Hanging On Just a Little Bit Longer
Still, there are those last few things that haven’t made it to the “sell” pile yet. I don’t want to overanalyze, but part of this rebirthing process is understanding how you got to where you are and why you don’t want to go back where you just came from. Having said that, here are a few things I’m having trouble with:
Art supplies: I know I’ll use them again someday. It’s what I’ve planned my life around lately. I know the benefit of expressing yourself in ways that don’t involve words. I have plenty of art supplies in Virginia. Everything you can imagine, really. Yet, my heart tugs a little when I think about letting go of that tub full of fabric or those magazines I’d use for collage, or all that yarn or handmade paper. If it fits, I’m going to take it back with me. If it doesn’t fit, I’ll donate it to a school or hospital and have a little grief ritual, maybe with some sort of art process.
I did give some of it away though. I found a “ton” of kid stuff for making masks and some matting supplies and lots of fabric. The woman I gave it to is part of a non-profit that works with disabled children and adults. They only use recycled materials, which was great for me. The name of her program is Art Takes a Village. She offered to let me work with her once I get settled again. I’m thinking about it.
Office supplies: I know we must have three or four big plastic containers of office supplies. I seem to always need extra paper and pens and rubber bands and tacks and paper clips around. Lots of them. In every room. My mother says she has this problem too. We agreed that it’s better for us to just stay out of the office supplies department unless we really need something specific. But that rarely happens since we always have extras somewhere. So, knowing this about myself I am hesitant to let go of this one big bin of potential. If someone offered me $25. I’d let it go. Any kindred spirits?
In the end, which is coming soon, I will probably donate it all to some place that really needs it. Maybe Art Takes a Village would find some use for it all.
Beanie Babies and Handmade Dolls
This has to be the hardest thing so far. When we first got back and I found this box of Michelle’s unused stuffed animals, I knew that I should just donate the whole box to a hospital or some gifts for kids program. Then I started remembering…Michelle got all of these cute, fuzzy comfort toys when she was sick. Every time we went to the hospital for treatment she would get to choose one. Sometimes people would bring in handmade things as an extra bonus. Sometimes we’d be shopping at a craft store or a mall and I’d just buy her one. I walked a thin line between giving her comfort and spoiling her. It felt justified. Near the end, she lost interest in the toy chest at UCSF. She just wanted to go home afterwards. So that’s what we did.
I know that if I donate them, some other seriously ill child will get a short term boost. It will make them happy for a while. Then the feeling will fade and they’ll just want to go home. Is a small amount of joy worth the disappointment that follows? It’s a real dilemma. But I’m probably over-thinking it.
Other baggage
Then there are the things I feel mostly detatched from:
Trek Navigator Bike
I got this bike four years ago for my birthday. It cost more than any other birthday present I had ever bought myself. I felt entitled. I had a desire to get back to that time in my twenties when I rode my bike all over the place. But this bike was just too tall for me. And the weather in Northern California was just too unpredictable. And the roads were just too bumpy and unsafe. And I was just too busy to ride it. All excuses, but true.
So the bike sat in the garage for a year, then in the office bathroom for another year, then in a storage shed for a year, then to the east coast and back to the west coast in a travel trailer. And now it has been for sale for over a month. Maybe my price is too high because I feel guilty and silly for buying it in the first place. I know it’s worth $250. It is in pristine condition, only one scratch. It’s perfect for the right, tall, person.
And, even though I’m not attached to this bike any more, it will be very hard for me to come down on the price or just donate it with all the art supplies and beanie babies. Guilt is a strong emotion in my world.
Books
Well, at least some books. I couldn’t believe all the classic literature I had read when I found this box. I held onto them just in case I ever taught English. It looks like that won’t happen now. I’ve grown past that to something less defined.
What I remember about my career as an undergraduate student is understanding about half of what I read, and never wanting to speak out in class because of my insecurity. Still, I left Virginia Wesleyan with a sense of accomplishment and a real love of good writing. Somewhere along the way I realized that I had moved on from Shakespeare and Faulkner. I think these particular books have done their job with me. On the other hand, I will not sell my yoga books, or my meditation books or my expressive arts books. They are still forming a new foundation under my feet.
I guess the college counselor was right. A major in English can take you just about anywhere!
Christmas Items
We spent a lot of time and money collecting this kind of stuff. Every year we went to the half off sales at JoAnn’s and before we knew it we could have opened a holiday store of our own. It started when the kids were growing up. It continued with our program for people with disabilities. The last time we really celebrated Christmas with all our decorations was for our clients. It was very satisfying to see them walk in and get excited about simple things like putting candy canes on the Christmas tree. We sold the bulk of this stuff to a woman whose husband is going through cancer treatment. She loves, loves, loves Christmas. It felt appropriate. But there are a few items left.
Theoretically, we should just donate it all and walk away, and I’m fine with that. But my husband, Sam, is practically an incarnation of Santa Claus. He loves Christmas, not so much the gifts and the shopping, but the spirit of the season. He is a very giving person, loves to see people enjoy themselves, plus, he even smiles like Santa. Kids love him, unconditionally. So, selling this stuff might mean letting go of that part of him that makes him special. I might be getting more attached the longer it sits there, waiting…. I’ll let him decide.
The Emotional Side of Garage Sales
For the last five Saturdays we have had a garage sale from our 10×20 storage shed. Four of those Saturdays it rained. Last Saturday it was beautiful. By then we had sold most of the big stuff. So we were getting $1-2 for what was left…everything except for the few “good” items that remained. Still, it is such a good feeling to open that door and see this:
I learned a lot observing the process of buying and selling, collecting and purging. It seemed like half the people who came to our sales didn’t have anything particular in mind. They were just looking…for treasure? Some just didn’t want to miss anything. There seemed to be a yard salers’ club milling around every week. People knew each other by name and sometimes whispered about other yard sales they had just been to, as if we would be upset by this. Most looked at and touched everything remotely interesting and most went away unfulfilled. Although one lonely looking guy ended up with an armful of free history books. His face seemed a bit less dark when he walked out.
Over and over again I heard this: “I have a storage shed too. I don’t even know what’s there. I just keep putting more stuff in. Will you take a quarter for this roll of tape?”
Or this: “My wife/husband has two storage sheds, one with our stuff and one with her/his mother’s stuff. I doubt if we’ll ever do anything with it.”
I saw a lot of pained faces, like they knew they should let go of some stuff, but they just weren’t ready. I get it.
They’re right. Yard sales are a lot of work—hard physical work, but more importantly, deep emotional work. There were a series of shows on tv recently about “hoarders,” or “yard sale treasures,” where some professional comes into a person’s house and helps them get rid of most of their stuff. Letting go is extremely difficult. When you let go of mom’s vanity or dad’s tools, are you really letting go of mom or dad? When you sell your child’s size 10 dresses are you finally letting go of her as a child? And when you let go of your own half finished projects are you really letting go of that motivation to create?
This is too much for most people to deal with so they just let their stuff sit safely in a garage or storage shed, knowing that one day they will have to face it or leave it for their children to deal with after they are peacefully oblivious. It’s a chronic problem with Americans these days. We’ve made it to whatever dream we conjured up when we were young, satisfied ourselves with things, and realized that one earthquake, one super storm, one divorce or death can take it all away in the blink of an eye.
I’m happy to be in this letting go process now and although it feels like it has taken too long, it seems necessary. It gives me time to grieve properly. With each thing that I let go, I feel my heart healing. I feel myself emerging as a different person, a person with fewer needs and bigger perspective. Maybe it would have been easier if I had been through a tsunami or an earthquake and all of this stuff just went away. But I don’t think so.
******************
Beach Art
<a 
We went to the beach just after a storm and here are some of the things we saw:
Twisted Kelp
Muscle Shell
Muscle Shell Posing on a Rock
Kelp Trees
Twisty Seagrass
Heart Shell
Heart Shell in a Grass Frame
Group Photo
Follow me if you wanna see more!
Eight Cycles of Seven Years
(written on September 13, 2013)
These are flowers given to me by my daughters, Jennifer and Rebecca. So sweet!!
Today is Friday the 13th. Fifty-six years ago I was born on another Friday the 13th. My aunt’s dog also had 13 puppies on that day. Does that seem strange? I guess it might if you’re superstitious. But, being born on such an “unlucky” day, and realizing over the years that it was no different than any other day, I’m not superstitious at all. Being born on Friday the 13th was sort of like having freckles; it made me strong and resilient. But I’m sure my mother had something to do with that as well.
I have a faded black and white picture of my mother with me a few months after I was born. She is sitting on the side of a bed holding me next to her heart in a loving new-mother embrace. She looks very young and innocent. She was living with my father’s brother and his wife in Georgia, while my father was somewhere “overseas,” doing whatever he did for the US Marines. My mother says she was very proud during that time, even though my father was unimpressed that he had a baby girl. I guess he wanted a son as his firstborn but instead he got me. He would get a son, three, in fact, but he had to deal with me first.
When I was twelve or so, I looked forward to being an old lady one day. In fact, when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said a bag lady. Not knowing that most bag ladies were actually homeless, I imagined myself living in some small house, with a small garden and a few cats and a lot of books. I hadn’t started thinking about getting married or having children at that point. It was after all an adolescent dream, but there was something like freedom in that dream. Old ladies seemed to know exactly who they were and exactly where they were going, even if they were going there slowly. Now that I am practically a real old lady, I realize that those old ladies in my dream didn’t really know that much after all. They just knew where they had been and that was enough.
It is amazing to me how this age of 56 resonates in me right now. In some ways I still feel like I’m in my thirties. In other ways I feel like I’ve been around for a couple hundred years. I feel old and young at the same time. What is 56 anyway? Is it old or young or somewhere in between?
Teaser that he is, my brother jokingly called me an old lady when he wished me a happy birthday today. At first I felt insulted. But then, about a second later, I thought, “OK. Maybe I am an old lady,” at least in some people’s eyes. I let that notion settle in, then I texted my brother back and called him an old man, just for fun. Old lady, or middle aged lady, it doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is how you see things.
After eight birthdays on Friday the 13th, I’ve learned a few things, mostly that life can always be better, but it can also always be worse. I’ve never been devastated by a tornado like those poor people in Arkansas and Oklahoma, or tragically caught in a super hurricane even though I grew up on the east coast. I’ve never been in a serious car accident or had any major illness. I’ve never been in a war, nor have I ever had to use a gun to protect myself. My health is better than most women my age and I have had opportunities that most only dream of. I feel lucky and unlucky at the same time.
Like most women my age, I have suffered loss and I have had regrets and sometimes I wished I could go back and change some of the decisions I made when I was younger. I see the results of those “big mistakes,” that the Dixie Chicks talk about. We all make them, mostly out of ignorance, but it takes half a lifetime to realize the consequences. Then it’s simply too late.
As I see it now, the past is over; there is no turning back, no changing the trajectory that I chose twenty or thirty years ago. There is only today, and what I do today might affect tomorrow, but I shouldn’t count on it since tomorrow is notoriously unpredictable. This is the lesson I will be learning for the next seven years and the seven years after that.
When Friday the 13th of September comes again in 2027, if I am still healthy and alive, I’ll be seventy years old, as old as my mother is now. Maybe by then I’ll be a bag lady with a house, and I will have that look of knowing where I’ve been, and, with luck or no luck, that will be good enough.
End of the Season Thoughts
Rocky Path
We’ve joked about being gypsies, but it turns out not to be such a joke after all. I feel fortunate to have seen so much of this country, and, ironically, the traveling has really just begun. I know one day I’ll be back here, well, maybe not here, but somewhere in this vicinity. California has a lot to offer. It is amazingly diverse, both in structure and in population. It is a microcosm of the whole country. There are places I would never want to go back to and other places I would go to in a minute’s notice. The point is this: Living an RV life—a gypsy life—means being open to whatever comes your way. Yes, you can still make plans, but you also have to be ready to let them go.
For now, the loose plan is this: go to Southern Oregon for a couple months, work on boats and sell stuff, then head south, maybe toward Santa Barbara, then head east, maybe toward Texas, and keep heading east until we find ourselves back in the mid-Atlantic, most likely in the middle of winter. If I had a dream it would be to arrive somewhere near my family in Virginia around the holidays. That would be nice. It would also be nice if my two daughters could be there for the holidays. But here I go dreaming and planning again. We’ll see if Pema is right about the futility of making plans.
Sales Pitch, Sort of
“So, how do I get a membership to this camping club?” you may ask. Well, let me tell you, it’s easy, and not as expensive as you may think.
Years ago, being a member of Thousand Trails was pretty exclusive. People paid upwards of $10,000 to be lifetime members, which meant that they had year-round access to 30 or so campgrounds across the US. Back then, forty years ago, this was a new idea. The campgrounds were also new. People paid yearly dues to keep things nice and took pride in being a part of something similar to a yacht club. Things are different now.
These days, much to the chagrin of the original lifetime members, anyone can get a membership for as low as $425 for a whole year. Of course, there are limits to the membership. Instead of having access to the whole country, you only get one “zone,” which is basically about 18 campgrounds near you. If you camp a lot, this is a good deal since your actual camping fees are either free or $3. per night once you’re a member. And of course, there are other deals that may suit you better, but it all depends on how much you like to camp.
Sam and I sold quite a few new zone memberships in the four months we lived at Lake of the Springs. It wasn’t hard, once we figured out how to do it…sometime in July. We had no real training, so we flew by the seat of our pants so to speak, and now that the season is over, well, we were just getting started. In any case, the campground did pretty much sell itself, except for a few sour apples. The hardest part of our job was answering questions like this:
“Why is Thousand Trails letting all these ‘people off the streets’ in? They aren’t members and they don’t care about the park and they make noise and leave their trash all over, and I’ve paid $____ since 1972 and now the place is going to hell.” Etc.
People off the streets were actually potential new members, some of whom are now actual real members. But the park did let non members camp there for a fee. It’s how they made their money to pay their staff and keep the lake stocked with fish.
As much as we wanted to make things right for all the “old timers,” we couldn’t. The fact is that Thousand Trails has been around for over forty years and it is showing its age. Like America, its infrastructure is crumbling. Picnic tables need to be replaced, pools need to be resurfaced, roads need to be repaved, and plumbing and electrical systems need revamping. Maybe member dues haven’t been used to their best advantage. But that was far beyond the scope of our job description. We were there to sell memberships, not solve the problems of a system that was sinking under its own massive weight.
The last week we were there the power went out for a whole day and night, through no fault of the park, I might add. It was very hot that day and the pool was closed for repairs. I heard a couple neighbors complain that now they wouldn’t be able to make dinner or finish their laundry. Many were actually sitting outside of their RV’s waiting for the power to come back on so they could get on with their lives. Some simply got into their cars and drove to the next town for a nice dinner out, only to come back to find no power still.
After PG&E called to say that there would be no power until the next morning, I heard the rangers on the walkie-talkie working out how to distribute flashlights and batteries to anyone who needed them. “It will be sort of like camping,” one of them joked. Yes, camping. Remember that?
So, the final conclusion is this: If you think you can handle the great outdoors, with or without electricity and running water, you will love this deal. For only $35.42 per month you can have access to 30 plus campgrounds, that’s two zones for the price of one. You only have to commit to a four year contract and then you can camp your little hearts out. As our super-salesman supervisor would say, “What is there to think about? This is the deal of the century!”Or something like that.
Now back to the rest of this adventure.
Synopsis of the Summer
For the first month or so, Lake of the Springs was hot and dusty and just a little too wide-open for me. But I adjusted eventually, once I discovered civilization again. Yuba City, is about 45 minutes from us, has a cute downtown, a few decent restaurants, a health food store, several Starbucks, and an actual mall. All of this helped me to feel less isolated. Plus we found a great farmer’s market (emphasis on the singular here.) There is a farm in Oregon House where the farmer specializes in grass fed beef and free range chickens. She actually goes out in the morning, harvests whatever is fresh, then sells it to savvy customers between 10 and 3 on the weekends, at the farm. It’s a real rustic experience. I’ll probably write a post about her later since she is quite a character.
We saw Jenny almost every Saturday. Getting such fresh produce and meat made us feel healthy and happy. Of course, there were other good things. Living in a campground has its benefits:
1. You get to see the day emerge and fade as often as you want.
2. Your neighbors are either adventurous souls like yourself, or some of the many wild animals who wander through your “yard,” looking for scraps of people food. You don’t even mind when the deer eat your best tomato just as it is getting ripe. After all, they were here first and you are just visiting.
3. Sitting outside on your “patio” is a pleasure that you might not take advantage of in a real house.
4. Having a lake in your back yard is more than anyone could ask for.
There is an abundance of animals to marvel at: deer, jack rabbits, wild turkeys, geese, woodpeckers, quail, hummingbirds, squirrels and more than enough bugs to satisfy any kid’s curiosity. I feel as if I have been immersed in the natural world, with all its plusses and minuses, and I will never look at a zoo with the same eyes again.
Life at Lake of the Springs
*****
When I first arrived here everything looked vaguely familiar. Ten years ago we lived in Sonoma County, and, other than the lack of vineyards and million dollar houses, this area looks the same: lots of Oak and Manzanita trees on gently sloping hills with huge boulders poking up through the earth. Here and there is a field of rice or hay or some other sort of grass for cows. The cows have it good up here. Twenty or so share a field large enough to build a whole neighborhood on. Personally, I prefer the free range cows to rows and rows of grapes and too-close neighbors.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I was in a state of exhausted shock when I first drove into this campground. Although it felt like the middle of nowhere, I could tell by the size of the entrance sign that it was, indeed, somewhere. People have been camping here for over forty years, bringing their children, grandchildren, church groups and all the friends they can convince to go camping. It was once a private hunting preserve with deer and rabbits and quail and various types of fish. When Thousand Trails bought it there were only 20 or so campsites. Now it has over 500 sites for all kinds of campers—tents, trailers, fifth wheels, motorhomes and more and more cabins every year. Most of the people we talk to say they “grew up here,” meaning they came camping here when they were children. Now they bring their children and their children’s friends.
Lake of the Springs seems to be a sanctuary for hard working people from the Sacramento area. It’s just far enough away from the traffic and congestion to make it special. “The place sells itself,” said the assistant manager when we arrived. She was right. Our best sales have been by word of mouth. Period. No matter how many flyers, or phone calls or emails we put out there, it’s the “my friend said I should join” memberships that flow through our office effortlessly.
*****
Plans? Why Bother?
Rocky Path
“Nothing ever turns out the way you planned. Ever.”
This is a quote from one of my favorite meditation teachers, Pema Chodron. Sometimes she says things that really irritate me. But she’s right. I’ve recently realized that no matter how carefully I plan something, no matter how detailed I make my dreams, and no matter how consciously I work towards a certain goal, nothing ever works out the way I planned. Nothing. Ever. So, I’ve decided, for the hundredth time in the last year, to keep my “plans” loose, my mind open and my expectations tied up in a tight little bag that is packed away in some imaginary box inside my own future-focused brain.
This is all a lead-in to the fact that working as camp hosts in California Gold Country for the summer delayed our original plan, which was to sell two boats and the contents of one storage shed. None of that has happened because we’ve been distracted by learning how to sell camping memberships. (More on that later.) It’s all good though. We’ve added some new skills to our tool boxes, made a little money, and seen parts of California we hadn’t seen before…at least, officially.
So, instead of griping about what we haven’t done yet, I think I will spend the next few posts describing what we have done. It’s better than grieving over unfinished plans and dreams, right?
*****
on the road to simplicity 