You know you’re getting older when you catch your adult kids walking around your house with a tape measure envisioning the remodel after you’re dead. Actually, in our younger son’s case, he’s sort of hoping for the remodel before we’re dead.
“You could really do something with this place,” he enthuses hopefully when he, his wife, the kids and the dogs are down for the weekend.
He envisions, at minimum, a second-story master suite angled to maximize what would be an unobstructable ocean view, a wraparound front porch and reconverting the ill-considered, done-by-a-previous-owner 1955 garage remodel back into a garage (amen to that). We’re very clear that his fantasies include a remodel to his specifications on our dime.
We couldn’t agree more that this tiny built-by-the-lowest-bidder-after-The-War house on a prime lot could be a morphed into a really fantastic place. It’s had a lot of interior upgrades over time but is still the original 1947 footprint. Its 1,600 square feet (including the converted garage) felt enormous when my ex and I bought it in the ’70s, much smaller when we added two kids, positively palatial when the kids departed and now totally sardine-ish when both kids, two daughters-in-law, five grandchildren and two more dogs show up. We think it will make a wonderful remodel for someone. But we’re not those someones.
I’ll confess that a part of me has always regretted that the timing was never right for that remodel (divorce, college bills, etc.). As we’ve explained to the kids, the house, the cars and their educations are finally paid for. Definitely not looking for more debt, except at tax time when we realize our deductionless tax burden single-handedly s several branches of state and federal government.
We’ve told our younger son that we think all of his remodel ideas are wonderful and that we will be happily looking down (or up) on them when the time comes. He actually owns (along with a bank) his own house in L.A., so it’s not like he and his family don’t have a nice roof over their heads. But I think if you grow up in La Jolla, you never lose the draw to this place.
Of course, the other way you know you’re getting old, besides the kids standing on the roof with a sketch pad, is you have to set up those nagging living will instructions. (It’s pretty much all downhill once you wake up on your 50th birthday and find both an AARP card and an appointment for a routine colonoscopy in the mail.)
But one does have to decide at some point who will make decisions for one’s health care once neither you nor your spouse is able to. Did we want to appoint our older son, the clinical social worker who has run programs for the homeless and has done hospice care? Or should we go for the younger son, who has an MBA?
In our fantasies, the social worker kid is sitting by our bedside adjusting our blankets and patiently listening to our endless repetitious stories as he quietly strokes our hands. The MBA kid, we envision, is parked on the other side, earbuds cranked up to 120 decibels to drown out the annoying stories, comforting us with one hand and calculating the negative cash flow of long-term care on his tablet with the other. Next thing we know — pffft! Someone accidentally trips over the plug and we’re buried in the backyard.
For the record, the MBA kid does not find this story funny at all, insisting that a business degree would hardly prevent him from making comionate decisions about our care. And besides, he points out, there’s barely enough room in the backyard to park the two of us without having to reconfigure the entire irrigation system. And where’s the economy in that?
Actually, the whole backyard thing might be moot. My sons have long been threatening to have me cremated using the 65 photo albums — an entire bookcase — that I had amassed over the years. I just love taking pictures and might possibly have been (over)compensating for the fact that my parents probably took a total of 20 out-of-focus, off-center, black-and-white box camera photos of me before I was 18. During the pandemic, I culled the albums to a mere 36. Hardly enough to get a good fire going.
Meanwhile, my husband, Olof, maintains that the “tripping over the plug” part, intentionally or not, doesn’t sound half bad. Besides, for all we’d know, it would be the social worker kid, driven cumulatively mad after the 500th repetition of the infamous dead possum incident, whose foot suddenly intersected with the power cord. And if it came right down to it, burying us in the backyard (despite being massively illegal) actually sounded kind of charming, given our fondness for the place.
But one request: Can we have a view spot?
Inga’s lighthearted looks at life appear regularly in the La Jolla Light. Reach her at [email protected]. ◆
