Part 5: Florida to Ithaca via Kentucky
Tallahasee, Fl: contemporary house purchase, 1989
This beautiful contemporary two-bedroom house is surrounded by trees. The garage I turn into my art studio is full of spiders. We’ve come to Tallahassee so I can enter the PhD program at Florida State. Adrian takes classes in science and math and works out at the University gym. He goes on adventures with his biology professor. I exhibit my art in Winter Park and Atlanta. The problem son lives with us for a short while. Tenure-track jobs in academia are hard to get.
Alexandria, VA: house rental, August 1992
The rent on this house is more than our mortgage payment on the house we can’t sell in Tallahassee. We come here because I get a temporary appointment at George Washington University. I teach composition and get depressed. There is no place for me to paint. I keep applying for tenure-track jobs.
Reston, VA: townhouse rental, August 1993
This small townhouse is further from DC, but more affordable. There is only a small basement for me to paint in. I get more depressed and make lists of everything Adrian does that annoys me. I have to take a semester off and begin seeing a psychiatrist, who diagnoses me as bipolar. I keep applying for tenure-track jobs.
Morehead, KY: house rental, August 1995
This old house is a few blocks from Morehead State University, where I get a tenure-track job teaching fiction writing, sharing the creative writing department with one other person, a poet. The population is 8,000, so everywhere you go you will see someone you know. I walk to work and we have big parties in the house for other faculty and students. Adrian takes science and math classes and plays tennis with his Physics professor. I have so much fun playing the academic game that I go off my lithium after one semester. We take lots of hikes in the beautiful woods and gorges.
Morehead, KY: house purchase, August 1996
This six-year old house in the country is not contemporary or romantic, but extremely practical. There is a large family room, which I turn into my studio. Adrian grows vegetables in our one-acre back yard. Blixy comes to visit with her husband and baby. We get lost with them in the woods. I get tired of the academic game and spend more time painting. We hire Morehead’s hometown famous writer, Chris Offut, and he and I split the teaching position.
Honness Lane, Ithaca, NY: house purchase, April 2000
We have figured out that I can retire from teaching and paint full time. We look and look for a house and finally settle on this one. I turn the walkout basement apartment into my studio. The house is a nice contemporary with a deck and pretty back yard, but I don’t like the studio. I have to buy a new easel because my old one doesn’t work with the low ceiling. Adrian joins the Finger Lakes bike club and we play tennis in the afternoons. A few months after we move in, we bring my father up from Florida and John’s mother up from New Jersey to live in an assisted living facility near us. I become their primary caregiver. I go back on lithium.
Snyder Heights, Ithaca, NY: house purchase, August 2005
We buy a lot and build a house in order to get me the studio I want. The house is built in a factory in Pennsylvania and brought here in two halves to be set on the cement foundation. It’s a simple ranch house, but I get a beautiful thousand square foot studio with north light and lots of windows. The ceiling is high enough so that I can use my old favorite easel. Blixy, her husband and two children live ten miles away.
This is the place I’m going to stay.
