A New Plan for an Old Widow

One of the catch phrases I’ve used throughout my life has been, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” I’ve liked learning about many different things over the years and I’ve often wanted to do this or that off-beat profession. An artist, a tailor, a photographer, a teddy bear maker, a dog trainer, a writer, a furniture restorer, a basket weaver and I even tried my hand at making floor coverings. To this day the-son-I-wish-I-had stills teases me about making my own Linoleum. When he helped us move after Don’s stroke he found an area rug I had made and he couldn’t get over the fact that someone would actually make their own Linoleum. “Who does that?” “The Colonists”, I told him, “and people during the California Gold Rush when canvas off from sailing ships was plentiful and carpeting was not.” 

A summer or two ago I ran into a woman at a summer art fair who was selling handmade Linoleum area rugs.  (They're actually called floor clothes but they are the forerunners of Linoleum.) Hers were no better or worse than mine were and that old longing to march off into the sunset doing something different than the norm washed over me again. Woo is me, I guess I was just ahead of my time. That may be the excuse I tell myself for not taking my rugs on the art fair circuit, but the truth is that I get bored easily. After I’ve learned the ends and outs of doing particular craft it no longer holds any mystery for me, and I lose interest.

A professor of a ‘Women in Transition’ class I took in my forties when I went back to college to finish up my degree told me that the trick for me would be to find a career that was always presenting new challenges, new projects that changed often enough so I didn’t get bored. For that class, we had to research five careers we thought we might like and narrow it down to one that fits our personal assets and she considered my desire to keep on learning new things to be an asset. Believe it or not, that opinion changed my life. It was a light bulb moment. I no longer thought of myself as a loser who couldn’t find herself. I no longer felt guilty for spending so much time and money gearing up for hobbies and crafts that I didn’t stick with once I got good at them. That class taught me that it’s the process of learning that I like, not the finished products. Wow, why hadn’t I thought of that? It could have saved me a lot of negative feelings.  

I investigated the five careers and settled on the same career choice I wanted to be right out of high school: an architect. Oh boy, I thought, I can still do that! And that may have been technically true but in practical terms it was pointless for me head in that direction that late in life. After studying the government forecasts for the field, I learned that computers were going to drastically downsize the number of architects needed and by the time I would get a degree in that field there would be a glut of people all fighting for fewer jobs. In the end, I went for the degree I could get in the shortest length of time because, when it came right down to it, I just wanted to finish what I had started back in the 60s. Graduation day was one of the happiest days of my entire life.

What does all this have to do with the price of tea in China, as my mother used to say when something said didn’t seem relevant to the topic under discussion? A lot. On Christmas Eve I was telling my niece about a cottage I came close to buying just before Don had his stroke and how much I loved the area it was in. It’s close to where her daughter just bought a house and considerably closer to where my entire family lives. “Aunt Jean, they still sell little houses in that area,” she said. “You could still find one.”

Could I really? I thought about what is holding me to the north end of town---a house that is perfect for aging in place, a senior hall that is bustling with activities. Could I find a place and remodel it to overcome the first and find a source of activities to replace the latter? I hopped on Zillow, the real estate website, and all week long I’ve been looking at property within my budget. I found a cottage on a lake about a mile from where my nephew lives and with a little remodeling it could work for me. Zillow posts a lot of pictures so I was able to draw up the floor plan to that house and figure out what it would take to make it better suited to my needs. I did the same with several houses and googled how far away one in particular is from the doctor, the dentist, my nieces, the hospital and my favorite grocery store.

So Zillow is going to be my new best friend and maybe, just maybe the little cottage I wanted before Don’s stroke will come up for sale again. Tiny places on the lakes around here tend to do that often enough and if I keep going to Zillow long enough, I might come up with the almost-perfect house. I designed the house I live in, working closely with the architect and our builder and it will be so hard to leave it behind but the pull of being closer to my family is strong, too. At least I have a new dream to keep me busy in this new year…that is until I get bored again. ©