This is shaping up to be the most significant week since our move-in week in December. We have a firm, funded offer on the house. Contingent on an inspection only and there won’t be much found. Closing date, May 29!
The urologist visit yesterday. Action, not anxiety. Always better.
The first of several plant identification classes tonight. This one is basic botany, mostly taxonomy, how to use identification manuals.
And, on Thursday, the Woolly retreat in Ely. In addition to the physical reconnection with friends–at an important juncture for me (prostate)–it will also give me a chance to reconnect with the Ely/Boundary Waters area. Superior Wolf will be richer for this trip and my motivation for working on it will go up, too.
We now know our neighbors across the street (Eduardo and Holly), next door to the east, (Jude), a door down and to the west across the street (Jim and Roberta), and behind us (Karen). Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe came out, too, to help us celebrate St. Patrick’s day. Ann Beck, the realtor who helped Kate find this house, came by later. With the exception of those times we had the annual Woolly meeting at our house in Andover, we rarely entertained. Kate’s birthdays and the occasional bonfire in our fire pit were about it.
Out here we’ve set a new lifestyle in motion, one more involved with the neighborhood. Thanks to Next Door Shadow Mountain, an online social network for our area, we’ve also communicated with Justin who lives somewhere nearby. He’s offered to mentor us in mountain gardening. He and his wife have an extensive garden.
Different place, new rhythms. As we age, it’s good to have folks around whom we know and who know us.
Kate’s initiated both of these events, so she deserves a big thanks.
Eduardo is off to Kansas City for a week as plant manager for the uniform company he works for in Denver. He’s a second shift supervisor here. In K.C. he’ll be filling in for the top job.
Eduardo is from Tijuana originally and brought special candies from there.
Friendship, like so much that is truly important, is ordinary. Common. Well-known and documented. Not a surprise at all. Not really. As an idea, that is. But in practice? Friendship is rare, extraordinary, uncommon, little found and infrequently documented. Often a surprise.
Tom Crane dropped by yesterday afternoon, driving a black rented Kia SUV. He looked the same as when I saw him last, the day I dropped him at the Denver International Airport, December 20th. Then, we had driven straight through from Minnesota to Conifer, three dogs sleeping quietly in the back of the Rav4.
I took him on a brief tour of our still being put together new home. He talked with Kate, suffered the dogs to come unto him. We went to Brooks for dinner, a birthday dinner. We both had hamburgers while we spoke of family, of the Woolly Mammoths, his work the next day. Propane related.
He brought me back to Shadow Mountain and then went on to his hotel in the Boulder/Lafayette area. Over the course of our time together in the Woolly Mammoths, some thirty years, we have learned how to be friends, how to listen to each other, to support without invading. It was an ordinary, extraordinary time.
Left Shadow Mountain at 4:30 pm for Denver. It was 49 here. When I got to Denver a half hour later, the temperature was 73. There were guys in shorts and short-sleeved shirts playing golf at a course along Hwy. 285.
After an errand down Santa Fe Drive to the south, I headed back north to Colorado Blvd. S. Went past shawirma joints, sushi places, Mexican of course, into the 1500 block where a 24 hour IHOP sat in a busy parking lot. It was empty.
8 of us from the Sheepshead meetup gathered. I met a woman who grew up in Muncie, Ann. Another older, balder gray haired guy named Jim joined Jeff and me as as the mature male contingent.
My cards were mediocre, but I ended up in the middle of the pack for the evening. That’s up from next to the bottom where I stood last time. The trend is encouraging.
We played until 9:45 or so and the restaurant was empty most of the time, but as 9:00 came and went groups of teenagers came in, Latinos mostly, laughing and looking shyly at each other, the usual awkward courting rituals.
As I drove home, the almost full Settling Moon II moved across the southern sky toward the west, highlighting the mountains as I drove into them, going home.
Back from Groveland. A period put now to ministry. The Woollies showed up en masse thanks to Ode’s organizing. The conversation after Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing was solid, engaging. Interesting. And deep.
Told Kate that with the docents, the Woollies and the Groveland send-offs I feel affirmed. She said I could gloat if I wanted. No, I said. Affirmation is adequate. More than adequate, she said. Yes. Affirmation is enough.
It means that somehow the sum of how I’ve shown up in the world has been a positive for some people. Enough.
This is our last week as residents of this house, of Andover, of Minnesota. Next week this time we will be staying in a local motel, our stuff stripped out of the house and already on its way.
My main desire right now is to put an end to packing, to getting ready and get on the road. But the time is not yet. Not quite. So close I can see it, but not quite.
The desire is not about stress. We’ve done well at managing the terrain of a long distance move, pacing it out so we could finish our work in chunks over the last seven months. The desire to end the process comes more from the wearying sameness of preparation and no action.
All this is minor league stuff compared to the awful news Pam, a woman helping us with final clean-up today, got over lunch. Her daughter called and said that a good friend of hers had died while on her honeymoon. She went down on a scuba dive off Cozumel, came up, told her new husband she didn’t feel well and died right there, in the water.
Breakfast at Key’s with Woolly Frank Broderick. He gave us a bowl by Robert Big Elk with smudge in it for purifying the new house. There were also six prayer ties for protection on our journey a week from Friday.
My first introduction to Frank was his shamanic drumming, 20+ years ago. I’ve gone on many shamanic voyages to his drums over the years. He walks with the Lakota people as a friend and ally.
Frank’s a Celtic guy, as am I, he more purely than me. My Germanic heritage is probably stronger genetically and reinforced by upbringing, but it was not the heritage I embraced when I began writing over 25 years ago. It was the Celtic.
Not sure why I made that choice at this late point, but I know that the Celtic world felt and feels very close to my soul’s journey, especially in its intimate linkage to the natural world. Of course, if I’m honest, the Germanic scholarly mind has made an equally strong imprint. I’m a combination of the two: wildly passionate and captive of a need for scholarly precision. An uneasy mix.
Sadness, I’ve learned, is a measure of value. As we love, so are we sad. I’m sad to leave Frank behind, as soul brother and as political fellow traveler.
Over the past seven and a half months we have lived with loss: friends, memories, arts and cultural opportunities, our home, even the belongings we have jettisoned. Our decision to move opened deep fissures in our day to day reality.
A turning point in this experience of loss came when Kate found our new home on Black Mountain Drive. At last we had a concrete spot, a place toward which our work aimed. Until then the consequences of our decision weighted toward grief, even though the decision itself was about joy and adventure.
This is, for me at least, a deep learning. That is, choices we make will often (always?) lead us away from as well as towards. When we move away from, we leave behind relationships, places, things and there is grief with each loss. This is not negative, just true. And grief is not bad, it reflects the bonds formed and now sundered. Grief readjusts our psyche to a life without whatever it was we left behind.
Now that the packing is almost done and the leaving Minnesota day is just two weeks away, my heart has begun to turn to Colorado and our new life. I’m feeling a sense of release from my life here, a release made easier by gentle leave takings, by having enough time to say farewells. There is a delight made more delicate and precious by knowing I can leave without regret.
Again, thank you to all who read this: especially the fellow docents: Tom, Allison, Jane, Morry, Sally, Bill, Vicki, Joanne, Kathleen, Lisa, Marcia, Joy, Mary, Antra, Cheryl, Florence, Ginny, Sharon, Carreen, Wendy, the Woollies: Tom, Mark, Bill, Frank, Stefan, Scott, Warren, and the sheepshead guys: Roy, Bill, Dick and Ed. You have made leaving a source of nurture and grief the solace it is meant to be.
The electrician comes today to remove the automatic transfer switch for our generator. Eric at Alpha Electric in Evergreen said they can cost as much as $1,000 to $1,200. Probably saved us the cost of the electrician today and the cost of installing the generator in Colorado.
While we decided to leave the Viking in place (so we can install an induction cooking surface in Colorado), we did decide to take the freezer with us. One less thing to buy out there.
At the Woolly restaurant meeting on Monday Stefan said, “I know you’re focused on logistics right now, but this is a big life change.” He’s right, in a way. The logistics have absorbed, helpfully, a lot of the angst. We could put our worry hats on about things we could resolve like choosing a mover, what to take and what to unload, when to buy a new home.
The larger question of whether this is a good decision or not, oddly, doesn’t really matter. We made the choice to go and accepted the consequences, positive and negative, of that choice. There’s little we can do now to effect that. As a result, the time between deciding for Colorado and now has been filled with making that choice a reality.
We gave ourselves long enough to say our good-byes and that has been a very nurturing, even healing process. It means that when we start our new life in Colorado it will not be with regrets about Minnesota, but with warm memories.
The new life will depend on us and our choices, too. We’re going open to a new place, to new friends, to stronger family relationships. And, we’re looking forward to being with each other in a different environment. Our first anniversary in Colorado will be our 25th and for those of us of the divorce generation, the 25th is the new 50th.
Thanks to Allison, Morrie, Sally, Mary, Joan, Wendy, Vicki, Bill, Carol, Antra, Joy, Kathleen, Merritt, Tom, Marcia, Sharon, Cheryl, Ginny, Florence, Carreen, Jane, Lisa for a wonderful, sweet, sad afternoon.
The hot dish, the pickles on a stick, the bundt form jello, the wild rice soup, the selection of desserts and the lefse with butter and sugar, all culinary masterpieces of Minnesota home cooking. There will be nothing like any of this in Colorado, I’m sure.
Friends for life, you all. My time at the museum became a place to see you, catch up on interesting lives and have conversations about art. A good life.
As I said this afternoon, this event was sweet and sad and those two in direct proportion to each other. Very sad, very sweet. Here are a few more pictures taken by Ginny:
a Minnesota memories dish towel
Mary and Tom and the pickle tray
Wendy and Joy
notes from everyone written on the back of these Pre-Raphaelite cards. Antra (on the left) also did the calligraphy for a beautiful card.
