“When living in such close proximity, if we all wore our hearts on our sleeves, it would be overwhelming. We still have to live, work, plan, and play together, yet still somehow carve out space to grapple with our feelings.
“A mild and positive greeting acknowledges our connection while leaving the recipient a choice to maintain their bubble of privacy or to respond with an invitation to go deeper.”
As interviewer, I accept the contradictions and paradoxes. For example, if a man were to appear with an incurable sadness in him, but uses words that are happy, I would say with William Blake, “Without Contraries is no progression.”
Jeff Gilmore’s story starts two generations ago. The direction of his life goes from finding that there was no place set for him at his father’s table to finding the many mansions in his father’s house.
Jeff’s paternal grandmother abandoned her two young sons and went off like a character in fiction to follow her fancied need for another man. Her little sons were placed in foster care. This is the wound that has lingered like a ghostly presence in the life of the family.
Jeff is the fourth of four brothers. His parents were expecting a daughter. Jeff believes that the birth of a fourth son was a disappointment all around.
In the give and take of family life, his brothers, who were born within five years of each other, saw him as the laughing-stock of the family. To this day, Jeff feels the sting of their wit at his expense.
Still, there were happy moments. He enjoyed “walking and playing in the woods above the house, riding bikes with brothers, exploring industrial nooks, and discovering natural landscapes in our small Pennsylvania town.” In his mid-teens, he says,“ I found my own voice and place at my high school newspaper.”
He grew up being both inside and outside family life. He is aware of the contradictions of feeling that solitude suits him best and yet wanting to be closer to the life of those around him. But like many in our brilliant modern life, he feels an emptiness in his heart.
Jeff understood his own father, from whom he has inherited his engineering skills as well as his feeling of sadness, a hollow feeling, and a need that cannot be assuaged.
His father’s personal wound has left an impact on the family. Fortunately for Jeff, he had a moment of sharing with his father when the two of them went back together to visit the paternal family roots in Pennsylvania for a brief visit.
For Jeff, romantic relationships came and went like the ocean breeze, but when he met his wife Kristen, he says, “I had taken a powerful turn in my life toward self-determination. She was bright and funny, beautiful and loving, and I felt such a pleasure in being with her and knew that I had something good to give her myself.”
Kristen is a psychoanalyst. She has excellent credentials and a portable profession. She would do well almost anywhere. Having made his fortune as a computer specialist at Hewlett-Packard, Jeff quit his job, and the couple gave up California to live in EcoVillage in Ithaca.
It was the right place for Jeff. He says he can use his father’s engineering skills and his own talent as “thinker and problem solver to design and implement strategies through voluntary interdependence.”
Any engineering or technological challenge facing EcoVillage finds him—from installing solar panels on the roof of the Common House to installing a cheaper telephone system for the community.
In short, Jeff has not only found his place at the table, he has found the many mansions in his father’s house.
