Hope Floats
Today my daughter texted me that her two daughters were signed up for several courses for the winter session of extracurricular activities. She did this not only to keep me abreast of their goings on, but also because Kim and I give her holiday money intended specifically for the purpose of keeping her daughters enrolled in such activities to broaden their horizons. This past semester it was lacrosse for Charlotte and soccer for Evelyn. This winter it will be filmmaking and screenwriting for Charlotte and Mixed Martial Arts for Evelyn. OK, I think its important to let kids choose their likes and dislikes, and hopefully if they end up not liking it as much as they thought they would, that they should see it through nonetheless and get what they can out of the experience. I think its all great to see my grandkids moving forward with their lives, learning what they like and don’t like and trying new things.
I spend way too much time in retirement contemplating my navel, as they say. I sometimes wish I was a person who could just stay focused on sleeping, eating and exercising, but alas, I am not. My overactive mind sometimes plays tricks on me and gets all wound up thinking about stuff or, as the hat given to me by a less self-absorbed person says, “Hold on, let me overthink this”. When we are younger and in what we all call the prime of life, we are often too preoccupied with chores and obligations to spend much time reflecting. Everyone always says it is important to stop and think. But what is far less often said is that we need to stop thinking and just exist at one with our surroundings. I can do that a bit, but never enough it seems. It may be one of the reasons I like motorcycling so much. Unless you have an inordinate taste for flesh against asphalt, you have to stay in the moment and not think much beyond the 150 feet directly in front of you with occasional glimpses to the side with your peripheral vision to keep the broader picture ahead in mind. There is simply no serious advantage to doting on what’s in the rear view mirror and little value contemplating what lies well beyond the next curve. It teaches you to take life at it comes at you and to let things go when they have past you by.
I recently got a Zillow-generated email showing me the house at 313 Warren Road and that it has been put up “for sale” by the University now that I moved out of it a month or so ago. That was a glass of cold water in the face, given that it was a somewhat contentious departure for me and based entirely on the largesse with which I had bestowed on the University for many years. I was essentially being evicted because they defined my gift to them in a way that suited the administrative parts of the University (real estate and legal). I chose not to fight it in the end since while I thought I had a case, I also knew that it was self-defeating to fight with an institution that has meant so much to me and my family for so many years. It was hard not to grumble a bit, but fighting was simply not productive, so I let it go and feel that I handled it reasonably well. Then the Zillow ad came into my inbox.
To begin with, I had to look at all the nice promotional pictures of the house and how they had tarted it up finally (something they were supposed to do for my last year of use and yet, they managed to not do it for reasons of “bad weather” and “supply chain” problems). Those problems apparently went away quickly once they wanted to put the place on the market. I felt a moment of pride in that unlike many home renovations, the only thing they seem to have changed are the hanging light fixtures in the kitchen, which I cannot get too huffy about since the others were twenty-six years old and styles do change. The biggest concern I had was that they were representing the house as “for sale” which was contrary to my understanding of how the property was to be handled. Indeed, it was a 35 year leasehold on offer, not a freehold, so “sale” is actually a misrepresentation done to try to get past the problems Americans have with this form of property occupation. The most confusing part of it all is what happens to the buildings and their improvements and that was the topic of most of my conflict with the University. They took the view that it was all theirs even though they never gave me proper gift credit for it (they claim that was a simple administrative error). I didn’t want the money back, I just wanted an extension to let my grandkids enjoy the place a few more years, but that was quickly taken off the table as untenable. My millions of dollars of donations over the years and the fact that this very property was one such donation, be damned.
I put a call into the University real estate people and got no return call. Meanwhile, my neighbor had active communications with them explaining how they saw the whole leasehold working this time. It seems they knew that friends of hers were showing interest in the property. That all caused me to start an email to the provost of the University, but I took a deep breath and deleted it after one full page of grievances had been madly typed out. What was the point? I had already moved on. To do that would have been to take my eye off the road ahead and to risk tasting the pavement by turning around and not just looking back, but trying to fight a fight that was already behind me. Nonetheless, it took a few more deep breaths to settle myself down and slowly start to progress forward. It won’t be entirely helpful (but then again, maybe it will) that we will arrive at the Cornell Club in New York City in several days for our five day holiday visit with the family. We are even doing our holiday luncheon right there in a rented room at the Club. That alone should be enough for me to get caught chanting a meditation Om mantra and force me to stay in the moment.
I recognize that writing yet another story about how the University done me wrong is perpetuating the issue, but I prefer to think of this as the penultimate chapter in this sage, brought to you by our friends at Zillow. The ultimate chapter will undoubtedly be some combination of hearing that some nice family has taken up the lease on the joint and started to move in. I will, for finality sake, suggest that be combined as one experience with my next visit to Ithaca when I drive past the house on Warren Road and see people enjoying their new home and all the things I put into it. In a world where many people go through the mild trauma of separation from a beloved homestead, this one is both still fresh and somewhat more poignant because I feel I got kicked out of the place rather than chose to leave. That is only mostly true, but I still think it makes things different. Nonetheless, we must all move on and I know I want and need to move on.
We have a lovely home that we love and I know from a neighbor that the woman who planted much of our award-winning succulent garden still wistfully bemoans having to sell the property due to her now-dead husband’s health issues. Everything in life keeps going around and none of us own any of it. We are all just visitors in this wondrous place and passing things on to the next person to enjoy should make us happy, not bitter. Reaching a level of enlightenment to accept those facts is a key to finding peace and living in the moment. It is that hope that floats on wings of hawks as I look out towards the Pacific Ocean or the snow-covered San Gabriel mountains this morning.