The 15th one

(umm… had to change the title because counting up, this is the 15th Christmas here and  my completing my 15th year of life in this apartment)

I moved into this apartment directly from the Adult Foster Home I stayed in for 9 months after I got out of the hospitals that took care of me after the car wreck in April 1998.

This is the 16th Christmas Eve I’ve been HERE. All Fortune willing, it might be the last one in Portland, Oregon.

Next year, again all fortunes willing, I will probably spend this night with the woman I met this summer and who turns out to be The One for this time of my life.

I have had a Portland address for 26 years, although for three of them, I lived in Japan.

(Christmases 1993, 94, and 95 were in Japan, where Christmas is NOT a holiday. I worked at one job or another for all of them)

Matter of fact, I’m working tomorrow, 2 to 10, because Health Care knows no holidays either. It pays Double-Time though, and I wouldn’t probably have any plans anyway,

So it’s gone. For most of my life.

I’m going to change that, by moving south to become a live-in care-giver for my high school friend’s aunt.

That is a change:I’ll have a couple of people around me and will be living upstairs in the same house.

In The Redwoods.

***

Pretty good so far…

But wait, there’s more!

I met a woman down there last summer, and again a couple of times since. At the end of November, the first of December, I drove down there again and discovered that she was The One for me at this time of my life. She is a year younger, has three adult children, and so far as I know now, 6 grandchildren, with whom she lives. The daughter she lives with is someone I’ve met – she was my guide on the first visit, last summer, in The Redwoods and on the coast.

Oh yes, the coast. The coast of Northern California, a wildly beautiful place which will yield lots of good photographs.

Read between the lines and you’ll see that I am moving from a life alone ("I am the Cat who walks alone") to a family life that will fit my white beard to a tee.

"Grandma’s boyfriend"

It blows my mind.

The other side of the house, which my high school friend owns and rents out, has six people living in it; mom and the five kids who live at home.

(The oldest has Down Syndrome, and lives with other relatives)

From nothing and damn near nobody I will go to having people of all kinds around me.

Part of the care-giver pay will be payments made on my car.  I get to keep it.

Hear that clanging and ringing? That’s the sound of me hitting The Jackpot.

I won’t need those antidepressants much longer, and they interfered with my performance anyway.

That wasn’t such a big deal with no one in my life, but I’m glad to be done with them so I can feel like a Man again.

(There is more than one way to skin a cat, and I am a good lover, even with out that essential male "tool", but with it, I’ll be even better)

The future is blindingly bright, in full Technicolor and Dolby stereo.

I can’t wait to get there.

***

Stay tuned please: I want to "take you" with me.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

 

*****