Monthly Archives: October 2014

Colorado, The Move

A Day of Rest? Not so much

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Fall                                                                                   Closing Moon

Transferred gas and electric utility to our name, effective 10/31/14. Connected dsl and landline service effective 10/31/14. Bought washer and dryer online from Sears Outlet. In budget.

Harvested the leeks, the true last harvest from our garden. Leek and chicken pot pies on Tuesday. Kate’s been busy getting stuff organized for my trip. She packed up all the canned goods and I’ve started carrying them upstairs. I’m taking my second Gateway desktop and our HP inkjet printer, too. Various potions from International Ag Labs will be on this load, plus one gas can. Coffee press, tea kettle, sleeping bag, pillow, toiletries. A chair, a folding table, a lamp.

We bought a washer and dryer online from Sears Outlet and they get delivered on November 4th. I’m going to track down a freezer while I’m there.

And of course there’s the routing number and account number of the closing company so, high finance style, I can wire money to the closing on the 31st. I have to take a power of attorney with me that allows me to represent Kate in the closing. Lots of little moving pieces.

The big oriental goes into the American Rug Laundry for its last shampoo and rinse in this state. Then it will go on the moving truck, not back on the floor.

Oh, and I have to visit the library for recorded books. Traveling cross country is a lot of seat time. As I’ve said here before, I use these trips as retreats, spending some long periods in silence, meditative, not meditating. Contemplative. Clears away the webs of the day-to-day.

With this week coming up one full ring of the three-ring tent will be collapsed, rolled up and packed on the train. That’s the Colorado ring. The Andover tent will stay up until this house is sold. The third ring, the move itself, will come down in mid-December. That tent is getting smaller. The circus is leaving town.

Colorado, Minnesota, The Move, The West

Deep in Memory

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Fall                                                                                                  Closing Moon

On the ladder taking down the angelic weather vane I noticed the poplar, ironwood, elm and oak still gave some color to our woods. Bare branches mostly, but a few lingering leaves held on. I’ve found myself wistful this fall, realizing that with this move to the arid west, and reinforcing that, a move to 8,800 feet, we’re going to an alpine eco-system from an oak savannah. All my life (with the exception of 1.5 years in Oklahoma at the very beginning) I’ve lived in the remnants of the big woods or near the boreal forest. You can say I’m a mammal adapted to the ways of deciduous forests and their near cousin the northern forests.

The blue skies of autumn with the cirrus clouds providing white slashes for expression seem wedded, to me, to the falling of birch leaves and maple leaves, oaks and elms, ironwood and black locust. The cooler winds that these skies accompany smell of humus, fresh water and carry just a hint of the polar ice caps. This is what fall is, deep into my memory, deep into the formation of my self.

Last week at Black Mountain Drive I stood on pine needles, duff and granite, saw a few small alpine plants, some moss and had seen on the drive up there a few ash leaves, golden, on the browning grasses. The blue skies there have the cirrus high above them, but the falling leaves are golden, ash being by far the dominate deciduous tree in the mountains and up at 8800 feet far behind the conifers.

Folks I know often name fall as their favorite season here. I know it’s mine. Wonder what it will be out West? Unknown for now.

 

Family, The Move

Early Bird

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Fall                                                                            Closing Moon

Kate and I got up at 7 am. Drove down to Keys on University for breakfast. Keys was closed. I felt like such an early bird, up before the breakfast place opened. We settled on a sparsely inhabited Baker’s Square, not our first or even second choice since we tend to stay away from chains.

It had a few single men and two couples. The single men looked like folks who lived alone and who needed to get out in the world once in a while. A bit desolate. One moved his fingers in the familiar arthritic dance, flexing each one separately then giving the wrist a slight shake. He looked at his hand with the faint disgust of one whose body no longer serves as well as it once did. Another stared with a grim face at a laptop computer, sitting on a leg curled up.

Kate and I were, as is inevitable these days, talking logistics. What tasks the day held. What things remain undone. What we need to do before I leave on Wednesday for the closing in Conifer.

Kate spent the morning, while I slept, still trying to get back to a sleep equilibrium, packing up canned goods, the products of our gardens over various years. Now I’m going outside to move more hive boxes and honey supers from the far shed, take off the angelic weather vane that I want for our new shed or, perhaps, the garage.

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Family

50 Years Ago

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Fall                                                                                    Closing Moon

Awoke this morning and looked at my e-mails to see that my sister, Mary, had e-mailed me a photograph of Mom’s obituary. October 25th, 1964. Mom’s been dead 50 years. It is, as Mary said, hard to imagine.

The obit was by Bud Zink, the publisher of the Alexandria Times-Tribune, the daily newspaper which my father served as editor for many years. The obituary said the whole town mourned when Mom died. Mom volunteered at the church, did substitute teaching in Alexandria elementary schools and was well-known and well-loved. In a town of 5,000 you can be known by almost everybody.

Her whole life was her family, Bud wrote. And that was true. Seems hopelessly old-fashioned now. She never learned to drive. Cox’s Supermarket was only a couple of blocks away from home. Downtown just a block further.

Feminism has looked back in anger at such narrow lives, or more accurately, at lives lived that narrowly by sexist fiat. Because I was 17 when mom died, I never had a chance to ask her how she felt about such things. They weren’t in our consciousness yet. Her eagerness to finish her teaching degree, which she was doing in the period immediately preceding her death, makes me think she might have had other ambitions.

In World War II, as a WAC, she traveled to Italy and Algiers with the Army Signal Corps. I still have small framed pictures of Capri where she spent some time during her posting in Italy. So she was a world traveler in her 20’s and for a woman in the 1940’s that was not common. Her horizon must have been broader than I know; she had been exposed to a life different than that of the rural Indiana in which she grew up.

She died 50 years ago and in her death showed me that this most feared and mysterious reality of the human journey is ordinary. Nothing is more ordinary than dying. And in that, perhaps, is its greatest power. That something so final can be so ordinary.

 

 

 

 

Colorado, The Move

So Long, Farewell

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Fall                                                                                              Closing Moon

ruthandgabe 86The good-byes have begun. Went to the Walker this afternoon with Stefan and Lonnie. Having a place to move and a potential moving date, house packed on December 15th and 16th, gives definition to Colorado bound, a definition not possible even when the books were packed and the scout had been out doing her job.

(Ruth and Gabe on the first day of school this year.)

Pulling away from friends will be the hardest part. Lonnie and I have been going to the Walker together, off and on, for the better part of 30 years. The Woollies, the docents all many years of time. It was this glue that held me here a few years back when Kate and I first considered this move. The time was not right. Now it is.

As Lonnie said, you don’t leave friends behind, friends are for life. That’s true. The difference is the seeing and being seen on a regular basis. I’ll miss it, but the call of the mountains and the grandkids is stronger. Consequences, all decisions have them, neither good nor bad, just necessary.

Doing only the things that only I can do put Colorado on the will do side of our life’s work. Only I can be Grandpop to Gabe and Ruth. Only I can be father-in-law to Jen and stepfather to Jon. Only I can learn, for myself, what the West means within the unique context of my life. Only Kate and I can make this journey together, a bonded team.

And only I can say good-bye to you, my friends.

Colorado, The Move

Back To Living In the Move

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Fall                                                                                            New (Closing) Moon

Journey before destination. I’m back to this, back to living in the move. No longer as move-stupid as I was yesterday. With the critical Colorado mortgage process complete we can look at moving dates. I just e-mailed A-1 movers to see if the week of December 15th works for them. If it does, we would stay for the Woolly meeting, then follow the truck out to Conifer. If not, then we’ll go the first week of January.

There’s still residual weariness, exhaustion, not yet made up. I’ll be on the road again Wednesday, this time driving, so it will be a while before I’m fully caught up on my sleep. That drive will, however, be a peaceful one, listening to audio books, enjoying the quiet of a rolling retreat. Road trip!

It’s not like we’re finished. We have to finish packing, get that fence built in Colorado, pay many different people to do a lot of different things, but it’s manageable. Doable. The best part is that we can work toward the transition with our own decision making and judgment. The underwriter will have retreated to her underworld. If we’re lucky, no underwriter will make the trip up to judge us ever again.

So leave taking really begins. This move is happening and within a month and a half. Saying good-byes used to be a weakness of mine, sudden departures with no farewells. Not so today. I look forward to seeing many of you, Minnesota readers, before I leave. If somehow I miss seeing you, then good-bye.

 

 

Colorado, The Move

Yes!

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Fall                                                                                      New (Closing) Moon

9538 Black Mountain DriveYou may notice that I have changed the name of the moon. That means I will be driving out to Colorado next week for closing on our new home, 9358 Black Mountain Drive. Valerie, our mortgage consultant, called me about a half an hour ago and said the underwriter told her the loan would be approved! That’s one end of this process wrapped up. Now all we have to do is move, then sell this house.

Wow. Still trying to take it in. It was the result we hoped for, even expected, but until confirmed, anxiety. The rest of it feels down hill from here. The months of preparation mean we will easily meet a moving date in December or early January. Our stuff has been decluttered, our work on this house will move forward after we’ve emptied it and we can settle into our new place before the heavy Colorado snows of March and April.

Now the fence becomes the next highest priority, since without it, we can’t move the dogs. I’ll just keep calling until I find the right person.

I feel lighter, much lighter. We can focus on building that new life, a mountain life and a family life. Can’t think of a better way to spend the third-phase. Yippee.

BTW: Good job, Kate. Our scout.

Colorado, The Move

Wait, Wait

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Fall                                                                               New (Samain) Moon

Waiting is wearing. No news (which is good news so far) on the mortgage. We’ll know no later than Tuesday, October 28th, but that doesn’t leave much time between when I need to leave, driving, and the closing date of October 31st. If the decision is positive and we both imagine it will be, it will close off one end of the moving process.

Then, many other things become more straightforward. We can pick a moving date. We can make firm decisions about larger items that won’t work in the new place. We can do the math on almost all of the process and see what our assets will look like after closing. And project what effect selling this house will have on them, too.

I’m sleeping ok, but find that once I wake up, going back to sleep is not possible. Too many scenarios, ideas, issues hurdle the gate before the sheep can get there. That means I’m still in a modestly sleep deprived state, which I don’t like. It will pass.

 

Colorado, Memories, The Move

A Magic Carpet Ride

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Fall                                                                       Falling Leaves Moon

Another box. Carpet. 160 yards of a champagne colored floor covering that we may never walk on. Weird. At Hamernick’s Decorating in St. Paul we walked across the street from their main showrooms to another Hamernick’s building. This one, instead of aisles filled with flooring samples and fabric books, had stacked rolls of carpet. It would have made Harun al-Rashid comfortable.

Though there were more rows in the back, the front had two rows of carpet still attached to the cardboard rolls from the mills. Both rows were over my head in height which meant there were carpet rolls buried beneath as many four and five other rolls. Each row was probably 30 feet long. How did they get the bottom ones out, I wondered?

There was the answer. Near the open back door a man got onto an ordinary forklift with an unordinary front attachment, a long round metal probe, the exact length of the carpet rolls, drove it over and deftly picked up a fat roll. A worker there said he could get at any roll in “under 10 minutes.” Then, looking at the precarious portions of the two nearby rows stacked up against the far concrete wall, he amended that, “Well, maybe not those.”

Afterward Kate and I had lunch at Mai Village on University Avenue. While we waited for our food, I told Kate the story of the owners who flew Vietnamese carpenters in to build the interior. It’s a marvelous feat of woodcraft with delicate light sconces and elegant open screens, thick pillars, an interior roof over tables each with bamboo lengths carved from dark wood along the table edge. Each chair at the tables has an open back, again carved.

Later, on the way home, discussing what we would miss about the Twin Cities I used that story as an example. “I’ll miss,” I said, “the thick network of memories and concrete places, a network woven over 40 years. Like the story of Mai Village this network is idiosyncratic to these cities. But, part of the fun will be building a new network in Denver.”

Colorado, Friends, The Move, Woolly Mammoths

Counting Down

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Fall                                                                                    New (Samain) Moon

photoR

The Woolly meetings count down, now 2, November and December. Tonight a writing teacher came, courtesy of Charlie Haislet. We met in the casual room of the University Club, that quirky brick and ivy place where Summit curves north toward the cathedral and the state capitol.

We wrote, sharing pieces of our lives, not pieces held back necessarily, but pieces discovered in the writing and new then to the rest. It was a warm and loving meeting, for men of our age perhaps unusual, at least among the white educated demographic from which we all come.

I needed this immersion among my friends, my brothers because the week has been strenuous, even stressful. Yet, the time also points up the loss, heightens the foreground/background shifting of life now. Minnesota/Colorado. Colorado/Minnesota. In the mountains, on the Midwest.

When I drove down Highway 10 tonight, a point came where one sign indicated Minneapolis and the other St. Paul. Tonight I chose the left hand path since my destination was St. Paul. But, in a way that fork in the road sums up the last twenty years, living now north of two cities in which I have lived and places I love, going sometimes to this one and sometimes that.

The uncertainty of the mortgage underwriter decision process drains the joy out of this time for me and I look forward to knowing whether we will be able to proceed or not. If not, it’s back to the looking process. If so, it’s hop in the truck next week, canned goods and a computer onboard, an air mattress, a picnic set for dining at the new place, a bedroll. Signing documents here and there, talking to fencing contractors. Getting the new place turning toward our life.