Housing Insecurity

8 August 2021 [Above photo: My meagre island garden now provides kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, basil, cilantro, lemon grass, and marigolds. The peas are just starting up their trellis, but my soil needs serious work.]

I have discovered that writing a blog is not a habit I can easily break. 5 years posting every week is enough time to experience withdrawal symptoms when stopping. And on the positive side, there is the immediate satisfaction of organizing, recording, and refining one’s thoughts and activities. It helps me to pay close attention to my life, how I spend my time. Putting it down improves my writing ability and gives me a purpose on Sunday.  However, I mostly miss the sense it provides of connection with my family members and friends, all of whom are at some distance and who I can see only irregularly.  Even if it lacks a certain direct plunge into my deeper, more conflicted, and complicated feelings, I have learned to say things without saying them. That is, if a reader wants to look deeper, they can expand on what I write in a similar direction to my own thoughts from the tenor of what I do reveal. So, it needn’t be simply white bread, filling but lacking in nuance and nutrition, as I suggested in my last post.

I’m watching the sun burn off a thin layer of fog, listening to the Brahms Clarinet Sonata Opus 120 No. 1. I’ve always loved the Brahms Clarinet Quintet but have never, I believe, listened to the sonatas. He knew the potential of the clarinet and shows it off to good effect. Part of my love for these is, I’m sure, from listening to my brother, Chas, play clarinet as a high schooler. He was good and our teacher, Johnny Jessen, appreciated Chas’ talent. After our respective back-to-back lessons (me on flute) in downtown Seattle, we’d go to a market nearby and buy something “exotic” to us, like a coconut, a pomegranate, or chestnuts. In the late ‘40s and early ‘50s there, coconuts weren’t common. Even under the gray Seattle skies and the cloud of my father’s sudden death in 1950, we managed to find fun.

Having decided that I’d feel too isolated living on the Blue Hill Peninsula in the Maine winter, I selected Portland as a good place to set down new roots. Funny, new roots at 81yo (in 3 weeks)!  Visiting there for a couple of days in June, I tried to scope out the apartment scene and came away discouraged. Very few listings were available and they cost more than I had hoped. I also didn’t understand the system, where they were listed, and how to be in competition for a desirable place. I returned this past week to look in earnest. Over three days I learned how: they are listed on Zillow, Trulia, and Craigslist. As soon as a listing appears, I’d send an email and at a decent hour I’d call to arrange a viewing.  Also, I filled out the Zillow application for $29 and which I could then submit as quickly as listings appeared.  The service also provides the landlord with a credit rating score.

I met some lovely people and some not so lovely. The first place I saw was in a wreck of a building; at the end of the viewing, the owner said, “I hate to tell you this but I pretty much promised the apartment to a young woman who saw it yesterday.” When I wrote her the next day, noting that it “wasn’t very nice” and that she could have saved us both a trip, she defensively went off on me, confirming to me that she knew she was covering her bases at my expense. I saw a wonderful townhouse in S. Portland on a quiet cull de sac next to open space with a nature path along a stream.  It was pretty and owned by a sweet young couple who’d recently left San Francisco because of housing prices. Spacious, room for a workshop, hardwood floors, airy and light, it was, however, the suburbs and I knew then I wanted to live in the city. [It is funny to talk about Portland as a city. The population is around 66,000 [half of Berkeley which I think of as a town.]. I emailed and called one broker at 8:30AM; he’d posted on Craigslist at 8PM the night before and had 75 applicants! After several other tries, I decided to stay another night for two last viewings.

I did not want to spend much on a hotel and couldn’t stay with my unvaccinated brother in Brunswick because of the new surge of the Delta variant, so I booked the cheapest nearby motel I could find online: the Rodeway “Inn” in Saco. Well, it did have soap and shampoo and was reasonably clean. The following night I signed into the Sun Rise Motel in Saco. Again, it was clean but very, very modest. A tiny bar of soap, no shampoo, no bath gel, no lotion, no conditioner. I am spoiled, having had elegant accommodations for 1/3 the price in Thailand and Myanmar.

Friday started off poorly.  A woman who had stood me up and lied about it on Thursday but rescheduled for Friday cancelled our appointment, wondering if I could see the place Saturday. I then saw an ad for a rather upscale complex, managed to get Monica in the leasing office on the line, and she showed me around, although I couldn’t actually go into the apartment. It would be safe, clean, light, quiet, good parking, spacious, a good value for the money. But no character.

I then drove to Tandem coffee, a service station re-purposed into a bakery and restaurant, with picnic tables outside where the gas pumps formerly sat. The cappucino and cheddar/jalapeno muffin were delicious and I began a conversation with a vacationing couple sitting next to me. He’s Dean of the Business School at Georgetown U. and passionate about prison reform and rehabilitation. She is equally enthusiastic about teaching math to immigrant middle-schoolers. They are from Goa, having come here for graduate school. Just interesting, accomplished, and friendly people. [I’d guess Donald would lump Goa into those “shithole countries”, if he knew where Goa was.]  I’ve invited them to take 4 or 5 hours and come to the island for lunch. They are driving to Acadia and back down the coast, so they may. They are people with whom I could be friends.

I was beginning to think this might be a good day.  Breakfast can often do that for me. My appointment with Kim was at 11. I saw the first floor flat in her 1800’s Victorian house and loved it. She then surprised me, saying that the upper flat was available, too. She’d just heard that the tenants were moving out by October. I saw it and felt it would suit me perfectly.  It is a light, spacious 2 bedroom with 16 inch wide  pine flooring. There is a nice back yard. It is a few short blocks from two good Japanese and an excellent Thai restaurant, as well as coffee houses, sitting as it does on the edge of the “Arts” district. Brackett is a quiet street. Kim, who lives in the cottage next door, is probably in her mid-30’s and works for the UN as an economic development consultant. She lived in Yunnan Province for 6 years and 4 years in Thailand, so she and I have common interests. I’ve signed the lease and given her a security deposit. A sigh of relief!

I have been so lucky finding places to live in Blantyre, in Yangon, and, now, in Portland. It actually felt pretty bad facing an insane rental market and having no place to alight after we wrap up the island at the end of September. I could stay briefly with Ariane or with numerous friends in New York or California but not to be able to secure my own spot amplified my feeling of rootlessness. After settling it with Kim, I went to the Portland Museum of Art and bought a year membership, which allowed me to see a terrific retrospective of David Driskell. And to top it off, going and returning I listened to David McCullough’s reading of his book, The Wright Brothers. He exposes their character and tenacity, their courage and science, gloriously. My understanding of them was two dimensional: two bike mechanics who managed to develop a powered glider to leave the ground and advance 800 feet or so in the air. They were so much more, as he describes.

I am now reading a collection of Alice Munro stories, Dear Life.  She can say, and imply, more in a sentence or short paragraph than mere mortals can in pages or chapters. She carries a depth of honesty that, while not particularly cheerful, is definitely illuminating. Reading her builds character, which is certainly not her intent at all. I feel a mix of awe, admiration, appreciation, and intense envy when I read her stories.

I am on top of the world to have settled my living site. On Friday as I returned from Portland, my nephew drove to Maine from Cambridge, where he had installed an air conditioner in his daughter’s apartment (Good Dad!). She’ll start Harvard Law this month.  We met at his home in Blue Hill and had a very nice supper at the only restaurant in Brooksville Friday evening.

Now I am back in Paradise.