Chapter 4: Whip Lash

At last, a chance to get online and tell you about my conversation with Gloria.

As I pulled up to Gloria's house after work that day for some reason, though I'd been there countless times suddenly I was flooded with memories of our first visit there. How we'd gotten off the freeway, driven a ways, and been astonished to find ourselves in a verdant valley stretched before them to the horizon, cupped between rolling pine-covered hills. I flashed on how the road ahead had looked like a ribbon someone had laid across a field of waist-high grass that rippled in waves of green that seemed to chase the wind. How there hadn't been another car in site or any sign of human life.

Then how the trees along the road grew larger moment to moment until we rounded a curve and suddenly were swallowed up into a tunnel of towering pines that opened onto cascades of curving mountain vistas that leapt into view from all angles, above and below us. How long we wound down hairpin-curves until at last we saw the roof tops of a tiny village in a narrow meandering valley ringed by steep mountainsides.

I remembered our first glimpse of Gloria's log cabin that day, sitting just as it was now in a grove of tall pines alongside the meadow. The summer sun was hot on my skin and the forest was buzzing with sounds of life. Gloria was coming down the driveway to greet us.

“Welcome to Katani Falls!" she'd called out, smiling, vibrant, her wavy, long blond hair blowing wild and free in a slight breeze.

A chill ran up my spine remembering that moment and how I'd had the strangest sensation that Mark and Chelsea and Jason and I had fallen through a trap door into some other entirely different world.

I had that same feeling as I drove up the other day. Like I was about to fall into another entirely different world. I brushed off the feeling. How silly. This is my world now. But Gloria was not coming out to greet me in the driveway. Why would she? There was no sun bathing my face as I got out of the car. Why would there be? It's a fall and dusk is coming earlier every day.

But when I knocked and heard her call out, "Come on in," I knew why. The house was large, dark and cool as it had ways had been. It's a log cabin, after all, like ours. They're notoriously drafty. But there had always been a warmth in her home that you felt as soon as you entered, something quite separate from the actual temperature of the house. A warmth that came from the life inside the house and that warmth was gone.

I wanted to turn around and run back to the car. What had happened? How could I have failed to notice this change. How long had it been since I was there? I was always going over to visit, wasn't I? No, it had been too long since I'd dropped by. I felt sick at my stomach. It was like before. When months had passed without my even calling Gloria after she'd had surgery for the breast cancer. But that was in LA. I was different then. What had become of me? I had felt so ashamed then and that shame came creeping over me again. What had I been too self-absorbed to notice here?

But then there she was coming to the kitchen as I'd stepped through the door. Gloria, smiling that warm smile of hers, her small delicate frame greeting me with a hug. Inviting me in that lilting soft voice of hers into the living room where she'd set out a tea service for us by the fire.

The weird feelings I'd had melted away in the glow of the fire. Carly and Chelsea were over at our house, doing a school project. Gloria and I had her house to ourselves and could chat away like in the old days, she said. I let the "old days" comment slide past me, really wanting it to be then and not now. And maybe nothing was different anyway.

And so it seemed at first. I sat back into one of the cozy hearth chairs and relaxed, breathed in the soothing fragrance of the wood stove, chatted awhile about this and that. But then I remembered I needed to talk to Gloria about my idea of getting some of our friends together to talk about what we could do to be sure Katani Falls remains a viable place to live given the tumultuous economic downturn.

So I ventured in, mentioning I was sure she'd been noticing ... so on. I was just about to bring up Transition Towns and Rob Hopkins' book, which I had brought in my purse to lend her, when she smiled and said "Oh, let's don't talk about all that doom and gloom stuff." I told her I agreed I didn't want to talk about doom and gloom, either but the exciting things we could do to avoid the doom and gloom if we worked together now like we did before. She twisted in her chair catty-corner from me. I could see her body grow tense. "Let's just have a nice chat," she said, through a tight jaw, struggling to keep a pleasant tone in her voice and a little half smile on her lips.

I didn't say anything more then. There was a moment of silence. But she began to slowly wring her hands. She looked pale. I reached over to put my hand on hers, thinking of how often she had calmed me during my LA meltdown. She started to pull back, but then she just broke into tears.

Looking down at her lap she kept saying, "I can't get all stressed out! I can't get stressed out." I knew she was referring to the fear that stress had contributed to her getting breast cancer. Ever since she has worked hard to keep healthy, happy, and cancer-free ever. So I said, "Right, right, Gloria. You mustn't get stressed. Your health is what's most important." That's when her tears stopped and out poured a breathless tsunami of concerns I'd known nothing about.

"Ned is in LA most all the time now. The law firm has cut back ... revenues are down, they're talking merger ... everyone who's still there is putting in more hours ... if they merge, heads will roll ... they're not letting anyone work from home like Ned has been since we moved here ... I'm alone here ... having to do everything ... the teacher at the charter school is leaving! Did you now that?" She inhaled shallowly but didn't wait for me to reply, ran on before it could even fully sink in. "Yes, she's leaving ... going to go live with her mother in Iowa ... I overheard Mark on the phone saying we probably won't be be able to order meds from Canada any more ... that means Carly's asthma meds and Chelsea's meds ...."

I could feel her panic and I was picking it up myself. No teacher, no meds! Ned gone. Gloria alone. I noticed I was holding my breath as the tsunami continued.

"So you're going to suggest that we organize for some simpler way of life where I have to grow my own food and make my own clothes and forage for herbs to use for medicine!"

She was angry now. Her coloring had changed from ashen to pink to red, her eyes narrowed and hard. I'd never seen Gloria angry. I took me aback. I leaned back from her and expelled the breath I'd been holding as she continued venting.

"Simple is what we had when we all moved here. Why do you think all our modern conveniences were created in the first place? Why do you think they were adopted so eagerly? They make life easier! Do you want to go back to wringer washers or washing your clothes in the lake?" Again, no pause.

"When I read this stuff you send me about how we're going to have this idyllic simpler, less consumptive lifestyle, all I hear more difficult, harder, and labor-intensive!" She bit down on those last five words. "I don't want to organize for that. I can't live like that!"

Just then we both heard Chelsea and Carly walking up the road. Gloria immediately shook her head, brushed back strands hair that had fallen over her face and were sticking to the wet tears on cheeks. She sat up straight and composed herself.

"I'm sorry, Rose." she said, suddenly calm. "I don't know what came over me. You know I can't allow myself to get all stressed out. Let's not talk about this any more. Please. I'm sure everything is going to be fine. It's just a hard time right now. We'll all be OK."

She got up, took my hands, pulled me up and gave me a big hug. Softly she apologized again, her hair damp against my neck. I hugged her back and said no apology necessary, that's what are friends for. But I felt like I'd been whip lashed, hit from behind by a semi-truck.

By then the girls had crossed the porch and were coming through the kitchen door. I could hear them tossing their book bags on the table. "Hey," Gloria said all brightly, "let's the four of us have dinner. Just us girls. Or, wait, call Mark and see if he wants to come by and join us! I'm going to go freshen up and I'll meet you all in the kitchen."

Being a little worried about her state of mind and feeling unsettled myself, I seized on the idea and that's exactly what we did. On his last trip home, Ned had brought some organic baby carrots and some applepears. So the four of us girls made some turkey vegetable stew and one of Gloria's signature fruit compotes with Torani pumpkin-spice syrup. Mark did come by, and we had this jolly dinner. The girls chattering away. Gloria her usual cheerful self.

After supper we all chipped in to clean the kitchen. No one said anything about the teacher leaving or the meds being unavailable, or Ned not being there. It felt surreal. But I didn't dare break the everything-is-just-great-as-always spell that enveloped us. Nor have I dared to since. Like I said, I didn't know what to make of it.

As we were leaving Gloria gave me another big hug and reassured me again that everything would be OK. Then she said something that made me think maybe everything would be OK.

Gotta save that 'til next time though.
Your Rose.

See Sarah's reply, LEAVE A COMMENT FOR ROSE, and read other's comment below. If you're just joining Rose's story, you can catch up by reading Chapter 1 under Labels in the right hand column.

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008

Chapter 3: A Quandary

It's really early. There's just a pale silver hint of light peaking through the pines. The Fall sun is rising later and farther to the south now. A morning dove is calling in the distance, but otherwise all is still. Even the ducks on the pond below us haven't awakened and the pond below our house looks like a flat, unmoving expanse of slate.

Blessedly Mark's still sleeping. He was out late, patching up a boy who crashed his ATV into a tree riding out on the trails in the dark. But I couldn't sleep, so I'm sitting here by the fire with my notebook computer and a cup of cocoa to warm my hands, looking out the window. I thought being here might calm me, but I'm in a quandary and I'm trying not to panic.

I talked to Mark night before last about the idea of pulling our friends together to start planning how we can be more self-reliant here. He wasn't opposed. He was just distant."Fine," he said. "That sounds fine."

I know he's tired from overwork at the clinic, but it's like our roles have reversed these days. I used to be the one who didn't want to face my feelings. I was the one who refused to talk about my feelings and what was happening to our lives. After his father died Mark experienced a profound sense of loneliness. I was never home, always off speaking somewhere in the country. We were making a lot of money. I thought we were happy. I didn't want to hear about his loneliness or that our life together was anything but the picture-perfect happily-ever-after-two-career-couple-success-story I thought it was. It wasn't until we got away from the city for a visit with friend Gloria Raynor here in Katani Falls that I finally came to see how barren and insane our lives had become.

Now, though, it seems he's the one who doesn't want to hear about what's happening, like he's cutting me off the way I did in the past.

I told him about the comment one of your reader made that maybe Katani Falls is too small and remote to survive in today's economy. He looked at me and just shook his head. "Not much we can do about that is there?" he said.

He was clearly irritated. Like I was a bothering him with the obvious. A shard of fear shot up my spine. Does he agree with her? Is it that obvious to everyone but me that we're all doomed? I asked him right out if that's what he thought. "Who knows," he said. "You don't want to leave here do you?"

"Well, of course, I don't," I told him. "I love it here. “But what if she's right? Shouldn't we be doing something?"

He shook his head again and said there is no way he'd walk away from the clinic even if we could leave, which we can’t, but "Go ahead, get our friends together if you want." Then he stalked off into the other room.

I think he'd reached the same conclusion as your reader, but he seems resigned to it. Like he knows something he's not telling me because he doesn't want to upset me, or maybe because he doesn’t want to upset himself by saying out loud what he's thinking. Like that would make it more real.

My stomach felt queasy ever since, but I did start calling our friends about the idea of having a get-together potluck where we might mobilize the community like we did before. But now, please tell me, Sarah, how does one respond to the reactions I got?

I called Megan Kelly first. She's an artist. She and her husband Ryan lived in San Francisco until they move here after their son graduated from college. Ryan had a high-powered executive search company there, but he closed it and opened a one-man firm here in his home where Megan also has her art studio. Ryan is semi-retired now, but Megan is still very involved with her artwork.

She's the one who mobilized us before when she saw our way of life threatened by a development company that wanted to come in and turn Katani Falls place into an Aspen West. Make it into a wealthy, elite tourist destination. Oh, what a different time it was then, and not all that long ago really. There was plenty of big money to invest and all over the country the motto was growth, growth, growth!

Megan foresaw everything that drew them here eroding as the sprawl of LA suburbs crept ever closer. The predominance of nature untouched by mankind; all the wildlife; the old-growth trees; the quiet; the clean air; the homey, small-town feeling; the camaraderie ... were all about to change forever. So she enticed the Reverend Suzanne Reid to come here during her sabbatical from the Interfaith Community Church in Lucadia, CA. Suzanne had been studying the research of the noted political scientist Robert Putnam of Harvard University showing how and why America had become an increasingly isolated and independent society since the 1960, filled with lonely, disconnected people.

Megan got her friends together in her home to meet Suzanne and to hear what Putnam's research suggested we needed to do to preserve our way of life. There was resistance at first to the idea that we needed to take action, but before the evening ended Suzanne and Megan convinced us we that’s what we had to do if we wanted to preserve what we loved about Katani Falls. Well, of course, that's all history. We did take action and we did preserve our way of life, but it’s under an even greater threat now.

So Megan seemed like the person to begin with, even though I knew she and Ryan had been trying to sell their house for over a year and I knew they want to move to the coast. As Megan reminded me once again on the phone yesterday, "The economy is a lot better over there and there's lots of shops and galleries there where I can sell my artwork." Personally I doubt that. I also doubt they'll be able to sell their house, at least not for the foreseeable future. No one is buying houses here now. I thought surely they'd accepted that by now. Especially because the Interfaith Community Church services she and Suzanne started after Suzanne decided to settle here in their home on Sundays again.

At one time the church had grown to the point we rented a house with lots of space to hold classes and activities throughout the week. But with so many people selling or just walking away from their homes, attendance has been way down and we're back where we started on Sunday's … in Megan and Ryan's living room.

Guess I was wrong, though. Megan told me in a tone that said I should know better than to bring up this topic, "We're trying to stay positive. We can't get involved in any new activities here. That would be like saying we're giving up on our goal of re-starting our lives over on the coast."

I wanted to talk with her more, find out why she'd given up on Katani Falls, but it didn't feel like the thing to do. I wasn't even sure where to begin. After all, they had been planning to leave for a year! Why hadn't I talked to her about it before now? Why had I just accepted their decision without even trying to find out how they felt and why they didn't think they could stay?

So then I called Suzanne, but got a recorded message saying she 's out of town. I know she's been traveling a lot, as I mentioned before, doing workshops in other communities on community-building. There's something ironic about that, isn't there. I'm afraid the real reason is financial. She retired when she moved here. It seemed she had the funds to do that: Social Security, a pension from the diocese, some income from the cancer-recovery groups she led twice a week at a hospital in the city.

But I know Social Security payments have been cut and I remember hearing the hospital had stopped offering the recovering groups. Certainly our church was never large enough to provide her with a salary and she'd never asked for one.

For some time now she’s been giving presentations on Putnam's work and how to re-build a sense of community spirit. Someone brings her in for a workshop; she stays with them while she's there; they pay her a small fee; and she moves on to the next community. Every so often she comes back to lead our Sunday services.

OK. I thought I'd call Lorraine Mather, but she’s not here now either. Her mother is living in Lorraine's house and told me that since Lorraine’s husband, Lee, is spending now all his time up in Sacramento lobbying for green builders, Lorraine has moved in with a friend in Santa Monica for the time being. Lorraine’s an actress.

in her 20's Lorraine had a very successful working actress. She had a staring in a popular TV series, but with the stress and the long hours that involved, she developed chronic fatigue syndrome. It got so bad she had to leave the series, give up her apartment, and move in with her mother up here. She was gradually recovering when she met Lee Mather.

Lee was representing the development company that wanted to transform our community into Aspen West. He was young, ambitious, and new in the business. But Lorraine, and Katani Falls, swept him off his feet. The more time he spent here the clearer it became that the development project he was promoting would be harmful. He left the company and married Lorraine. They bought a home here and he started his own development company, Community First.

Well, there's not much development anywhere in California any more, so Lee morphed into a lobbyist for green builders, but that meant being in Sacramento. Lorraine wasn’t going to give up her goal to return to acting and for some time she's been getting episodic parts on web flicks. But her mother explained Lorraine wasn't able to keep driving back and forth to LA. The gas is too expensive and the drive is just too long and stressful. She doesn’t want to do anything that might cause a flare-up of the chronic fatigue. I certainly understand, but I just miss her!

After these three disappointing phone calls, I needed to talk to Gloria. I'd been saving her for last because I was sure she'd be interested in my idea and that we could brain storm what to do. We were on the professional speaker's circuit together when we both lived in LA. We didn't see each other very often then, of course, because we were both always crisscrossing the country speaking to various companies and organizations. But then she got breast cancer and we lost touch. When we reconnected I learned she’d met Suzanne at a recovery group and, to my great surprise at the time, after visiting here she and Ryan and her daughter, Carly moved to, as I saw it, the "boonies." But she invited Mark and I and kids up to visit and, well, that's how, after a rather tumultuous emotional journey, we moved here too.

Gloria and I see each other almost everyday at the Clinic, but we don't get much opportunity to talk about personal things. There's too much going on to chit-chat and we're too tired after work to socialize. But our daughters go to school together and are almost inseparable. So I suggested that the two of us get together for tea after work like we used to do so often before the clinic opened. I told her I had some news to share.

She was enthusiastic. "I’d love that!" she said. "We need to do that! Why don't you come by after work tomorrow?"

Well, that was yesterday. I don't know what to think about what happened. I need to tell you about it, but I've got to get over to the Clinic. Mark just got a call that Lorraine's mother, Margaret Brookfield, fell this morning while trying to get in some wood. A neighbor called; he's sure her leg's broken. Mark's on his way over to her house now. Drat it! Margaret is too frail to be getting in her own wood! Anyway, she'll need to be stabilized and probably sent to a hospital in the city.

So until next time,
Fall Blessings, Rose.
PS - Hope this catches your readers up on some of the other people in this saga and provides a little background about them.

To read Sarah's replies, TO LEAVE A COMMENT FOR ROSE, or to read other's comment, click on the word comments, below.
If you're just now joining Rose's story, you can catch up by reading previous Chapters under Labels on the right margin.

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008.