By next spring, lord willing and the creek don’t rise, our
lives will have taken a definite turn.
In the works at this moment is a deal for a house in Eugene, 1.4 miles
away from the family I fled in 2001, to this home-in-exile, in the godforsaken wilds
of the Portland exurbs.
By the time we shake the dust of Scappoose off our shoes and
leave it well behind, we will have lived here for almost 18 years. Long enough to have borne and raised a child
to almost adulthood…scary thought. I wonder…would
we have been accepted into the community any more readily if we HAD done
that? Because it certainly didn’t
welcome us as citizens and business owners.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Though
I love the geography of the area where we’ve lived for almost 2 decades, the
town and the people in it thoroughly rejected us, and I, for one, have hated
them right back.
As I look over our tenure here, I realize that there have
been few moments of true happiness in this place. Truthfully, I don’t know if that’s just me…I wonder if I have the capacity to be
truly happy anywhere. But there have
been challenges. There was the
disastrous five years of entrepreneurship, and the several years of recovery
afterward…the damage done to a marriage that, if I’m honest, was already headed
for rocky shores when we crashed it into the café. In the end, we’ve built nothing here, save a
tenuous peace between two partners whose lives continue to creep inexorably
apart from one another.
The result has been, for me, an eighteen-year exercise in learning
to be alone. And I have learned some
skills in that direction. I’ve also experienced
the pitfalls. Chiefly, I’ve learned that
it’s hard to be alone but not free; to
have no one who is really engaged or interested in what you do, but still have
obligations to people to whom you are legally or emotionally tied…or both.
I’ve spent the past seven years trying to stay out of my
spouse’s way and find pursuits that interested me. Living out here in the back of beyond has not
been helpful…if I had lived closer to a larger and more diverse community, I
might have had more success building a busy and engaging life for myself. I don’t know.
All I know is that I have been incredibly lonely, 120 miles away from my
family and what I consider my “home” in Eugene.
In 2003, I fell into an internet community that went a long way toward
easing the loneliness and making me feel valued and engaged, but it also dissolved…long ago, in fact. I’ve been on my own for every bit of ten years,
tilting at…whatever.
Instinctively, I’m retreating back to the bosom of my family
for comfort and connection. Since they
are the reason I left my home in Eugene, I’m not completely convinced that, two
decades later, they will be the source of what I’m looking for…but it feels
right. If nothing else, I’ll be close to
a larger community of people more like myself—liberal, educated, thoughtful and
with a world view beyond the end of their noses. So I should be able to find a place of
comfort and support, should my family poop out in that capacity (which I am
confident it will.)
If all goes as planned we will close on this house…
…on January 10, 2019.
It is meant to be the place where we’ll spend our retirement…the
alternative to a cardboard box under an overpass. It’s really a nice little home, in a nice little
neighborhood. Not exactly what I had hoped
for as my ideal retirement cottage. I had envisioned a little house out in the
country, with a pond or creek, and birds and animals to enjoy…but the husband
was not so much into that.
So, once again, my dream has been put on a back burner…no,
thrown in the firebox and reduced to ashes, since we won’t be moving
again. And I can live with that, I
think. As long as I can have a place of
peace and comfort as a base of operations, I should be able to sally forth on
(solitary) adventures when I choose. And
the family will at least be closer than 120 miles away. I think that will be a good thing, too. Though you never know.
It’s unknown whether the husband will be inclined to throw
in his lot with me at this point, or remain faithful to his number one priority—his
job. It’s worth noting that this whole
process was initiated by HIM, precipitated partly by his dissatisfaction with how
his employer has chosen to treat him over the past several years. He’s toying with the concept of “Fuck them…I
have a life.” But hasn’t really brought
that concept into his heart and nurtured it.
I’d like to think that it’s finally dawning on him that yanking oneself out
of bed at 5:30 AM five days a week and dragging one’s ass to a job that makes
one frustrated and miserable might not be a good way to spend the first decade
of one’s “golden years.” But I’m
painfully aware that all they would have to do is crook their little finger and
give him some tiny hint that he might actually be appreciated, and he would be
bound to them for life.
Yes, this is the same employer that was the catalyst for “our”
foray into restaurant ownership all those years ago, at another time when the
frustration and futility of the job had begun to wear on him. The restaurant was to be “our” ticket to the
freedom and independence of self-employment…but it was never to be. Twelve years on, he’s still at the same job,
still letting it and his hyper-loyalty to it rule his (our) life. So I am not inclined to think he’s had some kind
of epiphany about his relationship to the job and life in general. He’s nothing if not a creature of completely
ingrained habit; that he might voluntarily give up habits of 24 years at the
job is almost beyond realistic consideration.
But, you know, I’ve made my peace with that. If he chooses to continue working in Portland,
we’ll get him an apartment close to work and he can have at it. Truthfully, our relationship works better,
these days, when we’re apart. Which was one
reason I established my own living quarters at our catering kitchen (which I’m
not so sure I want to give up, even if we ARE going to have a home a short
drive away from my “work.”) We might just
be happiest, for the next three years until he can qualify for Medicare, if we
live mostly apart and see each other on weekends. If, indeed, his job lasts that long…as the
company is, once again, hanging by an economic thread. But the separation would most likely be a
positive rather than a negative. I honestly
have no idea what we would do if we had to live together 24/7/365…but I suspect
it wouldn’t be pretty.
So this last holiday season in Scappoose, and the next couple of months, should
be…interesting.
