Made the Newspaper!

Many of you may not know that Rauno writes for the local newspaper called the "Applegater".  Every quarter he sends in an article to add to his "Trends" column.  Below is his latest, thought you might enjoy the read!

8 Summer 2013 Applegater
BY Rauno Perttu
A new sunrise
TRENDS AND OBSERVATIONS

A year ago, after dementia had slowly
destroyed my beloved wife, Jan, she passed
away. At the end, her dementia had even
stolen her ability to swallow food or water,
but the Jan I knew had been stolen away
by this terrible disease long before that.
My son Kirk and daughter Emily,
concerned about me being alone, said I
should start dating. The thought of dating
was strange and somewhat frightening after
so many years of marriage. At their urging,
and with the additional urging of more
family and friends, I began to date—an
unfamiliar ritual after 40 years.
I took a few very nice ladies to dinner,
and confirmed that I much prefer the
companionship of a lady to being alone.
I also recognized that, after decades of a
happy marriage, I was actually looking for a
serious relationship. The ladies I met were
mostly divorced and looking for someone
to take them to dinner, a show, or a social
event, but nothing serious.
I commented to Kirk and Emily that
there aren’t many single ladies in our rural
Applegate Valley. They said I should check
out the online dating sites. I said I couldn’t
do that, but they replied, “Everyone does it
these days,” and added that’s how some of
their friends had met. Kirk recommended
one that he said is probably the most-used
site with the most people.
With their urging, I decided to
take the plunge. I answered the online
questions and reviewed the profiles of the
local ladies on the site. It soon became
almost a morning ritual to check out who
had looked at my profile and whom the
site had flagged for me to review. One
day, I noticed that I could also see who
had looked at my site but moved on,
presumably with no interest. I promptly
checked out who had checked me out and
moved on to better candidates.
Among this list of uninterested ladies
was a pretty face with a big smile that
immediately caught my attention. Her
write-up was sincere and unpretentious.
She was a widow after almost 40 years of
a happy marriage. When she wrote that
her idea of a fun date
was taking a walk along
the shore, then topping
it off with fish tacos,
I became intrigued.
When she wrote that she
was a “smile machine,” I
was interested. I could
get accustomed to that
smile.
However, there
were two immediate
problems—she had
rejected me, and she
lived in La Paz on
the Baja Peninsula in
Mexico. La Paz is not
just right next door, and
I wondered why she was living there. I
decided on a cautious approach. I emailed
her to ask for her advice. I told her I had
also lost a spouse after 40 years, was out of
practice with meeting ladies, and did she
have any advice?
To my delight, she sent me a nice
reply. We quickly exchanged a long flurry
of emails. She had rejected me because
I had mentioned that, as an Oregon
university graduate, I enjoy Ducks football.
Her image was of me sprawled on the
sofa watching football in my t-shirt while
smashing empty beer cans against my
forehead. I was able to convince her it’s
not that bad. My forehead isn’t tough
enough for beer cans, and my t-shirt is
usually clean. It turned out she and her
husband had come to La Paz on their
sailboat after sailing in the South Pacific
and had fallen in love with the town. They
bought a house, sold their boat, met many
wonderful people and settled in. After her
husband died, also at a too-early age, she,
like me, realized she would rather share her
life than live alone.
During o u r
emailing, I got her real
name, Ana, and
her Skype number.
We were soon able
to see and hear each
other, which was much
better than just emails.
Somewhere in the midst
of all our conversations,
I thought, “What are we
doing? She’s almost two
thousand miles from
here.” Her reply to my
concern was “So what?
We’ve both done a lot of
traveling.”
I thought she was right and booked
a flight to La Paz. Because of all the time
we had spent online and on Skype, when
we met for the first time it seemed that we
already knew each other. To me, she was
even better in person. My week in La Paz
passed quickly and happily. That trip was
soon followed by two weeks spent together
mostly in San Francisco (medical followups—
she’s a cancer survivor), with a quick
trip to the Applegate.
I soon made a second trip to La Paz.
While there, I noticed that La Paz’s warm
sunshine felt better on my old face than
our cold winter wind and rain. We were
soon discussing spending future winters
in La Paz.
For 26 years, I have enjoyed this special
property on the
river. However,
a s b e a u t i f u l ,
comfortable and
private as it is,
with Jan and the children gone, I was
unsuccessfully struggling with maintaining
the acreage, house and outbuildings.
Although I was trying to resist becoming
just another old snowbird, I had also been
considering winters in a warmer spot.
When Ana told me she hates the winter
cold, we had the obvious answer: winters
in La Paz.
Although I don’t yet speak Spanish,
she is fluent, I want to learn, and there is a
flourishing community of other snowbirds
in La Paz. Ana soon volunteered to join
me in the Applegate to get my house ready
for sale. I don’t think she knew what she
had volunteered for, because she had no
idea how much I had accumulated over
the years. She has become an expert
seller on on-line auction, and knows how to separate
the worthwhile from the junk. We are
planning an estate sale and yard sale(s) so
we can sell the house. I hadn’t appreciated
how much I had let the house, outbuildings
and property deteriorate during the years
when Jan was declining. All this means
that we will both be busy getting the
house emptied and repaired for sale, while
squeezing in ample goof-off time.
I love the Applegate Valley, which
has been my year-round home for the past
26 years. However, starting this coming
winter, I plan to sadly miss those cold
winter days in the Applegate, while having
to tolerate warm sunshine in La Paz. A new
sunrise has dawned for Ana and me. Our
spouses would be happy for us.
Rauno