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Grateful for My Simple Life

May 27, 2026 — Pat Bertram

This is not another “ideal life” post, but it comes close. For sure, though, it’s a post about gratitude.

I am utterly and sincerely grateful for my simple life.

I just talked to a woman who has a four-hour daily commute for work, an Australian fiancé, a young son she has sole custody of, all of which turns her life into a logistical . . . well, not nightmare, because her son and her soon-to-be husband are not nightmares, but it creates an untenable situation. He can come here and they can get married, but once he’s applied for a green card he can’t go back to Australia for more than a year. And the same if she were to get married there. They don’t want to live here particularly, but they can’t take the child out of the country until he’s old enough to decide for himself where he wants to live. And if the fiancé moves here, he loses a great job, moves to a place he doesn’t particularly like, and leaves his extended family behind.

As we talked, she mentioned a few other logistical problems. Then we moved on to other topics, such as a mutual acquaintance who is dealing with some of the same issues, though he doesn’t mind living in Thailand with his new wife until she’s able to come to the USA. He has people here who take care of his house for him (me being one of them), but still, he’s been up in the air for over a year about what is eventually going to happen.

And a close relative recently married a Vietnamese woman who was twice turned down for a visitor’s visa. Now they have to go through the lengthy wait for immigration and then a visa (two different bureaucracies, apparently. It’s possible to be okayed for immigration but turned down for a visa.) She doesn’t want to be a US citizen, he doesn’t want to live there permanently (though they are hoping for six months in each place), so I don’t quite know how all that will work out.

But . . . and it’s a big but for me — it’s not my problem!!!

I don’t travel so I don’t have the possible nightmare of falling in love with someone from another country who may or may not be eligible for a move to this country. Frankly, I have no intention of ever being with anyone again. No falling in love, no getting married, no living with anyone. So, see? Simple!! I have no small children to take into consideration, no elderly parents, no horrible commute, no travel expenses.

It’s just me, my house, my simple life.

Maybe it’s a bit insensitive of me to be giving thanks for this simplicity when friends and relatives are dealing with such complexity, but this is the way things turned out for me. Usually at this point, I add a caveat about being aware that on a moment’s notice, things in life can change drastically (perhaps worse but possibly better) but I decided not to do that. I’m just going to bask in the simplicity — and gratefulness — of today.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, house, life, relationships. Tags: being grateful, family, immigration problems, living a simple life, marrying someone from another country, not my problem, relationships. 4 Comments »

Feels Like Home

March 4, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Someone asked me today if it were a cultural shock for me living here in this rural corner of the state after growing up in Denver. I told her that it felt the same, that it felt like home. If I had moved here directly from Denver, it might be a different matter, but I left Denver when too many people from out of the state moved in and immediately tried to change the slow-moving town to a great city. When I was growing up, Denver was a cowtown without a skyline, and fabulous views of the mountains from wherever I stood. Each neighborhood was a town in itself, with churches, schools, stores, a library, all within walking distance. The political bent was . . . well, there was no bend; beliefs seemed to hover right about in the middle. People tended to vote their beliefs rather than follow the party, and overall, it seemed to be centrist. There was some crime and some poorer neighborhoods, but there were no gangs or gang-related activities.

Then came the California invasions. Now Denver is indistinguishable from other major cities, with gangs galore, horrendous social problems, outrageous real estate prices, an agenda the rest of the state has a hard time dealing with, and no autonomous neighborhoods.

I am grateful to be out of that mess, grateful to have found a place that feels like home, that feels like the neighborhood “town” I came from.

The conversation, however, made me wonder why people leave an area they are dissatisfied with and immediately try to change their new location to mimic the old one. Although this is the current problem with a lot of immigrants — people want to change the laws in this country to make it more like the place they came from — it’s also a problem when large numbers of people move from one state to another.

I blame Californians for the change, but New Yorkers cause just as many problems in some areas. In fact, someone from New York recently moved here and is trying to steer this town toward being more of an artist’s colony like Taos rather than accepting it for what it is — a quiet, rather impoverished though congenial town with a lot to offer as it stands today.

I know people prefer what they are familiar with, but migrators — either internal or international — generally leave to go to a new place in search of a better life, so why try to make the new way like the old?

This isn’t simply a problem from state to state, but also from one area to another within a state. I spent some years in the high desert of California, across the mountains from the Los Angeles sprawl. At one time, it was a quiet place, but the state tried to break up the big-city gangs by getting families to relocate to the desert. Now, the place is rife with gang-related troubles, including drugs and crime.

It’s as if they (whoever “they” are) want to turn the whole world into a cesspool. Migrators seem to go along with this agenda because they believe in the rightness of their cause and the wrongness of people who want to live their lives by their own religious beliefs rather than the political beliefs of others. It’s not a surprise there are problems; there always are when the rights of the few are given precedence over the rights of the many.

But I’m migrating away from the topic of this blog. Mostly I’m trying to understand the mentality of those who leave one horrible area and immediately try to change their new environment into an equal horror rather than trying to fit in with the local culture. Though I suppose the truth is they don’t think of the change as horror. Nor do they see anything wrong with what they are doing. Many such immigrants I’ve met have a touch of arrogance about them, as if they thought they were bringing light to a dark area, and never realize they could be a dark bringer instead.

Luckily, this place is small enough and rural enough and independently-minded enough that it will be years before it’s changed all out of recognition. Luckily too, if it’s changed faster than I think it will be, I have my own place — my own personal gated place — and within this enclosure, I can still be at home no matter what goes on outside the fence.

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