Tag: house for sale

Home, Finally

Posted on | by Susan Tweit | 34 Comments on Home, Finally

 

“Wherever I hang my hat is home.” That’s not exactly true for me–I’m a very place-centric person tied to the natural range of big sagebrush at the foot of the Rocky Mountains–but today I hung my hat rack in my bedroom here in Santa Fe. So I guess it’s official: I am home.

As I said in my last post, Wanderings, I’ve wandered a lot in the past decade, in search of where home is in this final turn of my life. I’m 66 years old, closer to 70 now than 60, and I feel the pull to root and stay.

I thought I had found that place when I bought my Paonia house, but I reckoned without considering my age, which means I no longer want or need a house or yard to tend. Also, without considering my need for good healthcare, part of which is a need for nearby wild that I can easily walk to every day. Walking is my medicine, the therapy that helps me live well with Lupus and its associated conditions, Raynaud’s Syndrome and Sjogrens (often called dry eye).

All of that plus some other personal factors brought me to Santa Fe, to this beautiful and light-filled condo with views of the mountains in the neighborhood where I used to live.

The Sangre de Cristo Range after the last snowstorm.

This space makes me happy. I’m a story above the ground, overlooking a bit of wild piñon-juniper woods. The sun streams in the large windows during the day, supplying free heat in winter. The architecture is spacious, yet cozy enough to feel welcoming.

Come take a tour:

To the right of the garage door (yes, Rojita, my red Toyota Tacoma, has a garage to live in!) where I can admire it is the double column of glass prayer flags I’ve moved to five homes in the past, um, four years. We’re both settling here.

My Greg Reiche glass prayer flag sculpture, back in Santa Fe at last.

At the top of the stairs, my front door is graced by a Northern New Mexico chile wreath with dried garden flowers, made by a lovely Hispanic lady from Alcalde. I bought it at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market.

Chile pequin arranged around died yarrow and baby roses.

Inside is a small foyer. Turn right, and you enter the front bedroom, aka my office, where I am writing this blog post right now as sunset flames the western sky. (The photo at the top of the post is the sunset from the west deck, off my office.)

My office with the west deck beyond. (Note my saddle in the left-hand corner of the room!)

Turn left from the foyer and you pass the kitchen and breakfast bar, and enter the “great room,” the high-ceilinged dining/living area with its huge south-facing windows, and tall sliding doors leading to the east deck.

The great room with evening light and its east-facing deck. Welcoming, comfy, and totally me.

The kitchen is off the great room as you first come in, an easy connection with the dining area.

The kitchen is compact, but the design makes it comfortable to use. And I do eat breakfast at the breakfast bar.

Turn around to look back at the foyer from the living area.

Did I mention that Arabella has her own south-facing window? She’s a happy Christmas cactus.

The east deck has a view of the Sangre de Cristo range in the distance, over the ridge that hides Highway 285 from view. The main bedroom, also facing east, shares that mountain view.

Nothing to see here–just the mountains rosy with sunset.

I really did just hang the hat rack. I’m home.

Hats on the rack and all.

I am fortunate, and grateful to have found this place that feels just right for the “home stretch” of my life, as the Guy calls this time.

And what of my Paonia house?

That sweet place with its shady yard is still seeking someone to buy it and love it! Please help spread the word by sharing this link to a restored 1920s house in an artsy and progressive town surrounded by organic farms and orchards, at the foot of the West Elk Mountains in western Colorado.

This flyer is just a teaser; the full details are online at the link above.

Thank you, and many blessings to you and yours!

More Practice in Endings and Beginnings

Posted on | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment on More Practice in Endings and Beginnings

As those who have read this blog for a while know, 2011 was an intense year for me of learning about how to love someone and also let them go with as much care and grace as possible. I managed my mother's hospice care through her death in February of that year, and then, with the help of our daughter Molly, tended my husband Richard through his death in November.

Folks who work or volunteer in hospice care often say something like: "It's a privilege to be with you and your family in this journey." It's true: accompanying and/or shepherding someone through the end of their life is a privilege. It's a time of grace, when Life is often stripped down to what we value most, which is usually not things or power or status. 

As our physical abilities drop away, we have the opportunity to leave behind the emotional and intellectual baggage we may have carried. Our egos get checked at the door, as it were. We may find it easier to express love, we may speak of our core values and our understanding of what mattered most in our lives. We may simply be with an ease and comfort we struggled to find in our complicated, hurried lives. 

Of course, dying isn't all sweetness and light, trumpets and puffy clouds. As with the other major passage at the beginning of life, there is pain, sleeplessness, and no small amount of indignity and even fear. (For caregivers too.) Losing control is often one of our greatest fears–having to be dressed and undressed and fed, not to mention having the people we love (or relative strangers) change our diapers and wipe our butts. 

Yet that's a normal part of the arc of our existence. It's both how we come into this life, and most usually, how we go out. 

Now that ending part is coming up for my dad, Bob Tweit, who just turned 90 last month.

(The photo at the top of the post is a sweet one of Dad with my mom, in 2008, the year he turned 80 and mom was 77, when my brother Bill, my sister-in-law Lucy, and my youngest niece, Alice took the folks to Norway to visit our family there. My cousin Halvard Tveit told me in an email today that Mom initially said she was too tired to go on the midnight boat trip around the harbor in Trondheim, until she learned there was a possibility of seeing sea eagles. Then she decided to go, but she watched for sea eagles from a supine position with her head in Dad's lap!)

Dad on another of the adventures we planned to celebrate his 80th birthday, a trip to a wilderness yurt in the mountains on edging North Park, Colorado, near Rocky Mountain National Park. Dad and Mom hiked the whole three miles in to the yurt, and thoroughly enjoyed the days we spent there. That's Dad on the left, and my brother, Bill, on the right, relaxing on the deck of the yurt.

A week ago, Dad was diagnosed with lymphoma, cancer of the lymph system. It's a kind of cancer that is highly curable with high doses of chemo if you are young and healthy. Dad is neither–as his oncologist said, the chemo would kill him, after making him so sick he would wish he was dead–and the type of lymphoma he has is particularly aggressive.

The cancer was discovered when a lump appeared on the back of his neck while he was in the hospital. Ten days after that lump was biopsied, it has spread so much it's almost encircling the back of Dad's neck. His prognosis: two weeks to two months. 

When I called Dad after he learned the grim news, I said I was sorry, and he responded in his age-slowed voice, "Everyone dies sometime." True words. But we're not all particularly thoughtful or gracious about letting go of life. 

Dad's out of the hospital and in hospice care at the convalescent center at his retirement village. He's too weak to go back to his apartment in Assisted Living, so Lucy and Bill have decided to move him home to their house for the remainder of his time. I think they are saints!

My job is to consult from a distance, make sure all of his financial and legal affairs are in order, and arrange for his end-of-life wishes. Which will have me scrambling around quite a bit for the next couple of weeks. I'll have a hand in his care for ten days in late September, when I will go to Olympia to stay at Bill and Lucy's and tend Dad (and the household dogs and cats) while Lucy and Bill go to Germany to visit my middle niece, Sienna, and her family, a break that Lucy and Bill will really need by then, I suspect. 

I am reminded (again) of how grateful I am to have a family that pulls together in times of crisis, and also enjoys hanging out together when it's not a crisis. We love each other, and we do our best to live that way. 

A family expedition to the Beartooth Plateau last summer: Alice Tweit (holding Pepper, the Italian Grayhound), Lucy Winter (holding Sarge, also an IG), Bill Tweit, and Dad. 

I am also reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson's words about capital'L' Life: 

Our lives are an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn. That there is no end in nature but every end is a beginning. 

Dad's headed for that combined ending and beginning. Mom's spirit is waiting for him, I suspect, and probably getting impatient. For all I know, Richard's spirit is on the lookout for Dad too. 

For the rest of the Tweit clan, our job is to help Dad through this journey on to whatever's next with as much patience, care, and love as we can muster. It's his last trip with us… 

___

On an entirely different note, the for-sale sign is up at my house. If you want to take a virtual tour, check out the photos on Zillow. The place is looking pretty darned wonderful, I think. And if you know someone who would love to buy a beautifully renovated mid-Century Modern house in northwest Wyoming, please share!