Home Alone
Who doesn’t love the original 1990 Macaulay Culkin movie with such greats as Joe Pesci, John Candy and Catherine O’Hara? The idea of a kid left alone and on his own devices over the holidays is a hilarious premise, made all the funnier by the ne’er-do-well assailants slipping, falling and setting themselves on fire as they try to best the kid left Home Alone. Well, I have been left home alone for the day today as Kim and the grandgerms have all gone off for an extended day to Disneyland and all the fun that might entail for them. My weather app tells me that it is suppose to get to 91 degrees today on this hilltop, which is a little cooler than it has been the last few days, but still plenty warm to keep me from over-exerting myself if I possibly can. This trick for me will be how I choose to spend my day and what I will do for my meals. That sounds like a good problem to have, but as we all learn in retirement, idleness is the devil’s workshop and scheduling your time is of paramount importance if you are to end the day feeling good about how you have used your time.
It’s funny how we all crave alone time and then almost simultaneously desperately get lonely and want together time. Man is more a gregarious beast than a solitary beast. I remember when we moved to Italy we went to the beach at Lido de Ostia outside Rome. There was a huge expanse of lovely, wide-open beach in both directions, and yet all the Italians were gathered in on small area enjoying each other’s presence rather than spreading out for some space and quiet for themselves. I recall asking my mother about that phenomenon and she, being a more worldly woman than most, explained that some cultures are simply more gregarious than others and that what might seem like uncrowded to some might be seen as unnecessarily over-crowded by others. Italians, she felt, preferred to be around one another, even at the expense of less space per person. We can all imagine other cultures that prefer more solitude.
We find the same going on in our choice of places to live. Do we prefer urban high-density, suburban medium-density or rural and remote? Even within the suburban category, there is really a delineation that I choose to call suburban versus exurban. To me, suburban areas have sidewalks where exurban areas do not and if you want to walk around you are doing so either on the road or in an open field. We sort of have a blend of the two. We have no sidewalks, which implies exurbia, but with what seems like functional 2.5 acre zoning lots on this hilltop, and being less of a pass-through than not, our streets are almost equally used for driving or walking. I suppose that gives it more of villagy feeling, only without the little shops and pubs. I hear people say more and more that what they want is to live in an area where they are not on top of their neighbors, but close enough to feel like they have them and where one can drive easily around to do shopping and whatnot, but where you can also walk to the market to shop and take care of personal services. That blend between suburban and urban seems to have become a bit of an ideal, but it turns out that villages are harder to come by than you might think. The retirement model for all of that involves buying a golf cart and being able to drive around without using your car to do so. Some people in our neighborhood have golf carts, but I feel like they are pushing the envelope on that and have to look for reasons to use them since it seems very few are using them to head to the course for a daily round. I see people driving their dogs around in the golf carts, which seems like a funny way to walk the dog, but who am I to judge. If I had to walk a dog every day and I had a golf cart, that might well be me running around the streets of our neighborhood.
My friend Steven owns a golf cart, but he lives out in the Palm Springs area and he works from home in the mornings and plays golf most afternoons. He lives in a community where life seems to center around the three-course golf club. That is very different from our neighborhood, where we have a mediocre course nearby that nobody seems to go to to dine or hang out in the clubhouse. I overdid the golf thing in my youth and have virtually no interest in the game at this point. I don’t even own a set of clubs anymore though I do seem to have a pair of golf shoes for some inexplicable vestigial reason.
I was speaking to Mike & Melisa and Faraj & Yasuko recently about our neighborhood and we are all in agreement that while we worried about the potential isolation of of our property layouts, we have been pleased to have gathered enough friends from the neighborhood to feel very good about our social web in the community. This has not happened all by itself. We have all joined the various organizations like Kim and Melisa joining the Women’s Group or all of us (except our one holdout, Mike) joining the Hidden Meadows Garden Club. We have group gatherings on a regular basis, which is nice and cordial, but more than that, the six of us have chosen to gather even more regularly to both help one another with projects and to simply dine together for no particular occasion other than to spend time together. It has occurred to each and every one of us that this is exactly the social environment of a village that we had all wanted, and we all seem to appreciate our good fortune in having found it. We are all going so far as to plan trips with one another and that is adding to the glue that keeps us tightly connected.
My contribution to the group is to be the pain in the ass that drops by unannounced almost every day. I like to think that no one is therefore left home alone on any day regardless of where their partner has gone for whatever reason. This is reciprocated now by the rest of the gang starting to drop by for no particular reason other than to commune. They have not evolved yet to the “unannounced” stage of my presumption, and they usually call first to check if dropping by is convenient, but I like to think that the charm I bring to the equation is to NOT do that and thereby given them all a fun topic to rag on me about and to tell other friends and family about. “Rich just drops by whenever he pleases, can you believe that?” is certainly something they have likely shared with their other friends and family. I like to think I am giving them some texture to life by giving them that. In return, they seem to want to take care of me more when Kim is away. So, for instance, today, Mike called me twice in the morning to make sure I had a full agenda and was keeping busy. He must sense my ability to get into trouble when I’m home alone. Then Melisa called to say tat she couldn’t stand the thought of me trying to sort out my own dinner and invited me over to join them for a grilled hamburger and homemade pasta salad in the evening. So as it turns out, being home alone now works out pretty well for me…at least for one day.