FIGHTING CANCER TOGETHER “They were compassionate and they were kind.”
- Rick Bua, Cancer Survivor
30
THE B • Spring 2023
colonial in Otis. We went for the log cabin. This place was such a money pit even our real estate agent cautioned us against making an offer. But beside the faulty septic, evidence of rodents, and a roof that was more of a placeholder than functional protection, we fell in love with that house and moved in time for black fly season. It was mud—I mean love—at first sight. For the first several days in our new home, I saw our life through rose-colored glasses. The house was too cold and damp to be more than a foot away from the hardworking wood stove, and it was best not to think about the animal sounds at night. We were demolishing walls, making Home Depot runs, and getting acquainted with our field mice roommates. What I mean was: We were busy. Busy with renovations, busy with our love for each other and this new, imperfect house. But I woke up on our third night in a state of panic. My filmmaker husband and I both worked from home. We didn’t have children nor did we intend to make any. We didn’t have a dog to walk around the town. We had chosen an out-of-the-way house in a rural part of the Berkshires on a dead-end dirt road most people thought was a deer trail. How in the world were we going to make friends? The question of how to forge new relationships—especially as an adult— presses regardless whether you are new to the area or not. My portal to a social life came by way of the Sandisfield Post Office when I saw a flyer advertising “Sandisfield Calendars still available!” Given that it was April, the person who answered the number on the flyer, Liana Toscanini (today executive director of the Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires), was surprised I wanted one. “You sound young,” she said. “What are you doing here?” When I mentioned I’d just moved to the area, she insisted I come up the hill to meet her right away. Liana was my second friend in the area; our first was Chapin Fish, our realtor. But even with two friends to call our own, we still had to work extremely hard to be seen (again, dead-end road, work-from-home jobs), appreciated, and valued in our new town, which is how I came up with my best practices for making friends when you’re the newbie. B