hard habit to break
Living alone has never appealed to me.
Growing up an only child, with two working parents, in a no-sidewalks suburb, on a street with no kids – I spent a lot of time alone. I got really good at amusing myself. I can’t speak to what goes on in anyone else’s head, but what goes on in mine can keep me occupied for days at a time with very little external stimulus. Sometimes in movies when there’s that scene with the guy locked in solitary confinement or stranded on a desert island or languishing alone in a bamboo POW cage in the jungle, I think, Yeah. I could do that.
Which is not to say it would be my preference. Moving into a dorm at seventeen was majestic. There were people everywhere. There were people hanging out in the TV lounge and cooking in the kitchen, people to chat with while brushing your teeth and people in the hall at three in the morning. And though people come with problems – messes and noise and missing food – I decided I never wanted to live alone again.
Since college I have shared one residence after another, with friends and significant others and strangers from craigslist. I have lived with other people, without exception, all the way up until last March when I bought a house of my own. And then, for a few months, I lived by myself.
I didn’t really like it. I didn’t like coming home and knowing no one would be there, and I hated falling asleep aware of empty rooms all around me. I stopped cooking very often because it’s not so fun, cooking for one – and because if I was out of eggs or cinnamon there were no one else’s to borrow. I know that for some people this would be a boon, all that privacy and quiet, everything just how you left it. But it’s not what I’m after.
So as soon as I could manage I got housemates. And technically I have one now. He’s a new college grad, just setting up in Portland. But he works construction jobs all around the state for weeks at a time, without coming back through town. When he’s here he stays with his girlfriend – something about her place having an oven and central heat. It works out well for everyone: I get a check that helps me make my mortgage, and he gets a well-located spot to stash his stuff. We both get to be independent grown-ups.
And I’ve noticed of late that living alone has its sweet spots. For example last night after I walked home from work, under a sky that’s light a little later every day now, I threw my boots on the floor and cranked up a Chicago Greatest Hits album I’d found at the public library bookstore on my lunch hour. I fried up eggs and plantains while belting out What Kind of Man Would I Be. There may have been some dancing.
So it’ll do, for now. I’m growing into my space and letting it all feel just like me. And maybe I have been given this time as a little calm before the storm, as a respite to get grounded and get ready. Because really what I’d like is for this house to be more full of people than is reasonable – friends and family and at least one sloppy dog, people who stop by unannounced and stay too long. I’m already keeping the fridge stocked with beer. I have a sofa now, and a number of things to sit on, some of them chairs.
It is nice, having things that are mine: a roof and rooms, time and tomatoes. I could get even more used to it than I have already. But I think instead I'll give it away.
PS LOL CSNY
When I was back east in December I sat at a kitchen table with my childhood friend R while she fielded a phonecall about heart attacks. One of her extended family members had been rushed to the emergency room, and her phone number was passed hand to hand until these distant relatives reached out to her for reassurance. R has a PhD and an MD and beyond this, remarkably for someone so skilled at science, she has always been one of the most personable people I know – someone who understands where other people are at and what they need. If I was ever sick with anything, R is who I would want there. She is the person I would trust most to know what was going on and to tell me about it.
So R sat at the table across from me, calmly translating the frantic word-of-mouth from the relatives into clear and careful information. She talked about what the different things wrong might be, and why the doctors were doing the tests they were doing, and what the results would mean. She suggested other tests that might wisely be requested, and then suggested the most effective ways to go about requesting them. I felt so lucky to be there. Because how often do you get to witness what your adult friends actually do?
And listening to R, I also felt – and I hate to admit this – a little bit embarrassed. Because somewhere since high school, R got really, really good at this medicine thing. My other friend from high school has an art therapy practice, and my other friend from high school is a lawyer, and my other friend from high school runs her own marketing business. They are all very good at what they do. What exactly have I been doing with myself while they were getting good at things?
I’ve traveled around a bunch. And I guess that’s enough for me, because I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I lived in some interesting places and held bizarre short-term jobs and acquired quite a lot of miscellaneous skills. But the skills aren’t under any particular umbrella. What's the proper profession for someone who can survey sea turtle nests and make a pretty GIS map and order bread in Dutch? The closest thing my skill set might be useful for is journalism, which is something I planned to do for a while. I gave up the idea in college, and I sometimes wonder why.
I was in a room just now with a community of brownfield professionals, talking about brownfield topics. I’m much more fluent in brownfields than I was just a year ago. And if I keep doing this for even five more years, I could really get something going. It’s a small enough realm that I could confidently get my head around it, and then grow it in directions I find familiar and fascinating.
But while there is something undeniably appealing about being a specialist, there’s also something about it that stops me in my tracks. Five years? In one job? In one field? It’s a little hard to imagine.
In the mean time I came back to my office and I wrote an email that contained the following text.
The site is directly adjacent to the creek (map link below) on the southwest corner of Street and 108th. It’s a 7600 square foot gravel lot owned by BES. DEQ issued an NFA letter for the property several years ago; remaining petroleum contamination was left in place because of a sewer line and other barriers to traditional soil removal. The grant we just received from EPA will fund in situ bioremediation of the remaining contamination pockets. Our contractor is working on the ABCA right now.
The moral of the story is apparently this: if it’s late at night and you’re running low on acronyms and you don’t know who to call, I’m your girl. I can also edit and steam milk.
oh nine
Two thousand seven was like trying to herd cats. But two thousand eight is all about ducks in a row.
That’s what I wrote last year around this time. You remember last year, don’t you? 2008?
The ducks were shockingly cooperative, quack quack quack. Because holy shit: I bought a house. If that was the whole list right there, I’d have to say it would have been enough. (D’ayenu.)
After buying the house I then (with much help) pulled off many of its floors and walls and ceilings. I haven’t put on new ones just yet but – well, one step at a time. I drilled in a new doorlock and wrenched in a new faucet and replaced the flapper in the toilet. I salvaged a dining table and steadied the steps. In the summer there were eggplants, and pole beans. In the winter there was a woodstove.
I didn’t know how to do any of this, when I started, except the eggplants.
And there would be a longer paragraph of house-things, but there were so many other things this year too. There was hiking and biking and two weekend-long weddings, trips to Detroit and Seattle and Southern California, a seven-day expedition in Eastern Oregon. There was yoga again, finally, and new running shoes that are ready for some mileage.
This past year I continued to hold down my first post-grad-school full-time job, and though it has not been where I’ve directed the force of my insight and energy this year, it’s come along ok. I spoke at a couple of conferences and filled out a few neat projects and helped pull in three big grants. I more or less know what I’m doing now, even if I’m not always doing it as well as I might be.
In 2008 I got out of, and then back into, and then out of, once and for all, a beautiful and surprising and frustrating relationship – a relationship that on its good days filled me with joy and possibility, and that on other days asked me to be more realistic. I’m still pretty sad about it. But as long as I’m laying out good things, I might as well say that I’d never before dated someone with an ex-wife, or with children. These things were really, really hard sometimes, in all kinds of new ways, and I didn’t always do the right thing. But I tried hard to do the right thing almost all of the time. I think I got better at it. I think that most of the time I did the best I knew how to do. There’s that, at least. That and the time we sat on a sunny rock in the forest, and I swam, and he sang. You can’t really regret much when there was that, even if my heart feels more tired than it used to.
I didn’t learn to play guitar in 2008; maybe I never will. But I had Passover dinner in my falling-down dining room, and hosted a night of Celebrities, and ate spaetzle in the park with Mo from DC. I baked a pumpkin pecan pie for Thanksgiving. I hung my first holiday lights. And to close out the year I visited my oldest friend in Philadelphia, a woman I’ve known since we were basically babies, and soon she will have a baby herself. Which is all a little bit crazy, and perfect.
I don’t know what two thousand nine is going to be about yet. I do know that I’ve been going dancing a lot lately. I’ve picked out a bar that’s going to be my bar, and I’ve found a long-term volunteer position that suits me, and I no longer get lost driving to the homes of my Portland friends. I think that means I’m beginning to belong here. Which means it’s probably time to shake things up a little.
