Clicking on this Google Map will give you a better view of where our new place is vis-a-vis BHFH, just a bit over three miles west along Beacon Street.

I’ve never been a big fan of transitions. I hate that feeling of being torn between the sadness of leaving one thing and the excitement of the new adventure. Bill and I have decided to move into an apartment across the hall from our daughter, Kate, her husband, Marton, and our grandchildren, Leila and Mateo. Not immediately, but by early August. As exciting and happy as that is, it also means leaving our community at Beacon Hill Friends House.

Over the past two years this community has been the welcoming home where we transitioned into the next phase of our lives. We’ve had the luxury of good friends and interesting souls with whom to share our lives. We’ve had none of the worries of keeping up our own place or shopping for groceries. Dinner was provided five nights a week. 

A Google Street View of our new place, a clump of apartments surrounding a nice little courtyard, just off Harvard Street in Brookline

There’s a wonderful old library on the second floor where we learned to work more as independent contractors than as employees.

We learned to love people we might not have otherwise met. We learned not to take other people’s grumpiness personally. We were introduced to the transgender world, the vegan world, the Quaker world. We’ll take these learnings with us.

We’ll be sad to leave all this. But our move will create an opportunity for two new people. If ayearinaroom has got you thinking that BHFH might be an option for you, you’ll find news of the vacancies created by our departures.

And then there is the adventure, the new experience. We’ve never had the chance to live so close to grandchildren before. Toddlers are great teachers about how to look at and interact with the world. We feel lucky to have a daughter and son-in-law who want to live across the hall from us. Of course, like all adventures, risk is part of the experience. But who could resist the two cuties to the left??

We have entered a stage of life where we’re presented with choices much like Bilbo Baggins at the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring. We could put our feet up in front of the fire and remember all the past adventures. Or we could set off down the road, seeing what will come next.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

— Bilbo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein

What’s your next adventure?