Last weekend, my daughter, my son-in-law and I began to discuss our strategy for expanding our family group. For eleven weeks we have limited trips to the grocery store or the pharmacy to just three or four along with an emergency trip with the dog to the vet. My son-in-law has made many of those trips. As the oldest member of the household, I am considered the most vulnerable. We must think about when to include the grandparents who live a couple of miles away and who have had no physical contact with the grandchildren. What do we do with me when the Bay Area relaxes the shelter-in-place and when the children go back to school?

Three months ago, I began a post on multi-generational living. The plan was to create a series on the challenges and rewards of being part of a three-generation household. The decision to move in with my daughter and her family was complicated and I won’t recreate the process now. The original plan involved my living here during the Kindergarten year. I help cover the childcare gap before I return to the UK in November. Now, like the rest of the world, those plans are not just delayed, they are in all probability shot to hell.

This experiment became extreme when Covid-19 showed up. I won’t detail the problems of living with the family and the difficulties of trying to work and homeschool children – everyone in the world has the same story. But there is an added dilemma for households like us who must consider the health of an older relative living in a home where social distancing is near impossible. We share the kitchen and bathrooms and a lot of slobbery kisses. As soon as anyone returns to the workplace or to school or when the other grandparents take over some of the childcare, our cozy virus-free world is jeopardized. More to the point, everyone knows things would be different if I didn’t live here.

I take on a large portion of childcare and homeschooling while my daughter and son-in-law work from home and try to hang on to their jobs and income. There is another side, though. If I were not here, the other grandparents would be involved. The grandkids would go to their house. My daughter and her husband would have a childfree environment some days a week making their working hours a bit less stressful. The household would run differently. I would be making the FaceTime calls. Or it is possible, my daughter and son-in-law would isolate and take on the homeschooling themselves, because any mingling of households now increases the risk for all.

And if I get sick, how do I isolate myself from the household? What happens when someone else gets sick? Since I moved in, we’ve shared about four viruses (compliments of Kindergarten). I coughed from October to March. The grim news about a virus-related syndrome in children makes me more vigilant in following the rules. Not only are children considered possible carriers of the disease, now it seems they aren’t as immune to serious illness as doctors thought.

What makes these decisions even more difficult is that we think we all had the Coronavirus in February and March. But we can’t be sure. We experienced varied symptoms and complications. The children had a hacky cough and fever that went away after a week. One took a little longer. The others had headaches and fevers and scratchy throats or intestinal issues and recovered in a few days. After a visit to the crowded DMV, I developed a scratchy throat that turned into possible pneumonia (the doctor saw a spot on my chest x-ray and heard congestion), a high fever, trouble taking a deep breath and bronchitis. My flu test was negative. There was no Covid-19 test available in late February. It took me three weeks to recover fully. If I had the virus? Yay, I survived. If I didn’t? Well, given my reaction to the last virus – another worry for the family. I doubt we will ever know for sure, so we must assume we haven’t had Covid-19.

Even if the shelter-in-place restrictions here are relaxed, nothing much will change for us. A haircut or a meal in a restaurant are months away. A return to the gym is unlikely. At some point other grandparents will get to see the kids. And, at some point, I will leave the household and either go back to Portland for a few months or risk an extended stay in the UK. Eventually we will find a way to live with Covid-19 in some altered way.

It took me four weeks to write this post, so I’ve given up on any writing schedules or goals. Like everyone else, I’ll go with the flow and hope I get more than a paragraph or two written in the next week. For now, my days are filled with lunch-time geometry lessons as we decide how to cut the sandwiches, coordinating Zoom calls and finding new adventures in the mile radius of our neighborhood when  I walk the dog or take grandchildren to search windows for bears or rainbows. A workout with Coach Josh and his program “Dancing like an Animal” has replaced my personal trainer. (A preschool workout is surprisingly difficult and involves a lot of squats.)  Wild Kratz DVD’s come in handy when my daughter needs the internet and a quiet house to teach her university classes. I haven’t read more than a couple of adult books in the last few weeks, but I can tell you the names of many dinosaurs and will discuss the merits of being a Bengal Tiger versus a Great White Shark. My granddaughter found a joke book and now we are all fluent in Knock-Knock jokes. Interrupting Cow is always a hit.

And we have managed to find a way for three adult introverts to live on top of each other. My son-in-law shares his wine and I am fortunate to see my daughter so much. We have plenty of food and a reliable delivery network here in the Bay Area. Every morning and evening I have a great view of the bay, the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco from my bedroom window. I am one of the lucky grandmothers who get to cuddle with their grandchildren every day.

One thing the pandemic has taught me (something universally true even before Coronavirus) is that even in normal times I have little control over my own destiny. So I check in with the people who are important to me. I haven’t changed my phone habits much – I still avoid making calls. Socializing on Zoom is even more exhausting than going out because it is hard to make the excuse of having something else to do. Everyone knows I’m stuck here and just being unsociable!

Just know that I’m thinking of all of you and my short text or shoutout on Facebook is really a giant hug.

Oh yeah. Please wear the flipping mask – especially if you are going to the DMV.

Starting over — meaning moving place, entering new relationships, finding a job — is routine now. After six moves in five years, the logistics of starting over are easier, my possessions whittled down to a five-by-ten storage unit containing who-knows-what, its contents a mystery, along with my mindset on what to discard or keep fifteen months ago. I spent the last several months starting over as I traveled, looking for friends (sometimes with success, most times not), keeping a routine adaptable to any place, wondering if each destination was my place, the home I need, the sticking place. I found it, but I have not found the way to make it happen. So…I begin again, moving back to Portland with the conviction of making it work this time, because it is familiar and because my stuff is here.  I have a plan. I always have a plan.

Conventional wisdom, retirement advisors, and self-help gurus agree on the necessity of a plan for moving forward. For three decades I had an idea of how things would look at this moment, a plan, like most plans, based on fingers crossed and faulty data, because like most plans, it worked well in the short-term and imploded in the long-term. It can be argued that planning is futile. A plan is just an invitation for disappointment. And pretty much since I returned to the U.S. with a migraine headache, my pain starting at Heathrow and ending two days later, I have struggled to envision my next ‘starting over’.

Since that landing I have visited family and friends from California to Texas. Seattle. Boise. Salt Lake City. Moab. San Antonio. Most of the last few months I have spent in San Francisco, a place of refuge and grandchildren, but also a place to hide away where I found myself trying to recreate those three decades, experiencing regret and knowing there was never a guarantee, even with the most detailed plans. My days as a computer programmer should have prepared me for disruption. There will always be an unanticipated glitch.

Those glitches happened quickly. Another two-day migraine, a headache that began on moving day, lasting another two days without the help of pain killers or my usual sick food. A family emergency right after I signed a year lease. I might have made a different decision about where I live if it had happened the week before I moved.

My best friend came post-headache for our semi-annual retreat of wine, advice, and movies. She has helped me christen each new place from Astoria to Oxford, listened when the new relationships ended, and was with me in the mall when I learned of the latest crisis. She measured the windows for curtains. She gave me a pink hammer in a sparkly hot pink bag, a hammer I used to put up curtain rods, its slim handle smooth in my hand as its head whacked my unsuspecting thumb.

My friend crawled into her place, beside her man in a truck with a camp trailer behind it, to head back to their desert home. She reminds me how the world is my neighborhood. Even though my touchstones are not around the corner, they are out there, my friends and family, and even though I feel like I am alone again, I realize there are many friendships waiting to be made here in Portland. These days, a year is an eternity. I’ll hang the curtains and paintings; I’ll assemble the IKEA furniture. Each box I open reveals what my plan was a year ago. I can’t remember why I have a single wineglass and six cheese knives. I packed two crockpots, but not the sugar bowl. Furniture is sparse. After six years, I retrieved my maple table from Utah. That, with four folding chairs and my bed, is all the furniture I saved.

I have been called irresponsible. I have been praised for being adventurous. The truth is I am lucky in circumstance. I cannot predict my future and I must try not to worry about it. Like most people I will plan with what I know at this moment, making the best decision for now. My plan is to make a home out of the mishmash, a home that will last at least a year. Beyond that? It’s a mystery. Maybe I’ll find the next plan in one of these boxes.

Coming back to California after spending a winter in the UK is a bit like emerging from a bunker. There are a few of us who suffer from reverse seasonal affective disorder and find relentless sun an emotional burden. Summer used to drag on and on for me, a school nerd who could not wait to buy new notebooks and pens. The Fourth of July was the turning point. Once the fireworks were over, I knew the days would get shorter, the nights would begin to chill, and all the supposed summer fun would end, providing an excuse to hide away with my books and homework. So when the Oxford Mail informed me of the upcoming May Day celebrations, it brought back blissful memories of a May Day spent standing in the rain listening to the choir sing  Hymnus Eucharisticus from the Great Tower of Magdalen College.

I rode my bike to make it to the bridge before dawn, stuffing it among thousands of others, before joining the thousands of May Day celebrants, many who had spent the night drinking and who were unsuccessful in their attempts to jump off the bridge — a dangerous tradition often leading to serious injuries. As the church bells chimed, Morris dancers moved down Broad Street, rain streaming down their faces.

Speakers took turns ascending the box at the end of the street where they voiced opinions ranging from traditional workers’ rights to whimsical thoughts. May Day in Oxford is a wonderful lesson in how Oxford finds ways to meld Town with Gown.

Thinking of May Day in Oxford put me in mind of scones. There is a bakery in Berkeley where I love to go for scones. It is a good thing that visiting this bakery involves getting dressed at an earlier hour and overcoming my distaste for finding parking on Shattuck Avenue. Most mornings these deterrents lead me to a sensible breakfast of oatmeal and bananas. But once the idea is planted, buying scones becomes a single-minded task and everything else is set aside.

Hair combed and clean clothes donned, I found parking in front of the bakery, only to discover the doors locked in celebration of May 1 – International Worker’s Day.  Disappointment aside, the sign urged me to remember why we should celebrate May Day. My Master’s Thesis focused on Nineteenth-century French sweated labor (workers producing things like matches and clothing in dingy apartments or small shops) – workers who needed a unified voice for improving their working conditions. And yet, I’m just as guilty as other U.S. consumers of ignoring the despicable working conditions in off-shore garment sweatshops.

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Far too many people in the United States work for hourly wages without guaranteed hours or health care and no idea how many hours they will work each week. We depend on these workers and yet, we forget them. We scoff at their attempts to organize, forgetting that organization brought better working conditions to many workers. It is beyond this blog to argue for or against unions or whether they serve the greater good. But we must consider the plight of workers who have no power to change their working conditions and who cannot earn a livable wage.

I’m a middle Baby Boomer, coming of age in the sixties and living in a place where the John Birch Society thrived. Displaying a Peace sign on the window was tantamount to joining a commune. Spouting workers’ rights put you on the rolls of the Communist Party. It is different here in the Bay area where nursery school children participate in Peace Marches, singing “We shall overcome” alongside the ‘safe’ nursery rhymes that hide political agendas. They understand that a rainbow flag signifies inclusiveness. Historically all of these activities would point to Communist infiltration and the dissolution of American ‘values’.

As the bakery’s website points out, the USA has a long history of protests and movements which led to better working conditions and the eight-hour day, but we do not make May 1 an official holiday.

Work is the one thing uniting all of us. It is the cornerstone of our country’s values. Let’s take a moment and remember all the people who work without recognition to make our lives easier.

This morning, awaking with a desire for immediate gratification, I decided to take my laundry to the launderette around the corner and pay to have dry clothes within a couple of hours rather than a couple of days. Later, because I dropped off the clothes with only a vague idea of how much this luxury would cost in Great Britain Pounds and then US dollars, I visited the laundry’s website and learned its hours might be affected by St. Andrew’s Day, a bank holiday celebrated on November 30. Researching St. Andrew’s Day led me to the Stone of Destiny.

First, the two-minute lesson on St. Andrew’s Day: Andrew was the brother of Peter and was one of the disciples present at the Last Supper. He continued to preach Christianity until he was crucified by the Romans on an X-shaped cross in Patras, Achaea. St. Andrew was known for his generosity, something Scotland takes seriously. I have seen this characteristic in most of the people I encounter here with their willingness to help and their friendly interactions. Even the curmudgeons smile as they deliver a grumpy dialogue. On November 30, Scotland celebrates an extra kindness day in honor of St. Andrew and fills it with ‘all that is good about Scotland’.

Andrew was named the patron saint of Scotland in 1322 after the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath proclaiming Scotland’s independence.  There are various accounts of how Scotland acquired a few of St. Andrew’s relics. One of them involves a Greek monk named Regulus and a shipwreck in Fife. The bones included an arm bone, a tooth, a kneecap, and a couple of fingers. They were stored in the cathedral in modern day St. Andrews until around 1560. Two relics survived the Protestant Reformation and are now in Edinburgh under the care of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.

According to Scotland.org, the celebration of St. Andrew’s Day began in the United States by a group of 18^th century Scottish ex-pats in Charleston, North Carolina. The Saltire, the Scottish National Flag, holds the symbol of St. Andrew’s Cross and must be flown on all Scottish Government buildings with a flagpole on November 30, even if it involves replacing the Union flag with the Saltire. November 30 was declared a Bank Holiday in 2006, although it is not mandatory for banks to close. My nearest branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland had its doors wide open today.

What does this have to do with the Stone of Destiny? If you remember (I didn’t either), the Stone of Destiny (or Stone of Scone) was used as a coronation stone for Scottish kings until Edward I took it from a monastery in Perth to Westminster, where it became part of St. Edward’s Chair, the chair used at the coronation of English sovereigns who proved their truth by submitting to the stone’s judgement. The chair was used for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953, but not before it made a frenzied journey to Scotland and back.

On Christmas Day in 1950, four Scottish Nationalists, university students from Glasgow, stole the stone from Westminster Abbey, breaking it in two during the process. They hid the largest part in Kent and waited a few days before unearthing it and taking both pieces back to Scotland. Ian Hamilton, one of the students involved in the caper, was asked why he wanted to bring the stone back to Scotland. “I wanted to waken the Scots up, that was all.” (See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3743946/Ian-Hamilton-on-Stone-of-Destiny-I-felt-I-was-holding-Scotlands-soul.html for more of this story).

The students deposited the stone at Arbroath in plain sight until the police found it. After spending a night in a prison cell for security reasons, the stone was returned to Westminster where it remained until 1996 when it was loaned to Scotland. It was returned on St. Andrew’s Day in 1996, witnessed by ten thousand people lined up along the Royal Mile. It now resides on display at the Edinburgh Castle with the agreement that it will be returned to Westminster for future coronations. The students were charged with the crime, but were never prosecuted.

Edinburgh Castle must provide free entry on St. Andrew’s Day, giving everyone the opportunity to view the stone. I have seen the stone on a previous visit, so going to Edinburgh Castle on a holiday with free entry was not on my agenda. I did read (and I did not gain visual proof) that the castle, because it is a British garrison, must fly the Union flag on all days. This has created a controversy for years and resulted in numerous petitions and calls for the Saltire to fly on the castle instead of the Union Jack. I read, and again I’m not sure I’ll walk to the castle tonight to verify this, that St. Andrew’s Cross will be projected onto the side of the castle — just in case you thought the issue of Scotland’s independence from the United Kingdom was settled in 2014.

Ownership of the stone is not the only controversy. There is growing speculation and perhaps some evidence that the stone grabbed by Edward was a copy and the original stone never left Scotland.

Disclaimer: This is not intended to serve as a well-researched or complete history. There are tons of informative websites, books, and movies with a more detailed history of both St. Andrew, the Stone of Sconce, and the Westminster Abbey crime.

Edinburgh celebrates Christmas with the opening of the Christmas markets while my family and friends prepare for Thanksgiving, American football, and Black Friday sales. My phone’s newsfeed is filled with recipes for spectacular pies and hints on how to reduce the stress of hosting a family gathering. These reminders do make me nostalgic as I sit in the local coffee shop, a place where I am now deemed a regular and greeted with smiles and an occasional ‘pardon?’ as the barista misses something in my accent. Last week we had five minutes of confusion as I attempted to order a fruit teacake, but asked for a toastie.

Today marks only the second day of serious rain I have encountered in the last six weeks. Locals in Oxford, Windermere, and now Edinburgh exclaimed over the temperate weather. Cloudy days in Edinburgh are almost preferable to a November sunny day, when the three hours of a low sun produce a blinding ray of light. People walk along the streets shielding their eyes from the sun like they are witnessing some supernatural phenomenon. When the weather was fine and Princes Street was filled with shoppers and tourists, Edinburgh looked like any other city in the UK. But now, rainy and dreary, I begin to see the Edinburgh portrayed by Alexander McCall Smith, as a small town encompassed in a larger city.

The people here are cheerful. Rarely do I encounter a surly shop clerk. “Hi ya” is the usual greeting and nobody appears put out when my credit card transaction needs my American signature. For some reason, I seem to fit in and am often asked for directions. Anybody who knows me will laugh at this as giving directions is not one of my strong points. This is a much different city in the winter than the Edinburgh I encountered on my last visit when it was overrun with Festival attendees. Even then, it was a tired, but friendly host.

Finding a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving is not difficult. I can walk into any café or food shop and purchase a Turkey Feast sandwich, a holiday tradition, filled with any combination of turkey, dressing, and cranberries. This is a way to have the turkey sandwich without the bother of cooking the turkey. If I want a traditional dinner, there are tons of places to sit and have a roast of something, complete with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans. I might mix it all up and head to the Christmas Market for German sausage or fish and chips.

I have spent Thanksgiving alone in the U.S. where most stores are closed or preparing for the big sales and, according to the ads, everyone is home hugging their families and having that Norman Rockwell experience. Spending Thanksgiving in a country that does not celebrate the holiday and with a time zone difference that will mean my Thanksgiving will be mostly over before my family and friends celebrate, actually makes it more bearable. I will come here to my coffee shop as usual, see familiar faces of people I don’t quite know, eat some strange concoction of foods, and feel quite at home.

And, as in years past, I will hear from family and friends, wishing me from their faraway tables, as I wish them and you, a Happy Thanksgiving!

I wrote the following, posted it, and then as I wondered about the current discussion on sexual harassment, I took it down. I thought of my own experiences with sexual harassment and innuendos and of real circumstances where I was told flat out that I was not suited for a work position, simply because I am a woman and particularly because I am a mother.  When I reread my post, it seemed to perpetuate the charge of hypocrisy when women (and men) talk about their experiences with harassment or gender inequality.

Thinking of a painting by Matisse, Woman in a Purple Coat, I used his image as a reference for my purple coat in the black fashion of Oxford. You know– the vibrancy of a life in color kind of theme. Of course, the dark side of this post is the need to be noticed, to stand out in the crowd, but women are told we must be bright and sexual to be noticed and then are reprimanded if we do attract attention. It gets worse for older women and men, because beauty and youth in our culture are valued over life experience and character.  I ran across a survey that determined most younger women consider catcalls and whistles a form of sexual harassment, yet women over the age of 55 tend to dismiss the behavior. The reason is that a catcall provides needed attention for a woman who feels invisible.

So, although I wanted this to be more about feeling bedraggled in my travel clothes, it is a bit of a statement on a need to be noticed, not necessarily as a sexual being, but as a bright spot in a gray landscape. I’m leaving the post as it was published the first time, because it is an honest assessment of my experience.

The Woman in Purple

She roamed the streets of Oxford, her purple coat alive in a city of scholarly black and functional browns. Her white beret, placed carefully on her head in haphazard fashion, played with the chestnut curls bouncing beneath it.

“Who is she?” People, especially men, asked about her.”Who is that woman in purple?”  She promenaded through Christ Church meadow or University Parks, looking for a place to eat her takeaway lunch. In the afternoon she could be found drinking tea in Marks and Spencer or sipping a cappuccino in Blackwells, filling her notebook with prose. She might catch one of her admirers glancing at her coyly over his book and smile back in that enigmatic way that warns someone of boundaries. Occasionally she was spotted walking the grounds of Blenheim Palace.

Then one day she was gone and the town went back to its boring blacks and dirty browns — much dissatisfied with itself.

This is the fantasy version of my last few days in Oxford. Now for the real version, the reality when one does not read the fine print before booking an Airbnb bed.

The room I rented was perfect. The owners of the home provided everything needed and even though the bathroom was not ensuite, it was a fabulous, warm room. The hosts are lovely, lovely people who sent me on literary excursions to find Iris Murdoch’s old home or the Hollywell cemetery full of famous people and terrifying in its overgrown, shadowy space. But they teach at home and guests are expected to be gone from 10-5 every day. No stopping by to clean up a bit or drop off the computer. Too disruptive. This was a huge departure from other places I have stayed where the open door policy is encouraged. This forced march over the paths of Oxford was my own fault.

The coat was a gift. It is a jacket, light and puffy, filled with down, a color blended from lavender and blue. The hat is not a beret, but a stocking cap bought at Macy’s. And the hair, well it is brownish and the hat covers the telltale signs of roots in need of a little touch up.

Actually this combination could be quite perky if it had not been paired with ill-fitting jeans, once snug and fresh and trendy, now sagging in all the wrong places due to three months on the road, combined with running after grandchildren and walking about ten miles a day. After replacing my stylish, yet rubbish, light-weight European walking shoes with a pair of sturdy trainers, my fashion statement has transformed into “something the cat dragged in.”

There are no coy glances in the coffee shop. Usually the others look at me like they cannot quite believe what they see. Even the university students are better-dressed than I am with their classic slacks and oxford shoes. The word begins to form distastefully on their lips. American. They look over at another table where an American man is pontificating on British history to an English woman. I want to apologize for him and for myself.

If this is my biggest worry, then I am quite lucky. The fact is that I have never felt pulled together and I never will. It shouldn’t matter. Yet despite all the great things in my life, with abundant opportunities to follow my dreams, there is still the perception, whether it was instilled by nature or nurture, that I am a failure. How many of us strive for the ideal, whether it is being the perfect woman, the successful businessman, the busy volunteer or the A student?  Success and beauty are fluid and unreliable. Yet, like many people, I continue to look to the external to validate my place in society.

So it is important to pack reminders of a good life like the photos of loved ones or a purple and green stuffed giraffe to include in my selfie. And, of course, my favorite boots.

I like my warm purple coat in normal circumstances when I can drop home, freshen up, and pull on my boots, the boots made for walking (admittedly short distances). My back is paying the price for packing those boots. There are many things in my suitcase tagged for Oxfam, but the boots are nonnegotiable. My feet feel at home in my boots as they click-clack along the pavement. Somehow those boots can transform baggy jeans into a fashion statement. The boots make me feel like that exotic woman in the purple coat and white beret.

Who is she?

Maybe living life on the edge is an acquired skill. Or maybe being a minimalist requires more than giving away a few things. Perhaps the first step for a budding minimalist, who desires to live on the edge, is to actually give away the stuff instead of putting it into another storage unit. I came to this epiphany when I thought my son was locked in the storage unit facility as he tried to find room for my box spring and mattress in the cramped 5X10 storage unit.

“Oh, he will be all right,” my cheerful daughter-in-law quipped after we had rushed out at the bewitching hour to move the cars before the gates locked. “We’ll toss him a sandwich over the fence.”

They live life on the edge.

This was the scenario I feared the most – a rush to get to the gate before it closed and then the dreaded impediment at the last minute, a box spring blocking the door. My stuff. My accumulation of worthless junk had caused my son to be stuck in a storage unit facility and there was no emergency number. But the two of them thought through the situation. Worst case scenario? We make him a sandwich. My daughter-in-law pointed out that the gate probably opened from the inside, because “think about how many times a week someone doesn’t get out in time. What manager wants to leave a comfortable home to open the gate?” My son was ready to test out his many hours of climbing practice by scaling the chain link fence.

These transitional moments, after I have taken all the steps toward a vagabond life and am about to shut the door on the storage unit containing my traditional life with my stuff, are the moments when I face that question: Am I ready to take risks in my life again? Once I am on that airplane headed for my next endeavor and my next unknown, my traditional life of being able to provide some immediate assistance to my family disappears. My life is packed up and stored away, but my mind continues to spiral through all the ways I might help my children with their projects or find a solution to everything cluttering up their lives. This happens each night as I contemplate ways to help. But the fact is that they will have to manage their own lives with or without my help.

Is it really my adult children I worry about? If I break it down into bullet points, each bold, black dot represents, not their inability to handle life without me, but my fear of being made redundant, or worse, forgotten. The reality of traveling so far away and for a long time without a set schedule is that I do become less of a factor in their daily lives. The other grandparents will mark the big occasions. They will make the oatmeal for my granddaughter. They will sing and dance with my grandson. My ex-lover will find someone new. Someone else will walk out the door of the townhouse I once occupied. I will be relegated to the “I wonder what ever happened to Kathleen” with my remaining friends. Leaving Portland somehow has the feeling of failure. I wonder if I will ever find my place in the world.

And just as I’ve given up all hope for my new life, my son emerges from the storage building. He punches my code into the gate keypad and it opens!

Perhaps it is a sign. Perhaps I’ll leave Portland exhilarated and looking forward to traveling light.

Sometimes having faith in the gate opening is enough incentive to live life on my edge — which probably does not include scaling mountains or visiting war zones. It might be the simple act of shutting the door on the storage unit without trepidation.

And if it doesn’t work out, someone will toss a sandwich over the fence for me.

So the first cow of 2016 has arrived on my life’s path. It isn’t clear yet if this cow is a distraction or an aggressive direction-changer. Do I find a way around the cow or just run away? The cow’s temperament is a mystery, but those running shoes are looking pretty darn good right now.

There’s a problem in my apartment which has forced me to move my mattress into the living room and basically treat a two-bedroom apartment as a studio. Unfortunately, it isn’t an easy problem to solve. Without sharing too much, any push on my part is going to place me on the villain list with the likes of Simon Legree, twisting my moustache as I tie an old woman onto the train tracks. Moral and empathetic sensibilities keep me from pursuing the draconian approach to this problem, because the real culprit in my dilemma is not a fellow tenant, but a cost-cutting developer. However, if no sensible solution to this problem is found, then I’ll have to move. And moving is not something I want to address at this moment. Available rental properties in Astoria are scarce. It means my stay in Astoria might be over. It means I have an excuse to run – the only thing I seem to do well lately. Yet, as someone (maybe Confucius) so wisely pointed out, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

The usual pro-con list is made. As a woman who grew up in a small town, I find I’m really a city girl. It’s easy to hide in a city. It’s easy to do what I want to do and see who I want to see without prying eyes. Cities have symphony halls, multiple movie theatres, and large universities. There are tons of Meetup groups, so it is easy to try out new friends. In a small town, people know your business. Even a newcomer can find herself identified with a certain group or be defined by the place she works. It is hard to separate your job from your social life in a small town. In a city, you can change your persona when you leave work, or not, depending on your mood. And it isn’t easy to make friends in a small place. Newcomers are always looked on with suspicion. They interrupt the social balance. These are my excuses, anyway.

Something happened, though, in between the time I wrote the previous paragraphs and now. I attended my writing group meeting at the local library. My travel plans will keep me from the next two meetings and I realized how much I will miss them. And the Saturday night tango lessons. And the morning yoga class. And volunteering at the food bank. What about Second Saturday Art Walk and visiting with the local shop owners? Maybe I haven’t met my new best friend yet, but I still have good friends who live far away and keep in touch. Maybe people here will know more about my personal life than I really want to share, but someone might stop to check on me if I’m face-down on the sidewalk. And I’ll miss the noisy sea lions.

This morning I looked at my apartment problem as a sign from the universe telling me to leave. Tonight the signs tell me to maybe just wait up a bit. Moving will not take away my fears. A year ago I thought Astoria would give me a fresh start. New friends, new opportunities, new life. Those things are more elusive than I expected, but I’m finding the courage to become a part of this community. Moving doesn’t protect me from boredom or failed dreams. It won’t insulate me from yet another broken heart or arthritis or save me from making stupid comments. If I move, I’ll have to find a new doctor and a new hairdresser. My ability to entertain myself is well-developed. If I put myself out there and things don’t work out, it’s okay, I’ve been there before. Three months of rain is a valid reason to move. The fear of not fitting in or the uncertainty of life’s direction are not reasons to pick up and leave. Moving won’t cure those ailments.

Being a woman of some age, it is odd to see my friends settling into the comfort of retirement as I work on “finding” myself. The freedom I have is a gift. If Astoria doesn’t work out, I can leave whenever. What’s the hurry?

So, yes, it’s a bit more difficult to get up from my mattress on the floor than when I was younger. As fun as it is to relive my twenties, I will have to work on a solution before my bed resembles a dumpster prize covered in unrecognizable stains. In the meantime, it’s time to sit back, chill, and trust that the universe will take care of the problem without any drastic measures or consequences.