Unlost in Space

Cabernet at Two O-clock

It’s Friday night, six-fifteen. I’m home alone. Laurie is out for the evening, dinner with a friend then an author talk they’re attending at a nearby library. There are three leftover veggie meatballs in the fridge. There’s also the bottom third of a jar of Newman’s Own Marinara sauce. Oh, and several slices remain from a log of fresh mozzarella. A little milky, but it passes the sniff test. I rinse it off. Put it all in a bowl and nuke it for two minutes. There are also enough greens that are not yet black around the edge to make up a salad, plus some of that blue cheese dressing made from yogurt. Just fifty calories in two tablespoons. I pour it on like chocolate syrup. I set a place at the table. Napkin and fork on the left, spoon and knife (blade edge facing in) on the right. I pour a glass of cabernet from the wine box in the pantry, thinking how Bill and Sarah pour their box wine into an unlabeled bottle when they go to parties. The cab goes at two o-clock along with a glass of water. I’ll turn on the evening news fifteen minutes into dinner. After, I’ll clean up, walk once around the block, then stretch out on the couch, with the David Baldacci I’m working my way through, where Laurie will probably find me dozing when she gets home at nine. Thus, I bring order to an evening that might otherwise collapse into nihilism.

It's been the week from Hell. The higher-up boss person who regularly blocks whatever absolutely needs to happen has refused to pay the accustomed stipend to the professor who graciously offered to teach, over and above their full teaching load, the spring course we absolutely have to offer, and, on hearing the news from the Boss office, the professor has now refused to share their beautifully prepared course material with the adjunct I’ll have to hire. Boss-person and Professor are both dug in, grenades exchanged. Meanwhile, there’s a fight in one of the master’s programs with Professors A and B declaring that Professor C went to the Faculty Senate without their knowledge to make program changes the Senate has now approved. Oh, and the earnest and capable assistant prof going up for tenure is hitting strong headwinds because the chair of the college tenure committee is a die-hard number-cruncher who thinks focus groups don’t count for research even if a paper gets published in a tier one journal. What an a-hole, I would say, if I used language like that. I’ve been mentally composing my letter of support all week in between putting out fires. I’ll write it this weekend, in between reading the two dissertations that are up for a defense next week.

This is a realistic scene (not factual) from several years ago, pre-retirement. It comes to mind because of a feature that’s playing on NPR one day while I’m driving around town on Saturday errands. It’s about something called third place. They’re saying home is your first place, work is your second place, and then, there are places you just like to hang out, where, ideally people know you and it’s casual, like maybe a favorite diner or a bar or the billiards hall or a barber shop, hair salon, coffee shop. It’s kind of the opposite vision to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone about how nobody gets out anymore and civic life is dead. In the NPR feature, they’re saying third places are important for your individual sanity and the general health of society. It instantly makes sense, and it makes me think, do I have any third places in my life, and that makes me think about how for most of the forty-odd years I was working, I craved the idea of a third place, dabbled in them, but never had the time or energy to really settle down in any one. That’s because most of my work life was like the scene I described. By the end of the week, I was so completely spent, I had nothing left to give, and I always had more work to do on the weekend. I just wanted to be left alone. I’d find myself harboring a kind of loneliness, like where are my people, not workmates, but friends? And I’d build little rituals—setting a proper table when dining alone-- as a defense against a creeping sadness.

I’ve been reading up on third place. It’s a theory invented by a sociologist, Ray Oldenburg, and written up in his book called, The Great Good Place, published in 1989, which isn’t that long ago for an academic theory that’s managed to spill over into popular culture. In order to be official, a third place has to meet eight criteria. But ticking them off eliminates a lot of third places I can think of. So I prefer the loose, unofficial version, without all the criteria, because it works really well as a general category.

I was raised in churches, and, for most of our marriage, Laurie and I have been church people, but in a very different sort of church from what I was raised in. Until recently, our church, for me, wasn’t quite a third place because I didn’t give it the time and attention a third place needs. I was a back bencher (pew in this case) most of the time.

It occurs to me that for many of the years that I was too spent to engage casually with others, I devoted a fair amount of time to solitary pursuits: running long distances, cycling long distances, walking for hours, rowing for miles. Apparently, I managed to make a carve-out for these time-consuming activities and chose them over something like a local billiards hall, pub, or Church. Which makes me think, with all this talk about places, maybe there’s a fourth place that no one has mentioned. That place is solitude. The place we go to be deliberately alone, away from home, work, the pub, withdrawn from social interaction, a place of retreat and restoration. That’s something we all need, too. Looking back, it seems that, for many years, I craved it more than any third place. I’d carve out time by getting up at 5am on a Saturday to ride my bike on the rural roads near our home for four hours before turning to the day’s regular activities- chores, homework, family time.

But that’s all changing. What a difference not having to work for a living makes! My four places are getting completely re-balanced. Home is now a cozy place to relax. Work is sort of a hobby because there’s much less of it—I teach less, write more, and manage nothing. Meanwhile, Church has become a solid third place because I’m now spending the time and getting involved. And my fourth place is no longer squeezed into 5am. I can take two hours almost any afternoon for a brisk mini-hike in the woods, or get on my bike at 11am on a Wednesday for a long ride deep into new territory. I think this is what people call life balance. Apparently, to achieve it, you have to either be retired or have a rich aunt who reliably writes you a big check once a month.

I’m starting to think these four places are a handy way to understand the world, and I’m thankful to Ray Oldenburg for getting the ball rolling. Only, they may already be out of date. If I bring my laptop to a café and work alone, what place is that? If I’m at home having a weekly zoom call with friends, is that first place or third? If I’m on my Peleton in the basement competing with five people somewhere in the world, which place does that count for? If I’m sitting at the airport, waiting to board with soft music in my earbuds and my eyes closed, what’s that? And if I live alone in a small apartment where I work remotely, but regularly have friends over, alternating with long periods of solitude, what do I call that?

There may be a solution. I notice everybody talks about “spaces” these days. Spaces that are gendered or radicalized. Spaces that are safe or threatening. Brave spaces. This phenomenon, it turns out, is also a derivative from sociology and stands for socially constructed realities that don’t have to be anchored in any particular place. Ah! This may solve our problem. Solo laptopper in café? That’s a work space. Peletoning with phantom friends? Third space. Small apartment? It’s a second space if you’re working, first space if you’re on the couch with a book. Like that.

It's very nice to finally have the world all figured out. But it doesn’t solve everything. Our first space, currently, is way too big. What was great for raising three kids, feels, for the two of us like a giant, empty cruise ship with two passengers. And my beloved third space, I need to be careful because if I get too involved it will start to feel like my old second space, and if that happens I won’t have time for that all-important fourth space that, for me, has always been a priority. But, if it gets to be all too much, I can always retreat to ritual. Napkin and fork on the left, spoon and knife (blade edge facing in) on the right. Cabernet at two o’clock.

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