The Place: Jo’s Coffee on Second

The Cup: Janet said she’d maxed out on her coffee limit already and opted for Kombucha. I rarely max out, so iced coffee for me.

Background: A few weekends ago, hubby Dave and I headed to Fredericksburg, TX for the weekend. I decided to finally give AirBnB.com a try {I know, what rock have I been living under, right?!?} and I discovered a fantastic little place called Betty’s B&B. It was quaint, walking distance to everything and perfect. The owner of Betty’s wanted to make sure we had all the information we needed prior to our arrival and gave me a call. About 30 minutes later, I had the info and a new friend. Oh, and once I learned she and her husband live in downtown Austin, I also had a coffee date.

Janet is as warm and inviting as her little cottage in Fredericksburg. She’s also an adventurer with a few surprises on her bucket list. Before we get into all that, let’s cover some:

Common Grounds

1. What is the last thing you fixed? I’m not real mechanical. I give that stuff to my husband. The last thing I fixed was the insole of my shoes, and boy am I glad I did it.
2. What is your guilty pleasure? Chocolate.
3. How did you make your first buck? Baking. When I was growing up we lived in the country out on a grapefruit tree farm. My mom and stepdad were terribly in love. We lived in a primitive shack. You had to make yourself happy and I did that by going on hikes, reading, gardening and baking. When my stepdad was killed in a car wreck, my mom and I sat down and realized we were going to be very poor. We needed both incomes to stay on the farm. So, when I was 15 I started baking carrot cakes and selling them, mostly to restaurants, but also to individuals if they wanted one. The name of the bakery was Janet’s Bayview Bakery. Our speciality was carrot cakes – which is the only thing I made. I baked four bundt cakes at a time and just cranked them out. I used the money to buy a car and pay for gas. $4.50 was what I charged for my cakes {which won’t even get you a cupcake these days}.
4. What is your favorite way to unwind? Gardening. Digging a hole, sweating and working with plants.
5. Where is your favorite place to eat in Austin? Casa De Luz
6. Who has been the most influential person in your life so far? My mother. She still influences me regularly. When we were having a hard time, my mother was always one who stayed busy. And really, if you just stay busy, you end up working through it. She is 83 and she just opened another business in Alaska. By staying active and connected, you stay younger.
7. What is your greatest fear? Losing my connectedness by not being employed.
8. If you could swap lives with someone for a day, who would you choose? After a friend recently completed a half-marathon, I realized I was feeling kind of jealous. I would swap lives with a runner. I used to run before I hurt my knee, and I think I’d like to get back into it.
9. What is something about yourself that you would change? I’d remove self-doubt.

One of my favorite questions to get a coffee started is to ask my new friend to tell me about the most signifiant thing that’s happened to them in the last 30 days. I find this gives a good sense of where a person is at the moment because whatever is going on is likely to be shaping how they show up for our visit. A lot of my questions get similar answers from folks, but this one has yet to garner the same answer from two people.

Professionally, Janet was a nurse, then a teacher and then a nurse again. For the last several years she’s enjoyed a nursing gig where she travels around Texas for the state, visiting with people who are living at home with a caregiver. It’s a sort of welfare check-up, I suppose you might say. She does it for a few months and then is done. This year she was gearing up to hit the road for another assignment when she got a call from the state. It turns out her nursing license had expired; she either needed to get it renewed or pass up the job.

Janet found herself asking the question, “Am I a nurse?” After some thought, her answer was, “No, I’m not a nurse anymore. I’m a real estate tycoon.” In addition to the property that connected Janet and I, she and her husband also have another vacation rental in Fredericksburg, as well as five long-term rentals in Austin and Fredericksburg. Managing the properties has grown into a sizable amount of work, and Janet decided it was time to give up her day job and focus on the properties. As she says, “I decided now that I’m a real estate tycoon, I better be good at it.”

“Closing that book has been significant,” Janet tells me of her decision to not renew her nursing license. “It was shocking, actually,” she says, adding, “It’s amazing how much we wrap our identity around a piece of paper.”

Janet and I talk a bit about bucket lists and not only does she have one, she has it with her at all times, on her iPhone. One item she’s crossed off recently was learning to scull – which living in downtown Austin makes quite convenient, with beautiful Lady Bird Lake right there in the middle of town.

Some items she’s working on are: taking a serious bicycling trip; getting a side job and spending the money on herself; and volunteering with the homeless, as well as with a new farm that’s getting started just outside of Austin. Also, one that at first I found a little surprising – Janet wants to be a pedicab driver. She’s always loved riding her bicycle and she as she says, “You get paid to be out at night talking with people.” She genuinely seems worried as she asks me, “Do you think at my age it’s inappropriate?” I have no clue how old Janet is, but it has little bearing on my answer. Janet is full of energy, spunk and enthusiasm. To me, she embodies the phrase, “You’re only as old as you feel.”

“Heavens no,” I tell her, “it’s not inappropriate at your age. You’d be great!” And I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

The final bucket list item we chat about is her buying a sailboat, moving onto it and sailing around. For the second time.

Yes, Janet has already accomplished this one and intends to do it again. 15 or so years ago, when their two oldest daughters were grown and out of the house, Janet and her husband sold their real estate appraisal business, their home and cars, and loaded up their sailboat and their nine year old daughter Madison, and set sail for three years. Every summer they flew to Alaska where Janet’s parents lived, and spent a few months making money – Janet’s husband running a fishing business, and Janet working as a Native art dealer with her mother. Janet names this little tidbit as the detail about her life people who know her might find surprising. She tells me she isn’t an artist and has no art training, but her mom and brother are artists. She has an eye for what people are interested in buying, as well as the price they are willing to pay.

While in Alaska, Madison would enroll in school for a bit. Then, when it was time to set sail again, the Alaskan homeschool community provided books and materials, and Madison’s classroom, once again, became the sea. Quite literally, in regard to a science project they worked on. Janet and Madison enjoyed snorkeling and went every chance they could. Each time they went, they worked on identifying the fish and other critters they saw in the water. Above board, they created a map of their travels and put the various fish from each location on the map. Now that’s learning!

Janet recalls one Valentine’s Day when Madison came to her and asked if she’d teach her to sew a skirt. They created a pattern out of newspaper and then worked all day hand-sewing a skirt, complete with a zipper {a task that even with a sewing machine, I’ve not been able to master}. Janet laughs a little as she tells me that her daughter loved the skirt and “wore the hell out of it.”  “To this day, she sews and she’s good at it,” Janet says, adding, “it’s memories like these that are so special.”

Eventually, when Madison was 12, she told her parents she wanted to be on a team and to have a house. Janet admits, “She really wasn’t asking too much.” So the family moved back on land, settling in Fredericksburg. But the sea is calling to them, and Janet says that once they get the most recent property aquisition fixed up and rented out, they will look at buying another sailboat and getting back on the water. I assume Janet must really love sailing – and am surprised when she tells me, “I don’t really enjoy sailing because I get seasick.” She goes on to say, “But I love getting to the destination.  There is this whole subculture in sailing. No one is working, so there’s always a happy hour on someone’s boat. You can have coffee for three hours every morning, and if you feel like reading all day, that’s fine.”  I can see the allure.

I ask Janet about her greatest achievement to date and she tells me it’s being a mother. Her three daughters are a big source of pride for Janet and she tells me, “There is no other closeness like it. And they turned out to be decent people, which is a bonus.”

A book that was a challenge, but meaningful to Janet was the classic, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig. I, too, found the book quite meaningful and rich with insights that got me thinking. It’s one of those books, for me at least, that is read slowly because every other sentence, it seems, is so beautifully written, you have to stop and re-read it at least three time before moving on. One of my favorite lines is:

“It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.”

Another is:

“We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.”

Another book Janet enjoyed was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Again, a book I totally agree with her on as an excellent read. It pulls the reader in and keeps you wanting more – the kind of book that ends and you find yourself missing the characters. Janet says the thing she enjoyed most was the way it captured the interest of people of all ages. She found herself talking to a young girl at the airport about the book and then gave her copy to her 86-year-old father and they had a great conversation about it as well. Somewhat rare, these days especially, to have a book that nearly everyone can enjoy and relate to.

I want to know what Janet thinks is the biggest issue facing society today and she tells me its our (Americans’) sense of entitlement. She contends that we seem to feel entitled to a certain type of lifestyle that the earth just cannot support long-term. She goes a step further and says we even have a sense of entitlement when it comes to healthcare. She talks about folks her parents age and older who are at the doctor at least once a week for something or another. In Janet’s view, people think they are owed healthcare when they get sick, but the fact is, medical advances may be able to extend life, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best thing. We can’t afford the financial burden and the planet won’t be able to sustain it either. “We need to learn to live within our means, realistically,” Janet says, “rather than expecting some ideal life.”

I find myself both surprised by her point of view and intrigued. It leaves me considering a question I’ve never thought to consider before. Just because science makes something possible, living longer with the help of medicine and treatments, in this case, does it necessarily make it good?  I’m reminded of yet another quote from Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

“We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on “good” rather than on “time”….”

I’m left wondering if Parkinson’s Law may come into play here as people are given (and expect) longer to live. Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Ever had a task on your to-do list that you weren’t excited about and found yourself waiting until the last minute to do it? Ever crammed for an exam the morning of? If we expect to live longer lives, does that just mean we will take the extra time for granted and still only accomplish the same, or less, than if we’d had less time? Interesting question to consider.

If Janet had 30 seconds to make a speech to the world, she tells me she’s say the same thing she said a few weeks ago when she ran for a spot on the board of her homeowner’s association. Janet says, “I’m about promoting community, living harmoniously and getting to know each other. In my campaign speech I said that we needed to focus on having regular get-togethers and parties and we need to get to know our neighbors. Once we know each other, we can work together to improve our grounds or tackle issues like security. When people work together and stop isolating themselves, then the world becomes better.”

“Excellent speech,” I tell her. “Did you win?”

“Nope. And I’m kinda glad I didn’t,” she says and then tells me a story that paints a picture of her community and countless other like it. “If I’m working on trimming back the weeds on the grounds – which appears to have not been done in many, many years – people just walk on by. They don’t stop to talk or offer to help. They can’t even be bothered to pick up a branch and carry it to the garbage. They just keep moving, right on past me.”

One last quote, from Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

“We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. ”

Janet has shared her lovely little cottage with me and now she’s shared her story and her friendship. It’s clear to me that perhaps the biggest thing we share is the belief that people would do well to talk more to one another. To look up from their phones and into the eyes of the people next to them. Amazing people surround you every moment of every day. If you don’t take a moment to invite them in with a smile or a hello, you are missing so much. And I’m afraid that although we may live longer than those who came before us, we will find that those extra days we bought were spent chasing, working, climbing, hurrying, and that we’ll realize too late that the time is gone. The challenge isn’t to simply live longer – but to live better, more fully and more connected. Look up and smile more. You’ll be surprised at all the love around you.

If you find yourself in Fredericksburg, TX and want to stay at Betty’s B&B, I recommend it highly! Have a look here for the rental details.