Back in March, I sold my house. Which house, you may ask. It’s not like I am a housing tycoon. I have just been lightening my load. About three years ago, I sold the lake house where Scot’s parent’s lived and where I spent Covid, sheltering-in-place. It was time. Then in October, I sold the Minnesota condo where I spent six years recovering from Scot’s death and rediscovering who I was without him.

I had decided that I was ready to let go of Minnesota, my home for 40 years, and fully embrace Santa Fe. I didn’t ask if Santa Fe was ready to embrace me. Especially after my New Mexico casa sold before I had a place to live. Ready or not, here I was.

I moved into my neighbor and friend’s extra bedroom. My worldly goods from Minnesota and New Mexico were in Pods and Extra Space Storage. I had a suitcase and two plastic bins of clothes and shoes, and two shoeboxes of toiletries in her bedroom and bath. She gave me full run of the kitchen, garage, living and dining room. It was a good landing.

But I had no home.

Never in my life have I been homeless. I moved from home to college dorms, to apartments, to more apartments, to starter homes, to more starter homes to the big house in Edina, to the lakehouse, to the condo, to the little house in Santa Fe. But always, I had a place. I had a home. A place to call my own.

Until now, when, at 71 years old, I had to move i to “temporary housing.”

I was thinking “temporary” meant maybe a month. My friend whose home I was invading was thinking “temporary” meant maybe three months. Luckily, my “temporary” was shorter than her “temporary.” I figured I would pay rent beyond a month. Luckily we didn’t have to test the theories.

I found my 2363 home and moved within a month.

Work

Always in my life there is work. I have become amazingly inefficient at it. Everything takes me twice, thrice as long as it used to. And always it is the deadline that gets me to the finish line.

This time the finish line was the National Japanese American Citizens League convention in Las Vegas. My goal is to get a book a year published, and this year that book is Windows of Light, (click here to buy) an anthology written by Nikkei women. Coordinating and gathering thirteen women to have their submissions edited, formatted and pulled together into a book was an extraordinary push at the end. Herding cats is one idiom that comes to mind.

All this was going on while buying 2363, making an offer, getting a counteroffer, Getting an inspection, making another offer based on the inspection, setting a closing date, closing, getting my worldly goods put together, moving the stuff into my home that I am trying to name. QuintaCruce. CasaCruce. Crossroads Home.

I found Santa Fe attractive because it is a crossroads, an amalgamation of people, cultures, history. The crossroads of Puebloans, Plains Natives, Spanish and Europeans. Have I missed anyone? Well, there were the trade routes that came through that brought shells from the ocean, parrot feathers from South America, and who knows who from the eastern plains, perhaps from Cahokia.

I have come to a new home, my own crossroads. I am at my crossroad, chasing the last 20 years of my work life. Make that fifteen.