673 Miles

She lived in LA, I lived in Ashland, Oregon. That was the daunting puzzle from Date One.  Get in a car and drive and in a mere 673 miles, ten hours and thirty minutes, assuming a decent tailwind and no onerous traffic delays, I could get from my front door to hers. 

Which is part of the reason why we just kind of moved in together on our second date back in March of 2020. That wasn’t the plan, but between a burgeoning pandemic and 673 miles, it made as much sense as anything else in 2020. 

What’s amazing is that it worked. I’m particular about things, need my space, don’t think as well in a crowded space of two and so on and so forth. I don’t know when I got to be this way, but I did. And yet I found it easy to be around Teresa. We made space for each other in our little homes. Sometimes, laughing, she’d just build a pillow wall between us and hunker down to read. We both loved big smoothies in the morning and appreciated the same kinds of foods. Sharing ideas was delicious. But most importantly, all the invisible stuff. When we were together there was a sense of being in harmony or in sync. This made being around each other smooth and a whole lot of fun. We often say to each other, in an expression of the wonder of alchemy, “one plus one equals light”.

So we spent Spring, Summer and into the early Fall inhabiting our two unit estate. One unit was in LA, the other was in Ashland and every few weeks one or the other of us would get homesick and we’d pack up the car and head on over to the other unit. Not quite the ideal lifestyle, so we began to debate our choices: LA or Ashland, where shall we live?  As a person long accustomed to small towns and open spaces, the idea of living in Los Angeles caused me a bit of panic. Teresa, likely more adventurous and certainly more flexible than me, was open to considering little Ashland.  

My one room cottage was truly sweet. But much too small for two. So we began looking for a nice place to rent together. Or even a house to buy.

One way I often think about life is that things happen as they happen just because they do. There is no greater  plan, there is no design. You're walking down a trail and trip over a rock. It’s because you weren’t paying attention to where you put your feet. 

But it’s weird being alive. I don’t know if any of you have noticed that? Because things happen sometimes where it would appear that, no matter how much reason and logic you throw at it, there is something behind the scenes exerting some pretty considerable influence to affect the outcome.  Like you trip on that rock, fall face down in the bushes and there you are staring at your car keys which you’d lost at the beginning of your hike. Or, closer to home, I’m about to bring to a close a date with someone I’ve just met, but instead I am moved to touch fingertips with her and a wildly cosmic vibration runs between the two of us. So instead of walking out the door of the restaurant, we move in together. And that moment may well be determinant in the outcome of the rest of my life. That wasn’t my plan for things. But it appeared to have been THE plan. 

It’s moments like that that really cause me to believe that there is a greater consciousness out there that is rooting for us to do the right thing. It is clear that sometimes, often even, we need help in figuring out what that might be. And occasionally (or maybe even frequently and I’m just too skeptical to sense it) the invisible hand of the greater something comes along and gives a nudge. 

Well, it was either that invisible hand or just bad luck. But in four and half months of looking for a rental in the Ashland area, not a single place appeared that held the least appeal to us. Perhaps we’ve become over discerning,  but textured sheetrock and shag just doesn’t cut the bill anymore. House hunting was tricky too. We only saw two that we were really interested in. The first had, for some reason, been on the market for over 800 days. But the very day we reached out to a realtor to have a look at it, someone else moved to buy it.  The exact same thing happened to the next one as well. And a big piece of land we were considering modern homesteading on during a wild splurge of pandemic daydreaming had a grassfire burn across it.

We tried so hard to make Ashland work, because besides the fact that it was a nice place, it was also where my 18 year-old daughter lived, just a few blocks away, with her mother.  Sonora, my 23 year-old daughter, though enjoying a gypsy life, often passed through to visit. I was in Ashland to be close to my daughters and this was extremely important to me. Their mother and I divorced 14 years ago. My life had been built around travel and I had lived at least as much in Mexico as in the US for most of those last 14 years. Because of these choices I’d spent much less time with my kids than the yearning of my heart would have liked. Ashland made being close to them much more possible and that was why I was living there.  

Four and a half months of looking found us nothing. Teresa and I tried very hard to get a Yes from Ashland, but we kept getting No’s.  So one July day, in exasperation, we played the imagination game; “if we could live anywhere, where would it be?”.  We considered the entire globe and then ended up Googling the best small towns in America.  We considered for a moment a few places on the list; Bisbee, Arizona; Hood River, Oregon; Bozeman, Montana.  None felt right. 

Santa Fe?

Then somehow the idea of Santa Fe, New Mexico emerged, even though it wasn’t on any of the lists. Each of us had lived there many years before. We both knew good people there. It was a job in Santa Fe in 1991 that led me to work with potters in Oaxaca. I’d long imagined living there again one day. It was a region filled with creative artists and old-time rooted people and as close as one can get to living in southern Mexico while still being in the US. 

The idea electrified both of us. It felt like the perfect mid-way point between LA and Ashland, between her life and mine. More than that actually, it felt like the place where together we could arise. It felt like the place that our coming together could take on a greater meaning, where we could expand into whatever was to come next in our lives. Our heads spun with daydreams and possibilities. 

That same day, Teresa reached out to people she knew in Santa Fe. An old friend responded saying she had a house she was looking to rent. We looked at the listing and our (discerning) eyes lit up.  Thick adobe walls, wood and brick floors, hand-plastered finishes, beamed ceiling, character everywhere! However, that offer was bested by an artist aunt of Teresa’s who was away for many months and whose house was sitting empty. She said, “Dust it off and you are welcome to stay there as long as you need while you get the lay of the land”. Santa Fe said YES!

But there was that major hitch. If I was in Santa Fe, when would I see my kids? We chewed on that and agreed we were just daydreaming anyway.  To just up and move to a brand new city was a huge decision. We decided to mull it over, give it some time, and continue splitting time between the two units of our estate.  Zea had just graduated from high school and would be off to college once the pandemic had subsided. Six months? A year? Whatever it was, I wanted to be nearby until that time.  Teresa and Zea got along wonderfully and the plums were ripe on the trees in Ashland. So although Santa Fe said yes to us, we were less certain. Moving to Santa Fe, or wherever made the most sense, could wait. The daydreaming was a good thought experiment. 

The feeling of being electrified didn’t go away, however, and that night laying in bed I began thinking: It could be a wonderful thing if Zea came with us to Santa Fe. For 14 years she had lived up the street at her mom’s house. It would be really meaningful to have some time living in the same house before she headed out into the world to make her life.  And if that worked out, we wouldn’t have to wait 6 months or a year. We could all just, gulp, go to Santa Fe!

But...Teresa. We had been seeing each other for just 5 months. In what reality does one move to a new city with a new boyfriend and his 18 year-old daughter after 5 months? 

Maybe, I thought, in this one? 

Dating in the time of Covid shouldn’t really be measured by normal standards of time. At least not the way we were doing it, which was actually living together full-time with no distractions. By my reasoning it should be measured more like dog years!  By that logic, which is as good as any logic I can conjur, we had been Covid dating for 35 months (5 months times 7- for the dog year/covid factor). And that, my friends, is long, long past when you’d move in with your girlfriend in a brand new town and bring the kids along too. 

So in the morning over our breakfast smoothies, with a nerve-ball in my stomach because I knew it was a crazy idea, I said, “what if, like, maybe... umm... Zea came with us to Santa Fe? Ya know?”  And then, speaking a bit faster than I could make the words I delivered the sweetener, “ andthenwecouldmove there rightaway, you see? Like, there wouldn’tbe any need to be in Ashland and not have a place to live. We couldallgo stay at your aunt’s awesome house.”

I took a breath, afraid to look her in the eyes. What a foolish idea. 

She was quiet for a moment and then said, “yes, we could do that.”  

“Really?”

“Yeah, it could be a great experience for Zea and a sweet time for both of you. And I’d enjoy getting to know her more. Let’s see what she has to say.”

Zea bubbled with enthusiasm at the idea.  And then she said “Oh, and Dad, have you talked to Sonora lately?” 

“Not lately.”

“Well, she was just telling me that she and her boyfriend are thinking of spending some time in Santa Fe or Taos this Fall and Winter.” 

I don’t know who writes life’s script, but man is it full of surprises! Two and a half months later we’d all downsized, packed boxes and loaded trucks. LA and Ashland came together in the place that somehow made the most sense in the world; Santa Fe. Zea came along. Sonora and her boyfriend, Kadin, following their own particular orbits, showed up as well and rented a place not too far up the road in Taos. With Teresa’s gift of orchestration we celebrated the best Thanksgiving and Christmas I’ve had with my kid in many, many years. And we began to get our feet on the ground in this new land.   

And though it has not all been easy, often far from it, it has been good. 

Santa Fe means Holy Faith in Spanish. What more apt name than this for the place the wild currents of these last 12 months have delivered us? It has been an era filled with moments of astoundingly bright, and shudderingly dark, holy moments. And it has been a time that like no other in my life, has taught me of the meaning of the word faith. Something within me has begun to understand and believe that things happen for powerful reasons that I can’t comprehend and to trust in that. Trust in that and let go of working so hard at coercing my life to be this or that thing, and instead begin to surrender to a softer kind of unfolding. 

Some combination of holiness and faith has landed me in a house on the edge of a forest in the mountains above Santa Fe living with a fascinating, fierce, loving woman, spending rich time with my children and daily conjuring into existence a new way of living built around that which my creative heart is called to do. 

And here I bring this episode of this tale to a close. But I’m not quite done yet. There is one more chapter in this tale, and it will be about how Teresa and I have fallen into a creative project that draws out both of our gifts and backgrounds and is all the greater because we are doing it together. 

One plus one equals light. 

See you next week.