Giant Circles

I suppose you have to get old in order to learn how things that go tend to come back.  Stories that once seemed epic and endless are now just the last chapter of a long book you've been living through.  I'm marveling at middle age and its strange boomerangs.

Some are social:  the wreck I made of the last year of high school seems to be patched up and fixed--at least in my mind--due to the slow and painstaking repairs made to two or three relationships via Facebook.  The lovely chorus that was my third and fourth grade experience, the one that faded away and then died out completely before college, is back, and sweet, and right.  I am an extremely nostalgic person, and I love those I love fiercely--almost with a death-grip--and boy did it hurt to lose those connections.  In high school we all were in the throes of hormones and social Darwinism, and I was ill.  I'm not so ill anymore, and things have calmed way down for everyone now that we're up in our 40s. 

I guess I'm glad to be alive to witness these turn-arounds.   Moving back home didn't cause the fixes to happen, for sure, though it has certainly confirmed them nicely.  I still have a few other people to reconnect with, but those are on separate trajectories.

Today I had lunch with five women from work.  The synergy between us is so strong.  We are all so excited to talk it's almost electric.  And we laugh so hard!   I haven't had a group of women friends since I moved back to California (whoa, 10 years ago!), and we are all older and have a decidedly fuck-it attitude about things.  Yet we're professional, and work hard.  And we work TOGETHER!  It's great.  Who knows how long it will last, whether people will stay in their jobs, quit, get tenure, find other work, etc.  I just want to grab onto it and love it to death while I can.

In Long Beach yesterday, I learned that the dollar bookstore I so love to visit is closing.  No!  Where else could I get contemporary hardbacks (just bought DFW's The Pale King yesterday) for a buck?  It was like a free-for-all for Julie:  cheap+great=brain explosion, every other month!  I'd bring another suitcase and just fill it up.  I would stay at the hotel closest to it instead of my conference place, so I wouldn't have to walk too far with a heavy bag.  Etc. Etc.  And then, two hundred books later, it's over.  So there's that.  What do you do when you have a good thing?   YOU SEIZE THE DAY, even if you look ridiculous (people on the senate thought I was crazy with all my suitcases), but now that it's over, I'm happy I did it all.  Better to have loved and lost....

Perhaps emotions are amplified now that I'm back in my geographical home.  It certainly feels more settled.  My rock bottom is much farther down than it used to be, with a nice mucky layer of nostalgia and paroxetine between it and normal me.  Jeff is having a rough time, but he too is mostly basically good...and the girls are tremendous.  Blooming. 

What if there's a fire and we lose everything (very possible)?
What if something happens to Jeff?  Or god forbid our kids?  Will I look back and say I seized the day when I could?  Some tragedies are so awful that your survival might very well depend on getting that answer right. 

Nothing stays the same.  This I'm learning, too.  Anini Beach is slowly becoming an unpleasant place; Kauai is becoming alien to me.  My father is moving to New Mexico (don't ask), and with him, I've discovered, is going my nostalgia for Hawaii.  I love my Hawaiian students, and I share their pain when they come to California: there's a kind of brave grit to their effort to fit in.  I certainly understand it (backwards), but also, I feel I owe them.  I owe them for what their tutus did for me when I was a kid.  I owe Hawaii, and as I am useless to it when I'm there (today, with the old-timers dead and the young moved away, I'm just another tourist), I can honor it best from the mainland...by being there for the keikis.

Ok, enough mushy crap.  We're going to Texas next week for a deep dipping in the pools of Southern friendship: Miah, I can't wait to see you!!!

Some New News I Won't be Advertising Elsewhere

Yes, I have secrets this year, which is weird for me.
One is that I'm quitting the senate at the end of this year.  Not just the executive committee, but the whole shebang.  I'm just not re-upping for another three-year term.  I may return to statewide service later, but for now, I need a break.  The only downside to this is that I will have to win a separate election to stay on my home campus's executive committee, on which I love to serve.  I'll cross that bridge later, I suppose; ultimately, it doesn't qualify as enough of a "con" to worry about now.
I'm tired of traveling to LA.
I'm tired of the politics, and as I have zero aspiration to be promoted into a statewide academic affairs job...really, any administrative job, WTF am I doing besides getting drunk a lot and buying books?
I've been missing my family, and want to minimize the number of days away...
Because the other secret is that I'm taking students to Taiwan and Japan for three weeks in April.  Jeff will accompany us for part of the trip, which is extra-special, since he's had to sit on the sidelines while the girls were too young to be without both parents.  I have always loved the idea of Japan, and can do it all-expenses-paid, this way.
(I really want to travel WITH the girls, but they are still too young...we'll get to that later.)
Anyway, and I will go back to teach in Vietnam later in the summer--CHA CHING--because we need the money for our house.

Anyway, AND I will apply for a sabbatical when the deadlines come around this fall.  I am really, ultimately, trying to clear a little space around my head for writing some kind of book.

There are a few other secrets which may surface this year.  My daughters are growing and flourishing, and part of it is because Jeff's willingness to stay at home with them while I'm off on these trips and on my gigantic--but doable--commute.  Our new life is awesome, but it is new, and it has come with some odd stress.  Things that didn't seem so bad last year are suddenly really bad now, and vice-versa.  I guess this is what it means to change inside-out!

The whole family is traveling to Houston over Christmas, too, which is very very exciting to me.  Leaving town for a week will no doubt give us some perspective on the often too-close-for-comfort stuff happening within my immediate family, as well as allow us to see dearly missed people.

On the domestic front, I am rehabilitating plants (mostly succulents stolen from LA) on my kitchen windowsill, which is a really good place to have plants, due to the sink squirter.  I haven't had indoor plants since I lived in Barcelona...for real.  None in Texas, none in any part of California, until now.

Word of the week: monocot.

I'm also thinking a lot about low-rent fun: things I love to do that have little to no fiscal impact:  lie in bed talking to Jeff, reading used books, drinking coffee, walking, listening to music, gardening.  These are things that anyone can do, if one has any free time (which is problematic, I know).

The Eleventh Month

Funny how things change:  sometimes top-down, sometimes inside-out.  The move was a success, though there were several anxious months as we were smashed up against my mother's world.  The barn remodel took a lot longer than we'd thought, so we didn't get in there until a few weeks ago, and even that wasn't totally settled until the other day, when we finally sat back and relaxed in our own space.  Rent is paid for a  year, things are put away, kids transitioned well into their new school, etc.  We're getting used to major supermarkets being 30 miles away.  We keep a full gas can in the shed, and have needed it twice after driving up the hill on an almost empty tank.  Jeff has applied for a few jobs, had a few interviews, but nothing has panned out yet.  He's definitely needed the time off, but as it's occurred to us that we probably can't get a building loan on one income, he's been looking.

We are slowly meeting people, but I've been traveling a lot for work, and our schedule has been very wonky.  Jeff has befriended a carpenter down the road who seems to want to build our house; the carpenter is married to an ex-CSU faculty member whom I'd met years ago and who has mutual friends in the senate.  There is also a woman two doors down who has a little boy who likes to play with S. & L.  The social thing is slowly improving.

I'm getting used to the 88-mile each way drive to work.  It's not a big deal except when I don't leave myself a margin for traffic issues, which don't seem to pop up unless I'm already pushing it.  Everyone thought it was going to be an issue, but it really isn't.

Last week, a 100-foot trench was dug in our property, and we got an informal ok on the seismic/geologic conditions...we can't build exactly where we wanted, but we can build close by.  I've been reacquainting myself with a 3D building program so I can sketch out the terrain: big time-sink, but fun, and we are still thinking about the barn house.  The next step will be the septic percolation test and then water and power.  

Something I've been thinking about lately is this:  How does life change when one gets what one wants?  I remember sitting in my in-laws' dining table in Houston in 2004, trying to explain to them why RIGHT NOW was a good time to sell my house, because it would allow us to pay off most of our lot loan, and why RIGHT NOW was a good time to move West...because we would then be closer to the lot.  I'm sure we seemed crazy: that was ten years ago.  Then, when we lived in the cavernous and dangerous storefront in Oakland while Jeff worked his first social work job and I was a lecturer.  Then the seemingly illogical move farther north to Napa, where we hunted down the elusive short sale and had our kids.  Then, selling it and moving into my mom's house last summer.  We are fucking crazy!  We have certainly sucked it up in pursuit of this goal.  But now we are actually within range of achieving it, and it's a weird feeling.  I feel stable in ways I haven't ever felt stable.  And nuts in ways I hadn't predicted.  I still drive up Skyland Road and feel like I'm visiting my own soul.  Just visiting.  

We are certainly eccentric; this I've also realized.  Our lifestyle is not for everyone.  We've been in a fishbowl for the last four months, and everyone's looked in: my mother, her boyfriend, our neighbors.  They think we sleep too much, don't spend enough time on grooming, are not giving our children enough routine.  They are probably right in some ways, but not right enough for us to recast ourselves as Better Parents.  The girls are happy and strong, and I'm proud of them (and us).  I can't wait to unpack it all in our own space.  

Rebalancing

I'm finally able to take a breath, albeit one full of charcoal smoke in the Vietnamese city of Hai Phong, where I'm giving an ethics exam today.  I left for VN the day our house closed escrow, and since then, thanks to the miracle of online banking, have managed to settle all of the debts we've accumulated over the last six months.  Today, we are debt-free for the first time in years.  It feels really good, so good I just want to get right back into debt!

We found a house plan we like...except it's a barn.  I'm hoping that we can still make it work.

Speaking of barns, my mother's is almost framed in, and we're hoping we'll be in there by the end of July.  That will be a great transition for us, as we're already stepping all over each other in my mother's house.

I don't think I've really dealt with being moved and how it's going to affect my job.  The drive is so long, I'm just kind of in denial (Groucho Marx: "Denial is not a river in Egypt!") about it.  If I could come up with something productive to do in the car (like write a novel!), I would feel a lot better.  I will update on this.

The girls seem to be settling into life in the SC mountains just fine.  Jeff is happy.  I am happy.  Let's hope that next year will go as smoothly as possible.

Meanwhile, I will take a bite of my latest banh mi and visit a few more temples before I bust out of here.

Exiting

The house is sold.  We will have enough money to put in our well and water tanks, our electricity, our septic tank, and get the permits we need to build.  Jeff has given notice at work.  Word has gotten around on my campus that we're heading south.  The girls have liquidated their toy collection in exchange for a trampoline. We have radically downsized our possessions, as well.  My mother has begun work on remodeling her barn, so we can move in at the end of June, when I get back from Vietnam.  We have joined a swim and racquet club in Scotts Valley.  A Prius is coming, which will be my commute vehicle.  I have at least three potential carpool friends from work.  Jeff has applied for a few jobs on both sides of the mountain.  The roses are blooming.  The attic eaves have been vacuumed.  A party is in the works.

I have never been so terrified, but I also haven't been this excited in years.  We are both really ready to leave Napa, even though it has been so good to us, and we have made some good friends.  I'm really going to miss my neighbor Mary, who has supported us in so many ways: she watched our kids, cleaned our house, watered our plants when we were on vacation, made us cakes and brought us flowers from her yard, gave us cigarettes, sewed halloween costumed for the girls, fixed their boo boos; in short, was a surrogate grandmother to us (and to Sophie and Lucy).  I loved sitting in her yard with her, just shooting the shit.  I'm really going to miss her.

I'm also going to miss our poor house, which was in such a terrible state when we bought it; it smelled awful, had been so abused.  We moved so many rocks out of the yard!  We tore down the carport and a rotting, rickety, cinder-block-footed spa enclosure in the back yard.  We sanded down and patched the redwood siding.  We slept on a mattress on the floor when the girls were small.  We had no real kitchen for 18 months.  There wasn't a surface in that house that we didn't touch.  Slowly, its beauty reemerged. 

I had cancer in that house.  Our daughters learned to walk in that house.  I earned tenure in that house.  Jeff studied for his license in that house.  We were patient in that house: that's probably what I'll remember the most.

It's time.  Farewell, Napa!   

Doors Closing, Doors Opening

Moving 87 miles away from one's job, counting on the don't-gotta-be-there-40-hours-a-week nature of academe has a drawback:  if you ever thought about transitioning into academic administration, forget about it.

Say an opportunity comes up to head a new writing center.  Say you are the ideal person for this job.  Say you're a little tired of the 4-4 grind, and would love a bump up in salary.  Say you're getting close to retirement, even, and your pension is calculated by the highest three years of your salary....

Ain't gonna happen when you have a 90-minute commute.  I'm working through this newly closing door.  I may be an academic for life.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining.  I just dislike having fewer options.  It's a byproduct of survival mode, the setting my brain seems to be stuck on.

What I'm trying to do, now, is trying to accept that a new door is opening (or reopening): that of art.  I spend a lot of time avoiding creativity, or channeling it into things like home decor.  Why not write?

Because who wants to hear what a privileged white girl from NorCal has to say?  Aren't we tired of hearing about white people?  I'm tired of hearing echoes of hegemony in everything I read.  I don't think I'm that unique, and I'm certainly lucky.  I'm so lucky I'm starting to get paranoid about safety.  Gross!   Can I write something that anyone could relate to?  Today, I don't think so.  I can't imagine it.      I'm going to work on this.

I need to be a little more friendly towards uncertainty, overall.  Jeff and I have lived our lives in economic lockdown since we moved back to California.  Our moves have been careful and boring.  It's cost me.  Our house is beige inside, with beige trim (speaking of home decor).  It's oppressive.  No more beige.

I'm reading about some privileged white writers and the chances they took.  Some had no choice, due to wars, mental instability, poorly-timed childbirth, whatever.  I have choices; now I have to choose chance.

Update

We're still on schedule to put our house on the market come Feb. 1.  Since I last posted, we have completed the last major renovation on our house, a giant pergola to block out the view of the apartments over the back fence.  Until last week--for the last five years--we could have staged Shakespearean plays for the benefit of our neighbors, who could--and sometimes would--peer down from their bedrooms onto the floodlit back steps of our house.  This was not a selling point; as a matter of fact, it was kind of a deal-killer for us when we bought the house, and one big reason why we got it so cheap.  Unfortunately, it was not an easy or cheap problem to solve, but we have solved it.  I now can look out the back door and not be subjected to this week's NFL game on a wide-screen, coming from an upstairs window.  I could seriously watch a game from my kitchen!

The only thing left to do is paint the attic stairs and dining room floor, the last vestiges of the crazy lady who owned the house before us.  Her dogs started peeing in the corners of the room, and she did nothing to stop them. 

This house was a mess when we bought it, and it looks 400% better now.  Last night we burned the last of the carport that we tore down a few years ago.  

The sweat equity will hopefully pay off.

Other news:  my mother has been informed that we are moving in with her, and the most amazing thing happened!  She started cleaning out her barn, so we can move into it and not be so up in her affairs.  Once the inner walls were knocked down, we saw that we'll have about 600 square feet to work with, which is 600 sq. ft. of our own space, so I'm happy.  All I need is a bed and a table and a bathroom.

We went ahead and had our mountain driveway rocked, which involved tearing out and replacing a damaged culvert (the road would get squishy in the winter--no bueno) and smoothing out a roller-coastery hill that would require a four-wheel-drive to navigate.  The driveway had been a 100-year-old logging road originally, so the work was mostly cosmetic.  At the end of the driveway was an outrageously long mobile home that had not fared well in the 1989 earthquake.  That was crunched up and removed, too.  What a difference!  Behind it we found a wall of ferns!

As Jeff and I marveled, another thing occurred to us.  Now that the MH was gone, the fact that it was surrounded on three sides by VERY TALL, HOUSE-CRUSHING REDWOOD TREES became even more evident.  We had always planned to put our house in that spot, as it has a commanding view of what I call "the meadow."  I imagined being able to look down on my semi-dwarf apple and pear trees as they bloomed their white fluff in the spring...but when I added to this the ever-present anxiety of being flattened...well, we decided to move our building site.

We started imagining every giant tree's deadly radius (about 100 feet), and that pretty much limited us to building at the bottom of the meadow.  This is a place we had never considered, though once we did consider it, the benefits went beyond just not being killed.  The only southern sun we'll hope to get is down there, which makes my dream of having a sun-room possible.  It  might even afford us some solar energy, though I'm not super optimistic about that.  We are, for the record, at the bottom of a north-facing hill, deep in a forest.

Jeff and I took some stakes down there and tried to lay out a 2500 sq. ft. house for kicks.  I don't want a house that big, but whatever.  We will have to remove some smaller trees, including the only two oaks we have, but unfortunately the oaks aren't doing well (oaks in general aren't doing well in California, these days), so I'm willing to cut them down.

If we do build in that spot, the front of the house will be surrounded by California buckeye trees, which I love, even though they smell like sperm (really!) when they bloom.  The septic tank will be downstream from the spring, and the ground is level, so engineering shouldn't be too much of an issue.  There is a beautiful uphill view of two (safely distant) groves of redwood trees.  Yay!

To be continued....