From My Perspective

Gathered around Jan and Bill Hagen's lovely dining room table in Castro Valley last night felt both celebratory and sad as it began to sink in to me that soon I will no longer be a part of this diverse community that has been my pride and identity for 54 years. If all goes like clockwork (does it ever?) in 20 days I will be the owner of a new (to me) drop dead stunning home in Oakmont retirement community in Santa Rosa. The moving date is still up for grabs as Cathy Lane goes on the market Sept. 6. Moving will depend on the prospective sales date, my energies, and Kodi's adjustment to new hiking trails. Packing and painting and scheming and scrounging for packing boxes consumes me.  So does jockeying rapidly diminishing bank accounts. My beloved garden is suffering from neglect at a time when it needs to be nourished and cherished.  Oh, my. Do the fifty rose bushes, many 60 years of age, realize I am soon to desert them? Does the persimmon tree, come December, realize someone else will soon be collecting and painting its leaves and harvesting its fruit?
Last week I moved to the front bedroom (guest bedroom, study, etc.) in order to suck in the night memory of the panorama of San Francisco Bay at night.

I chuckled at the contrast between the new slick "staged" master bedroom (below) in Santa Rosa and the unstaged one (above) in which I am sleeping, heaped to the gills with clutter and yet to be filed paper stacks. Tomorrow the painters begin to try to cover the deep purple painted wall behind my bed in the master bedroom to transform it back to white. I wonder how many coats that will take? This whole process is like erasing a vital part of myself.

Will I have the strength and courage to reinvent myself in a new community? Of course, but first I will have to spend some time grieving over this land I am loosing and the loss of this long chapter of my life.