At my housewarming party, my daughter-in-law smiled and handed me a glass of whiskey.
“this is for you, dad. a new beginning.”
I was about to take a sip when my granddaughter tugged at my sleeve, small fingers urgent. My son took my glass and drank it without a second thought.
Thirty minutes later, everyone started screaming.
My name is Chris Sullivan, and I’m 68 years old.
That number used to bother me, like a countdown to irrelevance in a world that worships youth and speed.
But standing in the living room of my new house on this bright June morning in Portland, Oregon, I felt something I hadn’t felt in the two years since my wife Eleanor passed.
Possibility.
The Craftsman-style house wasn’t just a purchase. It was a declaration.
After three decades of designing buildings for other people, reviewing blueprints until my eyes blurred, managing construction sites in rain that soaked through every layer of clothing the Pacific Northwest could throw at you, I’d finally chosen something for myself.
Well, not built exactly.
I’d bought it from a couple relocating to Arizona for retirement, but I’d chosen every detail that mattered. The oak floors that caught the morning light just right.
The built-in bookshelves in the living room, deep enough for my architecture books and Eleanor’s novels.
The kitchen with windows facing east so I could drink my coffee and watch the sunrise over the neighbor’s maple trees.
I walked through each room slowly that morning, running my hand along the door frames, checking the corners where walls met ceilings. Old habits from a lifetime of catching contractor shortcuts.
Everything was solid. Everything was mine.
At 68, I was starting over, and it felt right in a way I hadn’t expected.
The house had three bedrooms—one for me, one that I’d set up as an office though I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it now that I was retired, and one for Grace, my granddaughter, for when she stayed over on weekends.
She was eight years old, all energy and questions, with Eleanor’s eyes and her mother’s determination.
I’d already put a small desk in there for her drawings, and stuffed animals she’d left on her last visit sat arranged on the bed like a jury, waiting to pass judgment on my decorating skills.
My son Matthew and his wife Oilia lived twenty minutes away, close enough for Sunday dinners but far enough that I wasn’t hovering—something Eleanor had always warned me about.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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