When the day came to leave Ohio and move to Colorado, I was emotionally torn. Everybody knows Colorado’s a gorgeous, scenic state, so why not live there? On the other hand – once a Buckeye, always a Buckeye!
Life is like that: full of changes, big and small, good and bad. Psychologists and those who study human behavior recognize how important these ubiquitous, life-altering periods of change are, terming them “liminal,” from the Latin “limen” for “threshold.”
I know how it feels to stand on the threshold of change. Liminal times in our life are disorienting. There are losses. Leaving Ohio, I wondered how I could live anywhere without beautiful Lake Erie in my life, losing my ritual of gazing at the lake, tracing all its shades of blue out to the horizon. I didn’t want to live where I couldn’t take the ferry on Lake Erie over to Kelleys Island for camping in the summertime, and to check out the Glacial Grooves, carved in the limestone 400 million years ago.
Yet Durango did captivate me. It began the evening I moved into my senior apartment (sight unseen, by the way), exhausted by travel. I was in a daze; then, suddenly a cluster of women and men who lived nearby circled me, wishing me luck, telling me how glad they were that I was moving in.
In the weeks that followed, these folks gave me important lessons in how to be a good neighbor. They helped each other out, and now they included me: “I made some extra potato salad so I brought you over some,” and someone else said, “Jim Harrison’s an author you’d like. Here’s one of his books for you.”
Kindness emanated from the women around me. They never imposed but moved through life with a natural grace, intuitively knowing when I’d appreciate company. And the men? They did the lawn, kept the place running, talked football and were, in my eyes, handsome rugged cowboys who proved they could wrangle anything that needed wrangling.
There came the day, too, when a man who lived nearby took charge of the somewhat neglected small rose bushes in the front. He coaxed the patch of yellow, orange, red and pink roses into something beautiful. Roses that are happy to bloom for a long time, it seems to me, and these were blooming into late fall. In the winter, missing the garden, I put a few red roses in a vase on my coffee table.
I was on the threshold of change: “I miss Ohio, but I like it here.” Durango nudged me to move forward, like the roses, and make myself at home.
So I continued to live through a liminal time. I looked for offerings in the humanities and arts, of special interest to me. I attended a dance concert, and during intermission, as I leafed through the program, reading the dancers’ biographies, I noticed one dancer was from Cleveland and had studied at Cleveland’s School of the Performing Arts. I was proud of her, and proud of Cleveland and its support for the performing arts. When I looked around at the crowded auditorium, I realized I was part of them, part of Durango.
Yes, I felt at that moment alive in both worlds. I was a Durangoan, enjoying the dance company based in New York City and performing here in Durango, and I also appreciated the young dancer from my hometown, where her talent had been nurtured.
The lights in the auditorium dimmed, signaling the end of intermission. Stage lights darkened. A little rustling from the audience, getting settled, then the curtains parted. The dancers, with their beauty and intensity, took the stage.
“It’s good here for you, Jo,” I said to myself.
I was home.
For 20 years, Jo Gibson worked as an adjunct faculty member in the English Department at Cleveland State University, and as a freelance writer with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She earned degrees from Kent State University and Cleveland State University, and loves her new home in Durango.
