Throughout my thirty-seven first marriage that I ended in 2012, I’d measured my success in life with the reassurance that I would never divorce. When I did divorce, though, I knew from the beginning it was the right thing to do, even while acknowledging it could never be a good thing.

   Unlike that divorce, widowhood was thrust upon me quite unexpectedly. Throughout what turned out to be an all too short marriage to Carolyn, I’d never expected I’d be living my life as a widow. Yet, when it happened, my sorrow over losing Carolyn – from the first moment I kissed her cold cheek for the last time – has been buoyed more by the happy years we were able to share than the ones ahead we were never going to have.

The New York Times columnist Russell Baker once recalled going for a walk because he was stuck for an idea for a column due the next day. Someone threw a potato out of a window along the way, and it hit Baker in the head. Suddenly, he had his idea. As I recall from his memoir, he was never stuck again.

   I’m trying to figure out the deeper meaning of getting conked on the head by a San Clemente railroad crossing barrier arm. That the incident is related to a train is definitely part of it. That it’s the only place to cross the tracks to get to the beach from our hotel, unless you take the underpass, would make it more or less predetermined that it was going to happen eventually. That it involved me is what made it inevitable. Nixon’s revenge? That one had my vote when it happened.

My previous familiarity with San Clemente was its being known as “The Western White House” during the Nixon Administration. So imagine my surprise and delight to discover a thriving beach town of charm, historic Spanish architecture and elegance, as well as magnificent Pacific sunsets that wash away for me its former association with cynicism and paranoia. Plus, it’s only about a twenty-minute drive from our house in Lake Forest. Also, Amtrak stops right at the entrance to the town’s wonderful pier! (Yes, an arrival by rail is in our future plans.)

   In 2016, Carol and I celebrated Christmas with our respective spouses. In 2017, we celebrated Christmas as widows. In 2018, we celebrated our first Christmas together. That’s a lot of change for three Christmases. Fundamental change. Seismic change. Dramatic change. WTF change.

In Bruce Springsteen’s one-man Broadway show, he talks ruefully about being 20 years old with a blank piece of paper still before him that represented the rest of his life. Later, after Carol and I had shut off Netflix for the night, she said to me, “I want our life together to be a blank piece of paper.”

For the Neanderthal of the human species (aka the male) it’s way beyond time he’s learned that no means no. I consider myself more fully evolved than my fellow homo stupidus in that I even know when yes means no.

   Carol is as laid back a southern Californian as you can imagine, but with her New York pedigree, it’s made for some interesting comminglings when it comes to expressing her wishes, especially when those wishes encompass the negative. That I’ve been a quick study in discerning the “no” at the center of her various initial affirmations or accommodations is probably why she’s spread around her conclusion that I am a “keeper.”

Last Christmas I was furthering my experiments in living alone. I booked a business class seat on Amtrak for Vancouver, B.C. and my favorite hotel in the heart of the city’s homeless section. I had packed only what would fit in my eVest, so unlike the homeless with their grocery carts and black trash bags, I was essentially more dissolute than them. And when one stopped me on the street to inquire “whether the old age pension checks had come in,” I felt as if I had transitioned completely to life on the street.

   But it wasn’t to be.

When Carol was twelve, she made a road trip with her older sister and her four kids. Somewhere in Missouri they looked back at the trailer that housed her sister’s dog Heidi, and didn’t see her. With a happier ending than a similar event in National Lampoon’s Vacation, the Crisfield clan hung a U-ee and found Heidi bounding along the highway, her leash that she’d used to somehow manage to open the door to the trailer bouncing behind. The original trip planned to Alaska had to be abandoned in British Columbia, when that same trailer busted an axle on the Alaskan highway. I’m happy to report Heidi was safe, though covered in leftover coleslaw that had spilled out of the fridge when the axle broke. A Native American guide fixed the axle and let Carol’s niece ride his horse during the repair, adding, “when you’re done, just get off; he’ll find his way home.”

   I’ve been pretty efficient in figuring out my life (I’m only turning 70 in a few months), leaving myself some modicum of longevity to enjoy the fruits of those reflective labors.

   For most of my life, though, I considered myself a restless soul, incapable of settling down into a productive and meaningful way of life. What I’ve come to conclude, however, is that I am a wandering soul incapable of settling down into a productive and meaningful way of life. The distinction is as fruitless as it is semantic.