By Betty Naegele Gundred
I had never lived alone.
I grew up in a large family with four siblings, had two roommates in college, and lived at home before getting married when I was twenty-two.
When my husband, a university professor, was offered a job in San Francisco in 1981, we left the East Coast and moved to California. We packed up our two little daughters, Jen and Erin, and headed west.
After renting for a few months among the eucalyptus trees of Mill Valley, we purchased a home in northern San Rafael. It was the quintessential California house, from my perspective, with glass everywhere and an interior atrium. My background was in horticulture, so the flower beds in the atrium sold me on the house. My husband worried about the energy efficiency, but he loved the setting among the Lucas Valley hills—hills that had been preserved as open space.
The architecture was unusual, by East Coast standards. It was called an “Eichler,” named after the man who designed the homes. We learned he had been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, who believed a home should be a part of the natural environment. House colors were neutral tones and only one story. The floor to ceiling glass in the back of the house and on three sides of the interior atrium allowed the outside landscaping to be part of the inside ambience. In summer, the scent of blooming gardenias in the atrium drifted in through the screened doors, sweet alyssum and roses through the back.
Our future heating bills forced us to turn the thermostat down to the mid- 60s, but since the back of our house was south facing, and primarily glass, it provided passive solar heating in winter. The wide overhang protected us from direct rays during the summer, while the tile floors provided delightful cooling to our bare feet. With overhead fans, we rarely needed air-conditioning.
One of the challenges of living in a glass house, besides not throwing stones, is that children often run into walls. Since many of our walls were glass, we had to be extra vigilant. Every autumn, birds would careen into the large glass windows drunk from pyracantha berries, fall to the ground stunned, and later fly away.
Our home’s design made it a great party house, with a circular traffic pattern. No one got stuck in a corner when they headed toward the bathroom or went back for that second helping.
Our daughters loved our home. Their laughter and that of their friends bounced off the walls and vibrated the glass, filling the rooms with a pleasant cacophony. Even sibling arguments and complaints gave energy to the living space.
Jen moved away after high school to attend college in 1994, Erin in 1997. The house was quieter with both daughters gone. They visited often, but never enough. I hated looking at their empty rooms, but by then I was teaching full time, and Carl was busy at the university as well as volunteering in the community.
Our lives were full—we planned to remodel our house, landscape the backyard, go on a long overdue vacation.
Carl had just taken a sabbatical. He had plans of every sort.
Life was good.
But plans don’t always work out.
We hadn’t planned to have his life cut short with an illness that had no cure— idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis—after a double-lung transplant and six months in the ICU.
August 2005.
Everything changed.
I was 56—and I had never lived alone–
The house was silent now, ghostly quiet. No conversation, no laughter, no singing. An Eichler was designed to commune with nature’s sounds, but I had closed all the windows and doors. At night, I cringed at every creak, every rattle of pipe, at the raccoons scrambling across the roof, the coyotes howling in the hills, a car passing down the street. These sounds that used to be normal, even welcomed, now caused me to close my bedroom door and curl into a fetal pose on our king-size bed.
During the day, when I was home, I turned on the TV for background noise, and in another room played music from my iPod, volume up high—rock, country, world, anything but sentimental.
I had friends who lived alone, some who preferred the quiet and embraced their independence. I knew living alone could be done gracefully.
The thing about glass houses is that they reflect images, especially at night when the inside lights are turned on.
Looking out the window, all I could see was myself staring back at me.
She looks so lost, I thought. I wondered if she’d ever find her way.
In time, I began opening windows at night, screen doors during the day, and turned the music down. My heart warmed to the sounds of doves cooing on the back fence and crows chattering in their daily debate. The scent of lavender drifted in through the back door and sweet jasmine through the kitchen window.
This was the home I had fallen in love with thirty years earlier. Looking out at the surrounding hills, dressed in summer khaki, I smiled. A sudden breeze, tunneling in from the coast, slipped through the open door and embraced me.
I exhaled tears of relief, of gratitude, and of hope.
By letting the outdoors back in, my healing began.