Hewing Out A New (Mid)Life

Even if you need a crowbar

No one told me that if you move to the suburbs to raise your children, there is a strong likelihood you will need a crowbar at some later point.

Small-town life

Shortly after my spouse passed away, I received an invite to a neighbor-friends’ party. The town I lived in was small, and I rode my bicycle to the party because my role as designated driver had come to an end, I’d decided. There was no one to designate, and I was weary of responsibility. Cabs are things you have to wait for in a small town. And I didn’t want to wait or to walk. Drink and ride, like a teenager, was a choice. And there was something about stowing a six-pack in the grocery basket over the back wheel that made me feel like Angela Lansbury cutting out. Yes, I put teenager and Lansbury in two sentences back to back.

Even the people who had invited me were surprised when I turned up. And when I spoke rather easily about my spouse, his passing, the months of care-giving. . . I’m not sure how people took that. It seemed to me that there was some element of relief; we could talk about it. Mostly, it seemed, people were happy to see me. I was happy to be out of my house, my house that had become hospital and hospice, locus of grief. The sounds of partying were capable of holding me up and carrying me. So good to spend such time with other humans.

That was before my realization that, living in the burbs, I was going to soon need that (mental) crowbar to wrench people from their couches.

That party was one of few invites. After that evening, it became up to me to contact people and say, “Hey! So-and-so’s band is playing at the pub. Do you want to meet and dance?” In the initial months, some brave folks went with me. But maybe I wore them out, going to three venues in a single evening, following the music of friends.

More and more I heard the answer: “I’m already settled in for the night…” (Eh? it’s 7:34…) More and more I found myself climbing into my corolla and heading into the city. More and more often, on my own.

Real estate

I began to study real estate sites, looking to see what was in the city. For what could I trade my 2600+ rambly huge house? A 600 square foot condo with a $450/month maintenance fee . . . that might, randomly, go up? I went and prowled around on a Saturday, looking at everything in my price range. Nothing. I didn’t want to live at city outskirts; I’d already done that for two dozen years. I wanted to be IN the city. By my definition, anything that required more than my feet to get places was a ’burb.

(cue music) I’m going home, I’ve done my time… That’s how I felt about returning to the city after two dozen years.

Then one day up popped an 1184 square foot half duplex, with wood stove, detached garage (insulated and finished, it turned out, perfect for a son with friends at music school), no maintenance fee . . . I knew the photos were exaggerated. The living room appeared capable of housing three elephants. The kitchen could host the last supper.

In reality, maybe an elephant foot fit. And the table could be pulled away from the wall for Christmas dinner. It was perfect. Strathcona, on the east side of Vancouver, and walking distance to the Drive (Little Italy area), the old Railway Club, and The Pat Pub (famous for homing Jelly Roll Morton just after WWI), house of jazz, blues, and good beer.

I went to see the place one night, along with twenty other people, most of whom bid. I outbid all. I knew it was my place.

I could leave my crowbar behind

On May 30, I bought with no subjects — no words about inspection or clauses of any sort — and a lot of faith. My home sold on June 12; in little more than a week I cleared out enough of my own home to hold a weekend open house. I left no less than six bookshelves at the end of my driveway, carted off by neighbors. Several dressers went. Old tools, garden implements. Boxes of who-knows disappeared into my mom’s storeroom. One room was painted. Clutter was gone.

But after it sold began the real process of getting rid of things. In the end, I estimated that 70% of everything I owned was distributed to the neighborhood via the driveway, and a constantly changing pile. I took so much to the thrift shop that I had to begin to sneak in bags and boxes full after closing hour. Then there was the process of finding homes for things that meant something and deserved to be given: an ancient ventriloquial figure (with the correspondence course I’d taken at age fifteen) found a perfect home with home-schoolers with Children’s Hospital performing ambitions. An old flute found a similarly suitable home.

In the end, all that was left fit in one moving truck and two carloads. I had a new home where everything had its place. That had become my criterion: can I envision this in an exact place? If not, it was out.

I had no grass to mow. I had no more decorative jugs to line up. I had empty spots on my bookshelf. For every piece of furniture I kept, at least two went. Maybe four.

Perfect fit

I was delighted to discover that the living room rug I had bought a year or so earlier, too small for my old home, was just the right size for the new one. That the one bookcase I did keep, made by my dad, fit perfectly on the stair landing.

What I didn’t know, at the time I moved in, was that the most significant change in my life that would come as a result…was the Gift of Time.

Not that I spent much time Taking Care of My Stuff. (Do you hear George Carlin’s voice in that phrase?) At least, I hadn’t thought I did. I dusted . . . never. But somehow less stuff equals more time. How is this? (Try it.)

And more

At the end of the first year of living in my new home, I had completed a 300+ page memoir of my time care-giving. Written a new picturebook. Completed the writing of another about to be published. And I’d — finally — completed a lengthy novel for teens that I have been working on for far too long. I can’t remember when I last wrote so much. If ever. And breathed the whole time.

Now that was the emotional crowbar at play.