neighbor. Morning birds in both places.

      Yes, the eventual need to walk to basics and give up driving are key issues for us. My mother was a terrifying driver in the ten or more years of her life.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a comment