I visited Scranton, PA for less than 36 hours last weekend. I loved it so much, I’m moving there. Just like that. I contacted a real estate agent and poured over maps of the city just to acquaint myself with my soon-to-be new home. I’m over-the-moon excited.
“Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going…”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again
I’m sorry, Mr. Wolfe. You can go home again, and we’re over the moon. There’s actually a ‘we’ to this story. And the decision to blow up our lives – at our age – was a mutual one, and it occurred on the sidewalk. Outside St. Lucy’s Church. On Easter Sunday. Yes, the homily was that good.
My life, our lives, have been a whirlwind since then. So, let me slow down and back up a little bit and explain how two people late in their careers, on the senior side of middle age, came to such a life-altering moment while walking to their car after church on Sunday morning.
When I started this blog in early April, I’d written that Tony and I were planning on movng to Scranton. It was a dream, albeit one that we thought would take a couple of years to accomplish. After all, Tony is only turnng 62 this summer. Sure, he could retire then, but why not wait for a few years in order to reclaim more of his social security?
But then, in mid-April, he learned the school district was reorganizing and his job would no longer be available in the next academic year. Lucky for us, Tony has retirement income to fall back on. Others didn’t have this safety net. But that’s a post for another day.
The news was bittersweet. Tony had been coaching with his high school for nearly 20 years. He is happy to be standing on the cusp of pursuing his bucket list, but wistful about the friends and memories he would be leaving behind. And it was the way he found out about his position: Adminstrators informed him and about 39 colleaues from schools throughout the countywide district in a general meeting. After all the years he – they – spent giving their best to educate and raise up future generations, these employees were informed en masse their services were no longer needed. Tony knew at that moment: Finding Scranton was going to become a reality.
He filed the necessary paperwork and I got busy sending out resumes. We made a couple of trips “up North” (to borrow from my Michigan vernacular) for house hunting. By the first week in May, I’d secured a dream job with an amazing local nonprofit agency. By mid-May, we’d bought a house. By the end of May, our mortgage was approved and Tony entered into an agreement with a friend to buy his house as well. Easy peasey.
Look out. Tony and Kristin’s Excellent Adventure has begun!
Who knows if this will all work out? We believe it will and we can hardly wait to become part of Scranton. For Tony, it’s a homecoming a long time in the making. For me, its a chance to once again be part of community.
Soon, the posts on this blog will change. Finding Scranton will be less metaphorical, less about finding that inner holy grail, and more about uncovering all the things that make Scranton, well, Scranton. Five days and counting!
A dream began on Easter Sunday morning on the sidewalk outside St. Lucy’s.
Dreams. At our age, dreams are supposed to be tucked away, pulled out only to facilitate our escape from the everyday.
That’s not how Tony and I roll, apparently.
In a matter of a few weeks, Tony put in for retirement, I found a new job, and we bought a house. God-willing, It looks like we’re moving to Scranton for realz!
Writing this with one finger, from the passenger seat of my Corolla. That’s the only caveat, mea culpa, pardon me I’m going to offer in advance for typos, etc. I also take no responsibility for auto-correct.
We’re on 81, about 50 Miles from Hazelton. Destination: Scranton. Obviously.
Worried. I’ve got a wedding dress to fit into in less than three months and all I can think about is the Texas wieners chili cheese dog at Coney Island, the Texas wiener cheeseburger omelet at Keystone or the daily special at Chicks. And, of course, I can’t forget the cannoli chips at PNC Park, otherwise known as “that stadium where the Rail Riders play.”
Who doesn’t like diner food?? What I cherish more than home-cooked meals, though, is the atmosphere. Diners evoke that Cheers feeling – a place where everybody knows your name – and the coffee’s always hot!
That’s how I characterized my move to Washington DC from the Chicago area in January 2015. My kids were grown and mostly on their own. Life was humming along and, suddenly, in December 2014, an opportunity to drop everything and move to the nation’s capital was dangled in front of me.
Working in the city that’s considered the nerve pulse of, well, the universe, really, had always been on my bucket list. As had working at the UN, although I was able to tick that one off after a meeting with the head of an UN agency during the annual General Assembly meeting, (read, in the midst of world leaders), attending some invitation-only high-level UN conferences, and traveling through the Hebron Hills with an official from the UN Relief and Works Agency. I jumped at the chance to move to DC. I found a studio apartment, found a small office near the Archives and Navy Memorial, sold most of my belongings, packed up Atticus Boo Radley Finch (my beloved feline partner in crime), and drove through treacherous winter weather at the end of January to my new home.
And what an adventure it was! I had meetings on Capitol Hill, the State Department, and at the National Press Club, trying to establish relationships that would further the agenda of my organization, which was working to help change U.S. policy in a way that not only would support Palestinian human rights but that actually would be more fair and balanced for everyone living in the Holy Land. International law and human rights. That was our thing and I believed in the mission fully. We worked in broad-based coalitions, with Jewish, Christian, LGBTQ, Black Solidarity and labor groups on a wide array of social justice issues.
Those first few months were a heady time. Then, life rolled in. Amid all the hubbub, I soon found that I had grown inexorably lonely. DC is not the place to be without a strong friendsip network, or, sometimes, a significant other. I had been working so much, I had failed to conjure any sort of extracurricular life. Then, the social justice movement I belonged to began to change. Some sectors became rigid in their rhetoric. Some began to police speech. Others were ostracized for not exactly “toeing the line,” although no one knew what the line was or whose line it was. No one took the time to reflect that the wonderful solidarity coalition we had built over the years was fracturing and turning in on itself. Folks began moving into their own silos. Things started getting harsh, and I began to grow weary.
You start dying slowly
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.
~ Pablo Neruda
I increasingly became aware that I needed to leave, to move aside for younger, fresher ideas. I had been advocating for the unpopular side in a contentious political debate. I wanted – no, I needed – a change, but I didn’t think that would ever be possible. At my age and after this political career, who would hire me? How would I find the strength to go through the metamorphosis that would be necessary to assume a “normal” regular life again? At my age, who would love me?
I started making the effort toward change. Lost weight. Got healthy. Stepped away from my austere way of living and reconnected with my roots. Found a new job. In the process, I found out – you are never too old.
(Top) Tony and me at the Wilkes-Barrie RailRiders baseball game on April 20, 2018. (Bottom) Tony and me at Archbald Park on Sunday, April 21, 2018.
And with a “Hello, there, young lady,” Anthony Alexander Cianfichi waltzed into my life and nothing has been the same since.
We both have found another chance at love, and, we both are going to take the chance to reinvent our lives. We are daring to chase that pie-in-the-sky dream. Just like the ant in the Rubber Tree Plant song, we’ve got High Hopes.
On our first date (the spontaneous one before the official scheduled one that was to take place two days later), I summoned the nerve to tell Tony about my work and all the good and difficulties that came with it and he, without being dismissive, shrugged his shoulders and said it didn’t matter. In fact, he was proud of me for taking a strong stand on human rights. At that moment, I knew I had found my guy, that I was home.
Sometimes, the thought of uprooting everything again to move so far away seems daunting. Then, I think of the words of Pablo Neruda. I’d rather try and miss than languish for the want of trying anything new.
This weekend’s big question is not, “Could we live here?” but “How are we going to make it work?”
Photo Credit: Google Images/Trip Advisor
In a little more than 24 hours, we’ll be on our way back up to Lackawanna County. Over Easter we came to Scranton for a visit. This time, we’re on a due diligence mission. We’re going to be househunting, and checking out other economic realities there. The cost of living is ridiculously lower than what I’ve struggled with for the past three years in DC, but how will that translate in terms of everyday living? We aim to find out.
In the meantime, we’ve got some exploring plans, too! On the agenda this time: A Scranton Wikes-Barre Railriders game, Montage Mountain and maybe the Antracite museum.
Not going to go into too much detail, but I can tell you that one of us (not necessarily me) doesn’t much ascribe to the food-pyramid, balanced-meal school of thought. But that doesn’t mean he can’t cook. The man knows his way around the stove like nobody’s business. He deserves his own Food Network show.
Since I met Tony a year ago, he’s become interested in rediscovering his Italian roots. At Christmas in 2017, for example, he wanted to create the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve for the first time in more than 15 years. Well, I may have had a not-too-altruistic hand in that decision. That Christmas was my first without my kids, and without the Polish tradition of Wygilia, which we celebrated every year. Sure, there were times when one of them may have been galavanting somewhere around the world, but to not be around any of them – at all?
And, I can’t endure do-nothing Christmas Eves. My history is steeped German Lutheran tradition, which included dinner, a trip across the street to the Emmel’s, where my parents could get a Hot Toddy or two, and our children’s program at church. Afterward, all the kids would get gift bags filled with candy. Christmas Eve and tradition go together. There has to be something. So Seven Fishes it was.
Now, slightly more than three months and one religious holiday later, the idea of Sunday’s spaghetti sauce bubbled up from the recesses of Tony’s memory that Easter weekend in Scranton. Attending service at St. Lucy’s, stopping by Catalanos, and tooling through his old West Side neighborhoood naturally brought up visions of his loving, bustling childhood, in an Italian home, nestled in an Italian neighborhood.
So, back in Waldorf, Maryland, we went to Nick’s, the premier Italian butcher and grocery in town, where we picked up our ingredients, many of them grown “over there.” Tony mixed up his ground round and fresh Italian sausage, added the spices and then let the mixture sit for at least an hour. Even then, the aroma was awesome. Later, when it was time to form those delectable, round meatballs — something I thought we would do together — I was relegated by the master chef to the role of spectator. That’s ok. I’m good cheering from the sidelines, too.
When I started this blog in early April, I’d written that Tony and I were planning on movng to Scranton. It was a dream, albeit one that we thought would take a couple of years to accomplish. After all, Tony is only turnng 62 this summer. Sure, he could retire then, but why not wait for a few years in order to reclaim more of his social security?
Finding Scranton 