Tag: Change

Letting go and moving on

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

It’s official. We’re selling our home of the past 21 years, including the red barn and my asparagus and fern beds.

It all happened much faster than I had anticipated. In truth, I didn’t expect our dream of relocating to a remote fishing village at the other end of Maine to go into action for another two years. Even when we made our pitch for the house we landed, I didn’t allow myself to get my hopes up – they’d been dashed too many times the previous time we were looking before we anchored in Dover.

But here we are, with any luck beating the crowd on that rising housing market. The trend of moving out from the big-city suburbs into smaller, more viable, pedestrian-friendly towns hasn’t yet reached fever levels in Sunrise County. It is, after all, an eight-hour drive from Boston.

And no, I’m not changing the name of this blog – the barn will live on in my memory and as a metaphor. Guess we’ll just have to get a garden shed, paint it red, and call it our new barn.

~*~

Still, the uprooting and transplanting have stirred up a lot within me.

I’m recalling one neighbor’s comment back in Manchester. “I don’t think anybody can afford to live in New Hampshire for under,” and he named a figure that would have gone up a lot under the inflation in the years since. At the time, I looked at him and replied, “But I do.”

He was shocked and maybe a tad embarrassed.

I still don’t know how most people are affording the prices of homes in much of New England or other hot spots, but they’re also being pressed by outrageous rental costs.

~*~

Reflecting on previous moves, I admit most of them were daring leaps to new jobs and dots on the map where I knew no one. This doesn’t feel so draconian. I’ve visited, after all, and have acquaintances, mostly through Quaker circles.

So now I flip between memories of places I was fond of and of others, well, there were some mean towns and economic struggles. Satellite photos reveal that a handful of the units I occupied have been demolished in the intervening years. Let’s just say that luxury rentals were beyond my means, but a few others had their funky charms or at least memories.

The Dover property was only the second I’d owned. The other was a marvelous 1920s bungalow in a Rust Belt town. (See my novel Hometown News for that one.) When that house was emptied, I sat down and wept in the aftermath of a divorce and the confusing developments with my fiancée.

This time, I’ve found myself anxious to move on. Both of us are finally admitting the shortfalls of our home of the past two decades – not just the short treads on the staircase but also the arrangement of the rooms and the fact it just wasn’t designed for our needs. We adapted to the space, and now that there were just two of us, the faults became inescapable.

On top of that, I keep seeing more repairs that are needed – some of them big ones the second time around. I’ve run out of energy. The responsibility – and expense – are simply too much.

But I’m also remembering guests who’ve stayed with us as well as our dinners and parties, not that we ever had as many as we would have liked.

~*~

One thing I have to acknowledge is the emotional weight of things I feel a responsibility for maintaining. As I shed more of them, I’m feel freer and more capable of opening to new experiences. The flip side is the question of just how much and what I might need to sustain that.

So here we go.

Let’s stick just to my end of this endeavor. I won’t get into hers.

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Yes, I’m talking about downsizing for real.

In this matter of daily living, I squirreled away a lot of doodads and papers – created quite a compact puzzle arrangement, actually – but preparing to move has meant opening the proverbial Pandora’s box and watching it all jump out, well, like a jack-in-the-box explosion.

There was no way I could take all of this stuff with me. It was time to let go.

Things like the library card, my swim pass and parking permit, old insurance forms and booklets.

Clothing got touchier, as I had to ask if I really planned on wearing this item or that – did I even like it? Old pillows, too.

It was time to let go of the tape cassettes, I had nothing to play them on anyway, but I do have a neighbor who’s big into his sound system, so I’m happy to know they have a new home. I simply realized I was unlikely to listen to them again, considering my schedule, even in retirement. I’ll concentrate on my vinyl and CDs, which will likely get a pruning in the upcoming year. You know, that reality that as you clear out the debris, you discover all kinds of treasures you didn’t know you owned. Ditto for the remaining books, which did get yet another culling but need more. What am I likely to need or revisit in the next five years?

I also passed along my student violin and sheet music.

Another difficult decision was to pitch a complete set of my mimeographed Ramblers, a periodic broadside I published in my years at Wright State University, as well as a long shelf of my contributor’s copies of literary journals where I’d appeared. Plus several boxes of unsold copies of my first novel. Even several drawers of acceptance letters – the more volumous rejections went out a half-dozen years ago. Add to that old genealogy notes and correspondence. The fact was that these imposed an emotional weight on me, and now I let go.

Oh, yes, and then there were several cases of 3½-inch computer cassettes. I couldn’t even access those now if I wanted to, though I moved all of their relevant content over years ago. No problem, overboard they went. Finally.

My cross-country skis are joining the discards. I was never that good on them, and getting older, I’m deciding to shift to snowshoes. Besides, I’ve usually been out on the snow all alone, as in solo, and I need to admit that if I break a bone in a fall, I’d be in big trouble. (Yes, I do tumble.) Oh, the realities and perils of getting old.

I am planning on going through my journals in the next year, and I suspect I’ll actually wind up burning some of them – the ones that have been thoroughly mined for poetry and fiction prompts or the ones that are boringly banal.

In the back of my head are the stories of surviving family members having to clean out the possessions of a deceased parent or grandparent. So my intent is to spare my own much of that burden. Not that they won’t still have plenty to tackle.

My unexpected winter

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

My world took a big – and largely unexpected turn – at the beginning of December, when we closed on our bid on a house in a fishing village in Downeast Maine. Frankly, I didn’t expect the seller to accept our offer, but the housing inspector we engaged before that produced a long list of essential issues to address, even before we get to any renovations that play into our modest dreams.

Since then, I haven’t had much time to reflect on the whirlwind, much less post on the developments, and a lot of the fallout probably won’t start appearing here on the blog until next year, in part because I’m also submerged in another big and very timely writing project. Yes, you’ll be hearing about that, too.

It’s also meant getting down to seriously thinning our possessions, which wouldn’t all fit in our new abode – not without a barn for storage, especially. That’s been a rough and emotional passage, with so many things tied to memories or unfulfilled aspirations. At least I’d been working through my stuff over the past several years – decollecting, as I’ve said – but a lot had nevertheless been tucked in securely and left untouched till now. It’s more of a cliffhanger for my wife.

And then there’s the matter of getting our home of 21 years on the market. We bought the place as a fixer-upper, not that we had much to choose from, and now I’m having to face the reality that after a small fortune in upgrades, it still needs tons of work. I hope the new owners are up for that.

~*~

So I’ve been spending much of my time in one of the one hundred easternmost houses in the nation, getting a better feel for the place and a few things under control, with enough commutes back to Dover that I could have driven to San Diego instead, except that I never got further west than just over the border into New Hampshire.

Whew! It’s all happening much faster than I’d anticipated.

Even at my age.

Yes, the balconies

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The old Foster’s Daily Democrat newspaper plant had been added to willy-nilly over the years, and there was no way of hiding that in the building’s transformation to multi-use tenancy. As we’ve seen in previous posts, much of its rear side facing Henry Law Park was essentially a windowless concrete block wall. Not anymore. The corner apartments were quickly rented.

I particularly like the use of balconies that overlook a state-of-the-art playground and a green park along a bend of the Cocheco River where tall ships once turned around. In contrast, the recessed balconies ofter privacy while overlooking an outdoor amphitheater where summer concerts are held and the entrance to the children’s museum.
As I was saying about the corner apartments? How about their commanding balconies?
The redesign sought to maintain downtown Dover’s historic brick storefront appearance – narrow buildings with upstairs housing set side by side.

 

Like it’s been there all along

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

 

Despite its full-block size, the new Orpheum multi-use development in downtown Dover plays off the dimensions of the old Masonic building, far left. The redesign sought to maintain downtown Dover’s historic brick storefront appearance – narrow buildings with upstairs housing set side by side.
How about a brief taste of a big-city side street?
While adding population density to downtown Dover, the Orpheum remains tucked in when viewed from Washington Street just below Lower Square. The small-town landmarks remain the old Masonic building, left, and former Strafford Bank, right, in their interplay of brick and stone.