Be Careful What You Wish For

At times when I’ve had no plans for the weekend and am feeling just a little abandoned by not having been invited to some one of my friends’ dinner party, I plan a unique dinner party of my own. Unique in that it’s just for me. I buy something special at Eddie’s – maybe lamb chops or a crab cake – and plan a meal around that, with accompaniments like broccoli, roasted new potatoes with rosemary, a green salad, apple pie with ice cream. Before dinner, I have a very dry martini (shaken, not stirred) with olives, and turn on some music, maybe Bass Norton at the piano in the Savoy in London. On these occasions, I build a fire in the fireplace and take my martini and maybe some expensive cheese, like a French epoise, into the living room where, mellowed by gin and enveloped in Cole Porter, I sit in different places in the room, checking to be sure the order of things in the space is always pleasing, no matter where a guest might sit. Sometimes I make a small change by straightening a painting or moving some item to a different location. But usually, I find the room very satisfactory so I bathe in the ambiance and listen to the music until my martini is gone. Then I serve myself in the dining room, with the lights just so, candles on the table and a real linen napkin. I selfishly luxuriate in my house.

So I suppose it’s not surprising that as the house begins to come apart in preparation for my move to The Fitzgerald, I’m experiencing some melancholy wistfulness, a kind of what-have-you-done-Phil-feeling. I know I’ll miss the fireplace into which I’ve stared so many times in winter, wondering about my life, my past, my future. What’s it all about, Alfie? I’ll surely miss the two-track lighting system in the dining room, which has allowed me to produce just the right mood for so many dinner parties. And even though I can no longer get down on my knees for proper work in the garden, I’ll miss the daffodils and tulips in the spring, the chrysanthemums in fall and the rhododendrons that always wilt in the heat of August, telling me when the garden needs an extra jolt of water. I’ll be leaving all that behind. I tell myself this doesn’t matter and I’m sure, in time, it won’t. I’m moving on to a whole new way of living, maybe even a new life, surely a beginning, not an ending, and certainly not just a going-on. I tell myself that this is good, and I pack another box.

I’ve always thought the two most stressful times in life (at least for me) have been starting a new job and moving to a new location. I guess I’m now beyond a new career, or even a splinter of one, and this will probably be my last move. So I labor on, approaching the move as just one more project in a long line of projects I’ve undertaken in my professional life. Plan the bookshelves for the bedroom and buy them from Ikea. Arrange to have them delivered. Find an installer. Plan the lighting and see how much of my current track can be used in the new location. Find an electrician. Plan the shelving in my new pantry and ask my handy man if he will put that up. Plan where the furniture I’m taking will go in the new apartment; measure all the walls. Plan the distribution of my art: what to take and what to ship to auction. Find an auctioneer. Evaluate quotations from several movers and decide on one. Throw away what I can. Have a yard sale. Give what’s left to Goodwill or The Salvation Army. Notify so many people of my new address. Change my insurance. The lists grow longer. And at this age, I carry around bits of paper and a pen to make note of things to do that I will surely forget if I don’t write them down.

When I first thought of putting my house on the market, my real estate agent looked around my environment and said to me, “Be careful what you wish for. It might come true.” Okay, I got my wish. The house has sold. Now I’ll make a new wish, that I’ll be as happy at 1201 Mount Royal Avenue – although I’m sure in an entirely different way – as I have been here on Linden Green. Onward!

Stay tuned.