THE TRUTH

/ janpriddyoregon

The truth is, I do not want to sell my family home on the coast. The truth is, this would feel like the failure of a lifetime.

The double arch of Arch Cape filled with rubble during the building of the tunnel at the south end of this beach in the mid-1930s. It has gradually opened from inches to feet during my lifetime memory. The central post was worn and then broken. The point at the top of the arch and the point rising from the sand in this summer photo were once joined.

My family has always regretted selling homes. [Portland, San Francisco, Seattle] We do not need the money from that sale—we only need to be spared caring for it. The truth is, my husband and I are overwhelmed.

The truth is, neither of us would live here alone. Upkeep is already too much for us. The truth is, we cannot sustain it. Something must change.

All true.

I take certain photos like this one over and over, at dawn and sunset, high tide and low, sometimes with Gary or I in the photo, sometimes birds.

It’s true that in my youth I loved the powerful weather, the storms and racket. They reminded me that I am small and mortal and must remember to be humble. It is also true that I do not require these reminders now that I am old.

“Land rich/money poor” my dad used to say and I never thought that expression would apply to me. Our income is modest, and our good fortune is our wealth.

It’s true that I try to find the positive to share, that I tuck away my petty grievances far more often that anyone might suspect. It is also true that Gary and I have had our share of disappointments and sorrows, regrets and griefs. We have been lucky more often than not, but not in everything. Who among us can claim more?

It is true that I like to think I have a thick hide when it comes to criticism and errors. I grieve errors at length—a foolishness I recognize. It is also true that I need a day after a manuscript rejection to recover my spirits and when I wound another person I struggle to forgive myself.

The truth is, I do not have answers, but feel I must always seek them and provide them to others. One of our sons seems willing to take charge of this inheritance. We love our home at the coast. We will sit down as a family and make decisions, clarify objectives and priorities, and perhaps he will become the next caretaker, and Gary and I will let go. That’s the plan.

18 thoughts on “THE TRUTH”

  1. The truth is, I didn’t want you to let it go, either. Yay for sons who can pick up the task! How about turning it into a writer’s getaway for writers you trust? We would pay per week, say $500? Consider it.

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      • Dear Thea, I know your intentions are generous. We have talked—Gary and I and also with our sons—about this for a long time, considering many options and possible solutions. The simplest solution is to sell. Renting is another option, and the one we hope will keep the house in the family.

        Gary and I have lived in the Beach House for 45 years, but it’s been in my family since 1911, first as a summer home shared by my great grand aunts, then as a year around residence beginning in the 1940s when their nephew, my grandfather retired. Six generations of my family have lived here. We raised our sons here.

        Times change and most of the local family homes have been torn down and replaced. Homes the size of ours rent for over $500/night in the off-season and their owners live somewhere else. Only a handful of actual neighbors remain.

        Even if we could still manage the work keeping up the house and garden, the cost of upkeep, the taxes and insurance, repairs ($17k last year, only $8k the year before) etc. is more than we can manage—I always knew it would eventually be too much.

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      • I wish things didn’t always boil down to money, especially after a life carefully lived. I can only imagine the heartbreak of letting go, of having no choice. So much history. So much time and love and energy. Let’s see what happens.

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  3. Oh, how different we are! I would sell it in an instant when it became too much work. Unless you have staff that can be caretakers and perhaps live there, too, but you still have taxes which I would imagine quite high? Insurance? Sitting on the ocean like that, I would imagine to be very costly.

    My sentimentality quotient is very low.

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  4. So tough. Ultimately of course (and you don’t need anyone to tell you this, of course) the meaningful value of the place is in the lives well lived, the people well loved, the impact that the love of the nature of the place, (the beach, the ocean, the rocks, the sounds, the smells and so on) had/has, woven in to those lives and relationships, not in the ‘brick and mortar’ of owning the house. I love looking at your photos as I know it all so well in another version, at the other end of the country.

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  5. I love looking at your photos and reading your essays about this place, as I feel similarly about ‘my’ Maine coast where I grew up, at the other end of the country with different rocks, birds, smells but not so different. We moved back here from Boston in our sixties and there is for me a sweet peaceful ‘arrived’ feeling. You certainly don’t need anyone to tell you, of course, that the true value in the place is woven into the lives well lived there, the people loved there, through the sights smells, feel of the ocean, beach, rocks, birds, regardless of who owns the brick and mortar of the house. That being said, though, what a great feeling if you can work it for the place to be a retreat for writers and readers and/or for your son!

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    • Thank you, Karen. After 45 years, the smell is mostly taken for granted, but for the first twenty years or so, returning after any time spent away—deep breath! Now I have to remind my old nose to take it in. I watch the sky, the water, the flight of birds. [We do that in Portland too, watch different birds.] At the coast we know the eagle pair, the black oystercatcher couples, the raven family. We have known specific crows. There is a male Steller’s jay who comes by each day. A rabbit. The Eurasian doves are an invasive species Gary has taken to; the band-tailed pigeons are indigenous to Oregon.

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  6. The only home I ever felt sentimental about was my neighbor’s house when I was a growing up. Our neighbor was a batchelor old enough to be my grandfather, and his father had built the two-story house in 1911. Sadly, in part because I moved away, my brother wound up with the house and “transformed” it, even adding a hot tub to the back porch. When the house was destroyed in a flood several years ago, and I saw the hot tub upended over the porch, I have to admit I viewed the sight with some satisfaction. My brother had moved out by then and was renting it out, but I’m hope he lost money on it. My childhood home and my neighbor’s house were both condemned; no more houses on that bit of floodplain. We’ve lived in our current home for over 30 years now, and it’s a nice home, but no house has ever gotten to my heart like Teddy’s home.

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    • The house I never owned was the small home I designed for my mother in Cannon Beach in the 80s. I supervised the build, personally tiled the kitchen backsplash, the entry, the bathroom floor and wainscoting, and found the fancy Victorian V-cut shingles for over the front porch. She promised the house would come to me, but then she sold it and the new owners removed the covered front porch and the deck on the south and did other things. I am sad and sorry every time we pass by and see it.

      I still dream about the house my grandfather built in the 1920s for my maternal grandmother on the eastern edge of Portland. It was surrounded by woods, had an enormous lawn, and the house itself was huge. I lived for a time in that house and spent most holidays there as a child. That one is gone too.

      I am very attached to gardens and forests and houses. The beach.

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  7. booth is trudie and troodles is both
    and thats all ya need to no
    what does that mean anyway?
    life is a beach and then ewe cry
    zen flesh zen bones is too long
    and if you hold the world up to your ear
    you can hear the ocean
    good times-thrill seekers

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