LIMINAL SPACE

As 2025 comes to an end, I've been trying to identify what I've been feeling this year.  It's been a wonderful, challenging, exciting, sad, joyful, infuriating time.  And I feel off-kilter, off-center, just "off".  Time is moving so quickly; the world feels more complicated. My desire to slow everything down might be age-related, but also, I think the changes all around us and the disorientation that many people feel might also be the ambient stresses of life in the early 21st century, which is looking so vastly different from what most of us of a certain age could have imagined.  Where are we headed anyway?

I need to mention the American political situation here. I'll  just say that I am absolutely shocked, disappointed, and outraged that apparently I was sold a bill of goopy patriotic goods by my Boomer Generation post WWII enculturation and all that is good and right about our democracy.  It was certainly an illusion (and from a decidedly white middle/upper class privileged perspective) and not something we were/are willing to fight en mass to improve.  

 Politically we are going through a bad patch that is a constant source of shock and disgust.  It feels heavy and sad and depressing and I'm pissed I have to live through it in my older years.  I don't really have the energy for this right now.  My sign waving, calling and writing legislators, marching, going to meetings, organizing, registering voters, etc etc might be worth doing, but the results are not yet turning the tide of corruption and cruelty that is the calling card of the current administration.  

Is this a necessary descent into chaos that is needed before we make our way to truly compassionate governing?  I don't know.  But that would be a good outcome.  Maybe this is a liminal space and what we feel is normal for such a transition.  I leave it to smarter people to analyze.  I just know it has impacted me to the core and I've ended up feeling cynical and sad.  But with some small inkling that there are brighter and better days ahead.  I'd like to be alive to see it.

On a personal level, let's start with learning how to drive again.  My car, a year old now, is still smarter than I am.  I still have not watched the 40 videos on the Kia app that will teach me all the intricacies of how to use all the bells and whistles.  I get in.  I drive.  I like that it's electric and not using fossil fuels.  I like the heated seats and heated steering wheel and a ton of safety features.  I really do need to learn more about it, but oh my.  Who has that kind of time?  And how did we get here?  A transition in to the intricacies of personal transportation happened without me much noticing.

Every other tech device I own also professes to make life easier and seamless.  But there is always a glitch or problem.  My TV has recently been possessed by a demon.  My phone apps and streaming platforms frequently malfunction.  My Alexa has been updated against my wishes and wants now to be my best friend, calling me by name with a new accent.  Our home security cameras randomly cut out.  Our security system always has at least one component part not responding.  My new WiFi can be spotty.  (My MacBook laptop is my one dear, constant, and stalwart tech friend.)  Is this challenging tech world forever, or are we still transitioning into a more reliable and sophisticated tech future?  Is this a liminal space between technologies of the past and future?  (And yes, A.I. is covertly and overtly becoming commonplace and I still don't really understand it.  But it has even played a part in this blog post by defining "liminal" for me to explain it clearly to you -- see below.)

Our 80+ year old house, where we've lived for 43 years, needs nearly constant attention as it always has but now it feels more demanding.  Water in the crawlspace, leaks in the irrigation pump, water damage on the basement floor, the occasional dead mouse smell coming from who knows where. (We live on a wooded ravine and they get in, but how?  We never have figured it out.)  A few light switches suddenly control nothing even though all wiring has been updated and it used to all work. A window seal failure has created a murky fog coating instead of a clear view.  An on-demand water heater beeps at us just for its own amusement.  The gutters clog, the paint chips, the leaves fall, the gophers dig...  We more and more often hire helpers or call upon our son to lend a hand.  Also more and more often we don't want the project anymore, nor do we want to act as project managers.  

There is a transition afoot as we realize at least we can ditch the house.  I say that so cavalierly.  Our home of 43 years is so much a part of us that we feel like we are cutting off a limb when we think of leaving here.  This is where we've lived our productive adult life, raised our children, gathered so often with our sons and their wives and our grandchildren, hosted neighbors and friends, celebrated, grieved, fought, laughed, crawled over every square inch of lawn and garden multiple times, renovated, remodeled, and restored every square inch inside too.  Our privacy on this 1-1/2 acre spot on a wooded ravine in the heart of the city has given us a fabulous back-of-house view of nature with all the other windows opening up huge views of mountains, the bay, and the lights of the city.  It is a unique place we have been privileged to tend and love for these past 4 decades.  But now it's all beginning to feel like a bit much.

And then there's my body.  I've been a life long bit of a worrier about health.  One might say I have some health anxiety issues.  But I have to admit I've been mostly really healthy with no chronic issues.  Until now.  I'm still very healthy "for my age" as they say.  But this past year or so there have been changes.  

I spent a year a while back with a painful hip/supporting muscles issue, at times necessitating using a cane (!), that finally resolved with dedicated physical therapy.  

This year it's been my back, most recently after our Europe trip. I have chronic sometimes activity-restricting significant pain that is stubbornly not going away.  I'm doing all I can, including acupuncture (fodder for another blog post), but it persists. I have a call in for more physical therapy sessions.  

Also, it was discovered I have a wee bit of cardiac calcium build up in my arteries that puts me at some increased risk for a "cardiac event" -- the kind of event I'd least like to go to.  So now I'm doing a ton of tests and scans to see what all of that might mean.  

Last spring I started about a 6 month "flare" of what recently has been diagnosed as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and of course that has been super fun to deal with.  More doctor visits, more tests, lifestyle/diet changes.  (But my new Nerva hypnotherapy app is pretty cool, designed especially to address IBS issues.)  

And then just a couple of weeks ago I got a biopsy on a little tiny scaly patch stubbornly rooted on my right cheek.  Skin cancer.  Again.  I am waiting for a call to set up a MOHS surgery to go in and remove it.  (I thought MOHS was an acronym for something.  Nope.  MOHS refers to Dr. Frederik Mohs who pioneered the meticulous layer by layer surgery to remove the cancer.)  So, my body as well as my house are requiring far more time and money and energy than I really want to give.

Growing older is the ultimate and inevitable liminal space from here to, well,  .... there.

So we do what we can to be proactive and mitigate the biggest worries.  Within the next two years we plan to sell and move to the Continuing Care Retirement Community  (CCRC) we've chosen.  We don't want to be socially isolated in a big house we can't care for; don't want to burden our adult children with overseeing our lives and caregiving; don't want to end up in places we do not choose for ourselves in the event of a health catastrophe.  So we are actively cleaning and clearing our possessions and as anyone who has ever done this knows, nearly every item we hold in our hands also means we are holding memories.  It's hard.  It's disorienting.  It's overwhelming.  While at the same time it's a relief, and exciting, and we are absolutely sure this is the right decision for us.  Still...  

It means facing loss, grief, and a huge change.  We've never lived communally (except Hub in his college dorm freshman year).  The new place is in a beautiful location, surrounded by trees, tons of cool amenities, lots to do, places to go, people to meet and befriend.  (We deeply wish our friends would consider a move with us, but alas, few are interested in this option we've chosen for our latter years.)  It will be a huge adjustment, further from our family, nearly 30 miles from our current community where we've put down deep roots.  And it will be our last home, with care available to see us through this last liminal space.

Liminal space is that time in between.  Like the end of one year and the beginning of another. Or high school to college or retirement to open-ended days.  Or any time of transition, really.  It is generally not a super easy journey, to end one thing and start another.  But such is the circle of life.  Sometimes we might notice it and sometimes we enter into it purposely.  Other times it's just happening on the edge of our awareness or with no awareness at all.  But transitions are life.  Nothing is permanent.  And it's OK to feel off balance.  It's normal.  

So let's be compassionate about all the liminal spaces and the disequilibrium that attends the "time in- between" and help each other through those times.  I think it would be lovely to prop each other up when we feel we are falling into the unknown, like at the end of every year when we look into the void of the next.  I wish us all soft landings.

At least that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit of definition  -- AI response to Google search for "liminal space definition"; 

Also photo of the nature trail at the CCRC we hope to move to.