Adjustments

The Table - looking into the kitchen. More photos to follow.

They can be positive or negative.

The biggest adjustment to both my new life and my health challenges is the lack of energy. I've always been a high energy person, whether internally or externally. Reading voraciously, loving live theatre, concert halls, performances. Hiking, travelling, racing,spontaneous walks, etc.

Now the lack of energy has me parceling out activities or performing trade-offs. If I shop today I can't run around later to visit so-and-so. If I write today I'll be wiped in the afternoon. Or working out a new design means I can't start the new book.

I was completely frustrated and hopeless for a while until I took the time to redesign my new space and go against the grain of popular opinion and have the old long dining room table moved from the house to the apartment. This simple task has opened up my new life in ways I couldn't have predicted. I find this new multi-use space invites flowers. And a candle and lamps for close work. I've never been much of a couch person. I like a table, the bigger the better. I sit here a lot, read, have my meals looking out at the view, everything is close at hand. Instead of making the space smaller it has opened it up.

Thinking outside the box when re configuring a downsized life is very helpful. I've observed a few apartments here and see that they are crammed with relics of the past. Huge china cabinets, tea trolleys, overstuffed furniture, massive bedroom suites. If that is what gives one comfort then go for it. But I like the reinvention of who I am now. Yes, I have to safeguard my energy and calculate the expenditure of it during the day.

In the common hall outside I hung some of my artwork and a little sculpture I made with knitting wool and needles and a few owls, one is a small vase filled with fresh flowers that I hope to replenish every few weeks. A bunch of flowers purchased late on a Saturday night costs under $5.00 (full price $10.99) who knew?

Some of you thought I was upset about leaving the salt box house in its wee paradise of land and ocean and woods. I tried to summon up some feelings when the fellahs were taking apart the dining room table prior to moving it. I stood in that dining room, summoning up all the dinner parties and brunches and convos held around it.

And you know what? There wasn't one shred of sentiment in me.

I was done.

Moving In and On

The view from my living room window

Over the years, apart from my precious Daughter and Grandgirl, I find that it is my friends who offer the most support and comfort and downright consoling when things get rough.

I don't like to lay too much on Daughter or Grandgirl, they have their own lives to live and their own troubles which they are more than welcome to lay on me.

A dear friend called me last week. She's quite the traveler and gallops around the world frequently. I must have gone on a bit of a whine about my health and the Cathedral and my worries, catch me on a down day and I'll fill one of your ears with my woes and the next day she calls me again and tells me she's booked a flight and she's staying for 3 days and find her a place to stay. I have a friend with an AirBnb in St. John's, a gorgeous terrace house on an old street, cheap digs that she'll have all to herself, so in we booked her. I am so delighted, she is a tonic, this brave soul, has beaten cancer a few times and has her own share of troubles but has that gift of curiosity and love of life and incredible loyalty to her friends. Once friends, you're friends for life. So she arrives on November 27th. She was the friend who flew in from Spain to catch my play in Ireland in 2012. I find this one act of kindness has lifted me like nothing else. All we need sometimes is a shoulder to lean on, yeah?

A cousin and I connected out of the blue and it is a powerful bond with similar histories of violence and disconnection from current family members. Goosebumps: this common thread of estrangement and distance and shunning, the theme of our dysfunctional clan. Therapy has helped both of us to just deal and protect ourselves from further abuse. This is like a breath of fresh air in my life and so unexpected.

Daughter rented a table for us both at a Craft Fair in early December So I'm busy crafting. I've ordered prints of some of my photos, the ones that have sold out a few times. This should be fun, just being with others who also sell their wares and making some coin. I'm considering taking orders for story shawls. A lot of work but there is an interest.

So here I am on a Saturday night. Remembrance Day. Poppy Day.

All is calm.

Downsizing 101

You know, all the books you read, the plans you draw up, the discard piles, the maybe piles, the WTF piles, the definitely moving with me piles? Garbage. At least for this downsizer.

To give you an idea: 5 bedroom house (granted, small wee rooms), 3 very large halls (I know, ironic), kitchen, dining room, family room, office, bathroom and oh yes, the Tigeen, garage, barn and shed. All to be condensed down to a 1 bedroom apartment with its own largish locker en suite.

First of all I should mention I am ecstatic that I moved. It took me approximately 2 minutes to adjust to city living. The location helps, overlooking lake and ocean and Signal Hill in the distance, plonked right in the middle of my living room window. Cars drive up here at night and park to drink in the night lights.

So that went well.

But stuff.

I took my largish sofa but left the over sized chair that went with it. I took my hand-painted decorative but functional small round table and its adorable chair from the craft room. Mistake.

I took my small antique lady's desk with needlepoint chair - desk fine but hello chair, what was I thinking?

What shocks me is that I carefully measured a space where one of the kitchen arches opens to the living room and realize my custom-made 90" long dining room table from the house will fit lengthwise across the space providing multiple uses: a craft table, design table, a sitting baking table and an eating, reading table and entertain a few in a pinch. Daughter rolls her eyes at this. But I know in my bones it will work. For me. I like to spread my wools and graph paper and my finished creations and my writing projects all about me.

My worries remain and ebb and flow. The house remains unsold, the Cathedral looms over it, unfinished, with garbage tossed all around it. The For Sale sign keeps being kicked and smashed. Potential purchasers still visit and bolt for the hills once they see the Cathedral even though forewarned and shown pictures.

I've been looking for a wee job. I hate to do this, feeling ill about it actually, but needs must. As long as it doesn't involve standing for any length of time, I'll be OK.

My retirement fund in the shape of the good equity in my home has evaporated like smoke. A friend's son said yesterday he's never seen elder abuse like this. And it stopped me in my tracks. Of course it's elder abuse. An elderly infirm woman being victimized deliberately by the wealthiest landowner in the town so he can pick up her property for a song. Like he's done many times before. But it's an old story, time and time again, being repeated everywhere. I'm powerless to do anything as he's within his rights, I couldn't get zoning laws put in place for the town because his family members are on council.

But I try not to brood on the downside of all of this.

Just do the next right thing.

And try desperately not to look backwards.

On My Knees

I call it The Cathedral. On the day my house was offered for sale, the neighbouring landowner put up this eyesore, it is much higher than it looks as it is taller than my two storey house. There are no zoning bylaws in this town, no town plan (though I did put up a fight for one). So if you buy land in my town, you can literally throw any structure your heart desires on it. This is what happened next door to me. Vlad bought up the two parcels of forested land, left them fallow for years and then stripped them and built one enormous warehouse, and now encored with this monstrosity. It overshadows my house and all seven acres of my land offer a view.

On the second day of my house listing, the day it was publicized, there was tremendous interest in my house, agents and their clients drove out of town to inspect, clients eager to make an offer. But as soon as The Cathedral hove into view they quickly changed their minds as it is smack dab up against the right side of my property, blocking the beautiful light from the west.

I was devastated. This is not the first time Vlad the Destroyer has done this. When I went away for a week last year this greeted me on my return:

I sat in my driveway and cried, there were about 500 trees torn down and clear cut to leave these wounds on the land.

But, he is perfectly within his rights to do it as there are no zoning regulations and this is not the first time Vlad has torn down old heritage homes to replace them with monstrous and ugly warehouses dug into the once fertile and forested land in residential areas.

The Vlad plan is to then buy up the adjacent properties of the disgruntled and dismayed and devastated owners at a bargain basement price.

Vlad and his cathedrals to wanton ugliness. This is what happens with no town regulations. Barbarians climb the gates and plunder and pillage and destroy.

I'm on my knees.

Downsizing Part XV or Dither and You're Done.

The more I work on this, the more I love it.

Catch up Day.

Well, the dump is open all day, limited hours in my wee town out on the Edge of the Atlantic.

So I look around me and my eyes fasten on my enormous collection of VCR tapes. Enormous, you say? You have no idea. I have maybe 2,000 movies scattered on these bulky (often 4 movies on a tape)suckers, all labelled and indexed carefully.

And now I shamefully report these have all been unwatched for something like 14 years now. I think I taped every episode of Saturday Night at the Movies when Elwy Yost was doing his gentle, professional interviews of all these old timers (performers, directors, technicians) before they died off. The only one who was doing so. I had planned to have a periodic movie night with a feast of these old classics. Alas, that never happened. When you're an aficionado, it's hard to find your equal nutbar twin. Most have no time for the old black and whites. And "restored" to colour? Oh please.

So I tackled the deep green shelves today. These held a triple layer of these tapes. Times 4 shelves.

I knew the only way to do it was to take out a row of garbage bags and start pitching without looking. If I lingered, it would be game over. Ah, you're definitely going to want to see this again, oh look, another Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, James Stewart. See? So seven full garbage bags later I think, I could donate these, oh someone would love these, I should Kijiji these as a freebie.

You catch my drift. Stall tactics. I slapped myself. Hard.

I loaded all 7 bags in my car and drove to the dump. I told Brian, the dump-man, what was in the bags (You have to do this, they don't want household waste) and he said, hang on a minute, there's a real old fellow I know living in the back hills, he's a right old movie buff, do you mind if I take all these for him? With the winter coming on he'll be thrilled!

I mentioned I may have 7 or 8 or 10 more bags to follow and Pete says, even better for the old fellah, he'll love them all. Bring 'em over when you can!

And oh, yes, as I drove my empty car home I realized the "old fellow in the backwoods" was a year younger than me.

Letting go is not easy but it can be done if you don't stare.

Melange a Trois

(1)I can't imagine what life is like without some creativity or passion in it. Any creativity. One of my dear buddies now since gone, would make log cabins out of those flat icecream sticks, with a working fireplace of pebbles and the chimney lined with tinfoil and a porch with rocking chairs on the front.

Me? Well I write and knit. And yesterday I finished this massive knitting project. It took me months but now it's winging its way to Massachussets to a sweet young friend whom I wrote about here. She sent me this incredible yarnbowl, right out of the blue, when Ansa died and signed it "Sunset for Ansa".

We had one of those rare instant connections at her father's wake. The kind that sees into each other's souls. Rare enough to be treasured.

(2)Since I moved here I've had the chance to explore my personality in ways I couldn't even dream of when I lived in the metropolis. Time, the gift of time and beauty all around me frees up the mind and imagination like nothing else does. The timelessness of the ocean at my door, the salt-laden walks on the shores or in the pine drenched woods invigorates, wakes up dormant brain cells.

(3)I continue to whittle away at "stuff". Discarding 5 items a day. Should be more like 10. Attaching the words precious or important or valuable to pieces of it is dangerous. A burn barrel is where much of it is going. And the dump. I don't want any kind of clutter in my new home. I'm listing what's coming with me. And so far it's not much. Clutter is weighty and murky and has a stranglehold on the psyche. I lived that in a marital home way back and remember feeling so overwhelmed as we conducted a 3 day sale around and in the property. Given space, I will fill it. Time to let go. Of inner and outer stuff.

Car

Dateline: Monday May 8th, 2017, St, John's

It's like this. Everything happens at once. My car lease is up next month, my tourist season has started, word got out my forte is filing delinquent tax returns and some are dribbling in, and I'm busy minimalising and bagging and donating excess, and oh yeah, my domain went down and new owners of same could not be traced through multiple sales of the domain holding company so I lost my address book and my domain name and the website I've had for 20+ years. And it's like the Irish pension I tried to get, I just don't have the energy anymore to keep chasing down my rights. Whatever they are - do we still have any? Do exhausted elders?

Daughter came for dinner yesterday. Her main purpose, apart from dinner, was to get me up to the Tigeen to survey what I was taking from there and to tidy up after the winter. I was terrified of the climb up. But I took one of my sticks and paused many times, the pain can be mind-numbing, but I made it. It was very emotional as I love it so much up there and Ansa and I spent so much time in this wee paradise as did some very interesting artist guests. Ansa'd go off up back and explore the woods. I'd write or just soak in the entire bay and the birds down below. But I am always mindful of attachment and hope the next person to inhabit this space will take as much pleasure in it as I did.

Speaking of, I was approached by a local who is interested in purchasing my little estate and batted not an eye at the price I'm asking. He needs to convince his wife, as he's in love with the place.

Scrutiny

This morning, I read in my Tao meditation book (always fortuitous these readings) that problems are never solved in a small room but rather on a mountaintop looking down. Yay I say unto thee and all that.

Looking at my life from a mountain top I see the beach stones are many, the rocks overwhelming and the trees overgrown.

Whittling is a frightening thought indeed. So I look at what my needs are. Not my wants. I want far too much for a small space. Now that I'm scrutinizing and evaluating and sometimes tearing up a little, I began to bag up possibly a 100 journals of my life to date. A friend will burn them in his burn barrel. We may have a small ceremony, that would be fitting. My collection of silver and old china is another story. We can all get sentimental about old stuff, long dead relatives presenting the Waterford crystal, the country auctions of acquisition when the kids were small and fascinated with the bidding. (I had to fill a four story century home - I don't use "fill" lightly, I knew auctioneers by name and could nod briefly to show I was still in the game). Stuff that has trailed me around.

I thought the times of 12 around the dining room table at brunch are gone, ditto dinners for 8. So dishes? 4 mugs, 4 small plates, 4 large plates and 4 bowls. Notice the absence of cups and saucers, passé, my dears. Ditto for cutlery. I graduated to all matching only 4 years ago when I opened my little B&B. Before then it was quirky.

Candles, candle holders, I look down from the mountain top and say: choose 2 out of the collection of 20+ and make sure you have a place for these two, I recommend small but beautiful. You must visualize them in use and where.

I have decided I am taking this narrow in depth but tall and wide bookcase, handmade and gifted to me by a carpenter many years ago. It will fit in the hallway from the front door. There I will lodge movies I love, books I love (mainly reference)And that's it. Everything has to fit in this bookcase. Right now I've spread everything out over 4 large bookcases.

So that's it for now. I'm being firm with myself.

And yeah, life is very busy and full which I enjoy, though the mind is willing and the flesh lets me down more than I'd like. I tire very easily. This does not suit me but I do pay attention.

I'm hoping to get approval for a beautiful hiking trail in the town tonight. It's a long held dream of mine. And the spot is magnificent.

So fingers crossed.

Key

Possible concept for a minimalist desk.

I hope it's not a foreboding of bad luck but when I laid claim to my new dwelling, all suited up with preliminary baggage: the important stuff like the small French press, mug, dark roast coffee, cream, some basic pantry stock, a small table, chair, layouts, suggestions, wouldn't you know it the key wouldn't work.

Because it didn't I met two of my neighbours, Elizabeth and Carol, who endeavoured mightily to help me. No luck. Not even a twitch out of the lock. I called the administrator (not a super, no, he's an administrator) no answer, left a message. Schlepped (with difficulty) my stuff back down again to the car (the ladies offered to host my bits in their apartments but I declined) and waited. I don't know about you but as I age I find the Type A personality has not being paying attention to meditation and OM practices whatsoever. So frustration and a small pity party ensued. He called me within 10 minutes. He'd been at the hospital and left his phone in his car. Upside was he found another key in the office and told me there were trolleys and roll-y carts to assist residents in hauling stuff around. He took my baggage up and we did the transfer of keys.

So I made myself a cup of La Java Française and sat down at the wee table and pondered my new space. And pondered. And thought: cripes what have I done. And thought: this is all good. And once again, I forgot to take pics for Grandgirl. She is the space expert. Seriously. At twelve she was organizing my car. At fourteen organizing my storage space in Toronto. At 20 she travelled Europe for the summer with a small backpack. At 21 she taught in India for months with a ditto. A genius with space and minimum necessities.

As a boost I watched The Minimalist. Recommend. Seriously. I love the 333 concept too. Though I've been adhering to minimum clothes for a while. And shoes. I was comforted by both. Yes, I'm doing the right thing.

I set up an area in the garage today with a table and loads of boxes of all sorts of stuff for me to go through. I set it up out there as my tourist season starts soon. Leo is an amazing help for the lugging as I am no longer able. I've recycled so much paper, cards and letters already but there's still more. Frighteningly more. But not as intimidating as I feared. The movies and books are the next go-through, though I've donated a lot already.

So yeah, I'll get there.

Measuring a Life

I officially took possession of Tiny. I use the word Tiny as a comparative to Sprawl which is my existing dwelling. I am sprawled out over:

(1) A saltbox house
(2) An off the grid cabin.
(3) A large garage
(4) A barn
(5) A baby barn shed.

I take measurements of Tiny. And then took them again, blinking in disbelief. Nothing from Sprawl quite fits, I think. And then I think: Help!

I look at the freshly painted walls, a lovely lemony shade. And fresh carpet, kind of grey-blue. And then I look out at the southern exposure view, lashings of sunshine. I look up at Signal Hill in the distance. And think: this is truly perfect. You won't need drapes, says the Administrator, as nothing overlooks you. There are lovely white opaque blinds on the windows, you can keep these if you want, he says, they're brand new from the previous tenant who never quite moved in as he had a heart attack and stayed in Ontario.

He tells me I should be around next weekend as there is Easter Dinner for all the residents in the community recreation centre downstairs. Free. What? I ask. Oh, all festivals throughout the year have a free dinner for the residents, he responds. Bonus.

I texted my friend who introduced me to this building a few years back and we met for coffee. I'd forgotten how much we laugh together. How alike we are in many ways.

Her place, similar in layout to my apartment is zen like in its simplicity. I aspire, I tell her. Tips, please.

In this new age of digital access, physical books and movies become redundant, we agree. What are my treasures? Pictures, my writing life and its accoutrements.

What defines me? How do I measure my life without the extras?

PS As I write this there's a film crew, cast and extras of 12 around my house. Filming a wedding scene. Using two of the bedrooms and my living room and many outside shots. They're all so young. Well, yeah. I don't see too many elders making movies, do you? Shame, really.

Blog Jam

This is a joke I posted on Facebook. I love jokes that are clever and clean and have a surprise at the end.

Laugh of the day~~~

"You're both in your nineties," said the judge to the elderly couple, "Married 70 years! Why would you want a divorce now?"

Said the old woman: " We were waiting for the children to die."

I have a film crew coming on Sunday to make a short film in my house as it is old and hasn't been drastically renovated but has the original exterior and interior. Interesting, I think. Now I'm thinking it's a huge disruption. Then again......

I had two rejection letters. How do you deal with rejection? I had loved these two submitted pieces, and so did others, so I felt rather very crushed and then got so busy later that I forgot to feel sad but now that I'm here at the end of the day I've got time to brood and flay and tell myself give up, I'm useless. So I'm writing here instead for the 4 or 5 that do read me and appreciate. Thanks guys.

Yesterday, I visited my friends whose daughter died and actually made them laugh helplessly about the first marriage proposal I received out here in the Far East. Have I told you I've had hilarious marriage proposals? I will some day. It could be a book. I always cry in my car when I leave my friends, I can't imagine their suffering. Now they are putting their daughter's Jeep and house on the market. She was only 40 and death stalked in, in the middle of the night, and grabbed her. A congenital heart defect. I discuss books with him, he's an avid reader of all things Newfoundland - he was a coast guard in his time - and make them both laugh. I don't plan it that way but I'm glad it works out that way when I visit. Getting out of bed is their enormous act of courage for the day.

I had this friend, well, she's more of an acquaintance. When I moved here she'd phone me about once a month. Strange conversations. She'd never a ask a question but would launch into a sort of list of people who'd let her down by not phoning/dropping in/not picking her up/not letting her know about events, etc. She had a stroke many years ago, I remember visiting her every day in the hospital, not an easy thing as the location of her hospital was both a subway and streetcar ride away from where I was headquartered then in downtown Toronto. But I knew visits to her would be minimal or zero from others during the day as she lived way out in the outlying suburbs and the hospital was in the west end. And there were other occasions too when I filled in as her caretaker on weekends away. All this to say, I was up against myself in dealing with her. I never felt close to her but I would still feel guilty, the stroke for one, and the fact she didn't establish deep friendships with anyone mainly because her demands never stop when you're with her. There are always extras you have to do and there is no acknowledgement of driving out of your way or picking up extra stuff along the route. And then guilt again for feeling like that. It's a vicious cycle. I dropped my landline months back and now I'm just on mobile. And of course she doesn't have that number. But lawdie, now she's phoned many of my friends to demand my mobile number but none feel they want to give it to her. So today she calls a buddy in Florida and he immediately puts her request for me to phone her right away on my FB wall. She is tenacious. And truthfully, normally I don't think about her at all. Guilt again.

So yes, I will call her. If I don't forget yet again. I need to brace myself. I don't wish for more friends to get harassed by her. There's none as queer as folks. If it were me, I would have given up long ago and put it down to disinterest and move on. But not J.

I take official possession of my home in the city tomorrow. Exciting times. Though I won't be moving there full time until the fall for there's a lot to wind down here over the next few months.

So new pastures, new opportunities await. Sadness too at leaving this little paradise behind.

But I'm ready.

In the Beginning....Part 2

And I use the word "beginning" for it truly feels like another one. I've had many, I've been blessed. And in my last two homes they reflected me, solo me, my décor, my artifacts, my friends, my colours.

And so will this new one that my spirit will enter on April 1st, but through circumstances of my hospitality business and my municipal position, my body won't enter fully until September.

It's a one bedroom apartment in an independent senior living complex. A friend already lives there. A friend after my own heart as we value privacy and abhor unexpected dropping around. The complex is small and charming and includes a gym on each floor, a free laundry on each floor, an outside patio with barbecues, an enormous communal two storey recreation room with library and kitchen and piano, it's overlooking a lake and is a short hop to the city of St. John's.

A few things, of many, that impressed me were it was so quiet, I loved how some of the artists living there had hung their artwork in the hallways, I was also impressed with some of the residents being in their nineties and having home care help coming in for a few hours a day if needed thus deferring the day when an assisted living home might be rquired. And twice a week there's a free bus that takes everyone out to shop if they are beyond driving.

My friend tells me we are the two "babies" in the complex being the youngest. I find that very amusing but also highly educational in that I hope to learn more about ageing in place and an ease and familiarity with the process.

The complex is close to the East Coast Trail and some gorgeous trails in the city itself.

Simmering down to a one bedroom is going to be challenging. I am hoping to market my current dwelling as a turnkey hospitality heritage home, all furnishings and appliances included. My plan is to take very little from here.

So yes, I am excited. But daunted too by the task of downsizing my existing lifestyle into one more manageable and easy.
But I am also blessed with an attitude that once I make up my mind, I don't look back. I don't want a life of regrets.

Looking ahead and with anticipation is where I'm at.

In the Beginning....Part 1.

When I bought this place over 13 years ago, I knew my relationship with my darling house and land would all end some day. I'm very conscious of the ticking of my own clock. I stay in moments and cherish them and reflect on my privilege and gratitude to have this house overlooking the ocean, surrounded by trees and hills, with views right out of some exotic magazine. With its own off the grid artist's cabin tucked up on the hill overlooking the bay.

We are so finite in this world and sometimes a tap on the shoulder comes, intuition if you will, and we must pay attention.

My friend Helen's death was a huge tap for me. Then a whole series of friends fell to the wayside shortly thereafter way before their time. I say way before their time when, really, what is human time? Three score plus ten? I've been losing friends since I was six when Geraldine died of meningitis and at eight Eithne was burned in a house fire and at fifteen Rosario had brain cancer. So death walks along beside me even though many of us behave as if we have two hundred years to live. And to live with full mental and physical functions intact. Not so. Take a look around at your Zimmer frames, oxygen tanks and wheelchairs and bewilderments in the supermarkets. I do. Not morbidly but noddingly, know what I mean? Constantly aware too that most health impacted seniors don't shop for themselves so we don't see the Alzheimer's, the dementia, the legless and blind and stroke victims.

I thought to take charge then, back in 2015. I live alone. Have a fierce streak of independence, turned down potential partnerships here, 3 or 4 at last count to offer an example, and wish to be proactive rather than reactive to any future challenges I might face.

I remember a dear blog friend, I was her role model of aging well for some reason, saying at one point: "Well it's a good job I have ten more years to catch up to you and loads of time to live creatively" but sadly she didn't. She died Christmas 2013 rather quickly, from cancer.

So the power of now became a mantra for me long before it was fashionable.

To be continued.....

Leaving this house....

Today is the last bit of day I spend in this little house that has been so good to me.

I've wandered the echoing rooms and said goodbye to each one. Memories come flooding in. Each of my daughters has lived here, my granddaughter lived here. A love of my life shared the space for a while. My father, RIP, was the guest of honour at a dinner party here, my annual women's brunch was held fourteen times here, many who attended have passed on.

My daughter thanked me yesterday for doing this packing up. You see most children are left to empty out the family nest when the parent dies. I and my siblings had to do it for my father. Scrape over the pieces and all the emotions attached to them and squabble over the blue kitchen jug. She or her sister will never have to do this. It is done.

Everything I own is in storage or given away. The junkman came yesterday and the saddest thing he did was smash the old piano into smithereens and carry it away. No one wanted it. These days few have the space and if they have the desire to play they buy an electronic keyboard.

It feels amazingly light, this feeling I have. Not drenched in sadness, only a light mist of nostalgia.

Last night I celebrated the newly empty garage and parked my car in it for the first time. The space had always been filled with the detritus of my children or my own.

This morning I noticed the buds of the climbing dog-rose from Ireland had burst into bloom and the whole garden was scented as my grandmother's had been in East Cork. A validation of what feels like a new lease on life.

I type this on an old bridge table and a collapsible tin chair in an empty back room with my keystrokes resounding off the empty walls. I wanted to take a picture of the roses for posting here but realized that my camera is in the locker in preparation for the summer trek to Newfoundland.

It is a good farewell, this closing of the door on my Toronto life for now.

I shake the dust off my soul along with my feet and look ahead to finishing the book of short stories, completing a writing assignment on the Jews of Newfoundland, writing the memoir of my mother and converting the barn into a studio/small theatre.

Life over sixty is a gift to be treasured even when we say goodbye. It is never too late to for reinventing ourselves!

The Simplified Life

I once knew a man who kept reducing the stuff in his life until he was living in just one room and he said he had never been happier. I think of him often today. He lived on fish he caught in a nearby stream and from money for cashed in beer cans picked up from the side of the road.

I've made enormous inroads myself in this twenty-year project of simplifying my life. I've worked my way from a veritable marital mansion to a three bedroom townhouse to the Toronto bungalow (now sold effective May 31) that I live in today - on one floor and I rent out the other.

I am listmaking and starting on the packing and I am very surprised at how little I do have now. Lots to sell/donate/give away. Not much to store and the no attachment thing is hitting me delightfully. By contrast,I am surrounded by neighbours who are getting on in years and still clinging to the detritus and clutter of forty or fifty years of family life.

I have decluttered a few times now and everytime I do it I feel the effects internally. A huge load has been lifted. I paint my rooms in wild colours - it took me years to get the nerve to debeige and dewhite and depastel and my priority room is the kitchen/dining room where I meet with clients or entertain a full table when the inclination strikes me. I have as yet no place to move to in Toronto, I am blocked at every turn in finding a small apartment to rent in the downtown area I would like. I pay attention to this message. It is not meant to be. I have offers from family and friends of accommodation. I am curious as to what this "homeless" feeling is. Even though I do have my home in Newfoundland to go to in late Spring/early summer. But no home soon in Toronto where the bulk of my business is. I sense change in the air.

My decor is a vast collection of old and new movies, CDs and piles of books. I've reduced the higgledy-piggledy art gallery that used to clutter my walls. Laid a lot out on the sidewalk for others to pick up and enjoy. I find one picture on one wall sufficient now. I look at it more closely, study it. One from an artist in West Cork delights me particularly, full of the fall colours that entranced me in that part of the world. I did not pay attention to this before, it was distracted by others. Clutter to the eye. I have learned to take my time now in the AGO (the Art Gallery of Ontario) and just visit one painting at a time for a few hours and leave.

My house in Newfoundland is similarly simple. Decorated with books and bags and bags of lovely wools and knitting needles. A place for the soul. All sheets are old cotton picked up at Goodwill. Old embroidered pillowcases. Old soft towels. White muslin and old lace at the windows. Long table with benches in the diningroom and it can seat 12 comfortably.

My decor are family, friends and books.

(Picture is of the house in Newfoundland, thriving and stretching under a fresh coat of paint.)