The House
Janice sat at the kitchen table sipping her coffee and watching the morning news on the secret drop-down flat-screen TV she had installed in the kitchen cabinet when she renovated the kitchen last year. It was her dream kitchen repeat with six-burner cooktop, twin dishwashers for party clean-up and a full beverage center with wine cooler and beer/soda cooler drawers. It was accented in her favorite color, fire-engine red, and had a mosaic backsplash with brightly colored (Guatemalan-looking) southwestern motifs like cacti, lizards and a roadrunner, all of which she could see at various times of the day through the large plate glass window pointing east out to the driveway and the distant mountains. On the far side was a natural rustic wood counter (smoothed to a satin finish) and a folding glass wall out to a large deck and palapa that looked out at forty miles of Pacific Ocean. Not a bad spot to sit and have your morning coffee, she thought.
Janice had her note pad and her measuring tape and was going around the house measuring different pieces of furniture and spaces. She was preparing for another move, but this one would be both easier and more challenging than normal. It was easier because the house was renovated and ready for them at this point. It was harder because she would need to consolidate three houses of stuff into this one place. That meant furniture triage with some internal redeployment of pieces, some using hitherto unused spaces (please without excess cluttering, she thought), some gifting to next generation kids, nieces and nephews (throw in a sibling or two, but note to self… do not offer pieces up like charity bazaar, or risk great offense), and some to the trash man.
It was that time of life for Janice. That peaking of life when accumulation turns to decumulation (a real word unknown to spellcheck, but well-known to retirement specialists….usually used to mean spending down your nest egg). But that didn’t feel exactly right to her. She had married late and never had a house of her own before this. She had been an apartment dweller for her whole adult life and this house felt like a place she should be carried over the threshold. Her husband might be able to pull that maneuver off if he rested up, but it was more a symbolic need than a physical requirement. He was supposed to be retiring in eight months and his winding down would coincide with her working like a Dervish to orchestrate the details of the move.
Janice had lived her life like a rolling stone. A military brat who became an itinerant song and dance gal. L.A. to N.Y. and a dozen Broadway touring companies in between (she might write a book about life on a tour bus when you are NOT the “gleat star” as the Korean wardrobe lady called her). Meeting and marrying her husband had seemed like a stabilizing move, but they had moved primary residence four times in twelve years, and that didn’t include the four vacation house moves that had transpired. She knew that sounded so much like a “poor little rich girl” story, but Janice was thankful for what she had and simultaneously anxious to pare down the habitats and stay put for a while.
Her husband had an office in this house, but somewhere in the kitchen renovation, what had been a built-in wifely desk had been abandoned to the design aesthetic. She would need an office nook somewhere. The house had a massive underutilized laundry room that she had not been allowed to renovate away from its mauve laminate surfaces. That was a two-birds-with-one-stone play she liked. There was a large guest room closet she could take over. But, of course, that would undermine the extended guest stays she hoped for or make her use of it very inconvenient. Her husband offered the far side of his office as the best alternative, so she now had three serious alternatives from which to choose.
The reason Janice needed an office was because she had moved on from singing and dancing for the most part and was now helping a friend build a a song and dance school. It was a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, and it’s mission was to make performers more able to be self-sufficient as performers. It also served to give her friend a platform for his teaching and mentoring, and a means to make him, as one of the most accomplished performer/director/producer/arranger sorts in New York More self-sufficient himself. Janice was the Chairman of the Board and as the organization grew and thrived, it gave her a way to be involved in her craft without stressing her joints or her vocal chords. She was the administrative end of the business and was now being considered as a candidate to launch a West Coast branch of the mother ship. A big step to say the least.
Do you remember the Bernard Slade play/movie Same Time Next Year? Alan Alda meets Ellen Burstyn and they have a once-a-year affair that lasts 25+ years. The funny bit I remember best is that he’s a businessman while she’s a hippie and she becomes a businesswoman while he becomes a beach bum and lounge pianist. They are cyclically out of synch, but simpatico nonetheless. Well, just as Janice is gearing up her business side, her husband is gearing down and thinking of taking up watercolors. Go figure.
The house is the metaphor for their life together. It’s plain, but beautiful. It’s not big, but yet feels sprawling. It’s secluded, but not gated. It has views of the Ocean, but isn’t close enough to feel the effects of the sea air.
And Janice is retiring with her husband, but reengaging with her career in new and interesting ways. It is a modern retirement that has nothing retiring about it. Janice finished her coffee and went in to shower and start her day of organizing her assault on the western arts world. She saw her husband outside in his hot tub, his morning ritual. She wondered what he would be doing that day. He wandered into the master bath as she finished blow-drying and he said, “hi Sweetie, what’s up?”
Janice responded for some unknown reason with the famous Bette Davis line, “I’d love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair!”