I’ve been asking myself lately, now that I am widowed, do I stay or do I move?
And the answer is — I seem to have turned into one of those stubborn old women who refuses to leave her house.
Jon and I gave the let’s-move impulse a trial run a few years ago. It was a thought experiment that lasted, oh, maybe a couple of months. It involved me going around to local open houses to look for a nice, level-in house where we could do what gerontologists and real estate agents like to call aging in place.
A good idea, a practical idea. After all, ours is a three-story house that you enter up top through the garage at the bedroom level. The next floor down is the kitchen, dining and living rooms. Another floor down, my office. Then, outdoors you take a third flight of (now beautiful) stairs to the backyard.
It’s not a good house for people with knee problems or vertigo. It’s not a good house for old people.
And so, three years ago, I did my due diligence. I went house hunting. I looked at level-in houses — in our price range and way, way out of it.
Most were perfectly nice houses. Convenient. Pretty. Suitable for doing that aging-in-place thing.
But they were somebody else’s house. Not ours.
The house on a hill that Jon and I bought as newlyweds is far from perfect. The living room is small. The flat screen TV shares a room with the laundry. (Do I do the laundry, or do I catch the next episode of “Anne with an E”?)
But it’s home. It’s where Jon, I and — for an ever-so-brief moment in time — our children have lived since 1978.
And now, it seems, I’ve become one of those old women who refuses to leave her house.
I used to be an adventurer.
After college, when most of my friends in Michigan were getting married, I spent a year in Europe. After that, I lived in New York City, then split for San Francisco, where I hung out with hippies, feminists, and the long-haired, antiwar journalist Jon Newhall.
So, if I’m an adventurer, how did I wind up parked in this old house on a hill? What was it I was searching for in my peripatetic youth? Meaning? Adventure? Romance? Fame?
Whatever it was, I seem to have found it, here in this house.
Tough one, Barbara.
I’ve been in my house for 60+ years, the last 4 alone since Mel died. But it’s basically one story with a big level backyard that I love. Also it was gradually modified as Mel became disabled. Luckily I don’t yet need stuff like the stairway chair or walk-in shower. And best of all my daughter Debbie lives nearby.
I feel for you. It’s a big decision. I wish you the best –
Hugs,
Jan
The dreaded stairway chair! Will I need one of those some day? You are lucky to have the big level garden. But landscapers are suggesting putting my favorite plants at the edge of low retaining walls where I can reach them without bending over.
Nice. We all remember those years in San Fransico, the feeling that the earth was tumbling forward under our feet; trying things forever forbidden to previous generations. The world did change. It still is changing, only now it is going much faster! What have we brought about?!
Miriam de Uriarte
My thoughts exactly! Things changed so fast back in the ’60s and ’70s. The Pill, the antiwar movement, the women’s movement, the pantsuit, the Afro, and all that marijuana. And, yes, I sometimes feel that the non-conformity and huge social changes that we unleashed back then have seta precedent for some of today’s social movements on the right to act radically — but badly.
I think your house suits you. Just get a couple of those “Seats” that slide up & down one flight, even if electricity goes out. We have friends I Lafayette who did that & life’s a breeze in their 3-story old house
Or an elevator. Much more dignified! But probably not cheap.
I love this last picture of you!!
It’s a great photo, even though I am fuzzy. Notice the dressy coat and the shoes — you couldn’t wear flats, let alone sneakers as a tourist in those days. As for jeans — out of the question. And even if you did put on a pair in the early ’60s, they would be baggy and shapeless. Designer jeans weren’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye yet.
Hi Barbara, I have much to say on this subject. Maybe tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon. eb
Let’s talk!