No Regrets

the community, and not celebrities to be pointed out or stalked. The area was an oasis from a world that moved too fast.
    Lopez was a particularly friendly island. It was the custom there to wave to anyone you passed on the road— friend or stranger.
    Unlike the well-known people who moved to the San Juan Islands, the Neslunds were far from famous or sought after, but like them, enjoyed the serenity and peace. In 1974, they bought a 7.2-acre plot of land with an old house on it on Alec Bay Road, on the south end of Lopez. The next year, the house mysteriously burned to the ground. With the insurance money, Ruth designed and built a five-thousand-square-foot home, one of the largest on Lopez. An almost hidden dirt road led to the backyard of their barn red rambler, while the front windows looked out on Alec Bay. They fenced in meadows on either side to make pastures for sheep and cattle.
    Ruth handled it all. She wrote the checks that chipped away at their mortgage with payments of $152.00 each month, only occasionally falling behind. She always managed to catch up on mortgage payments and taxes just in time to keep them from losing their property. She knew it was a canny real estate investment; by 1981, one estimated appraisal of their house and land was an almost unbelievable five hundred thousand dollars. By that time, Ruth had whittled their mortgage down to only sixty-five hundred dollars. She knew all about how compound interest could build a fortune, and she always deliberately waited five years to pay their taxes because she knew she could use that money in ways that brought in more in interest than she lost in penalties.
    Early on, the Neslunds established a pattern where Rolf turned his pilot’s salary over to Ruth, and she wrote all the checks to pay bills. He preferred to handle cash only.
    To be sure he always had spending money, Ruth keptcash on hand in a dresser drawer. Sometimes, it was twenty dollars; sometimes it was fifteen hundred. “Whenever he needed money,” she said fondly, “he would tell me and I would go and get him some. I always wanted him to have the cash he needed.”
    In November 1962, a year and a half after their marriage, Rolf wrote his last will and testament. He left virtually everything to his new bride, with apparently no provision for his sons or their mother. Ruth kept the will in a strongbox in their home.
    A few years later, on May 27, 1965, the couple signed a “boilerplate” form Ruth had purchased at a stationery store. It was very simple: They filled in the spaces that showed they agreed that if one of them should die all of their holdings were to be considered community property and go directly to the survivor. They had a notary public validate their signatures, and they filed the agreement at the courthouse the next day.
    What belonged to him would be hers, and what belonged to Ruth would be Rolf’s. Their signatures each had large, sweeping capital letters at the beginning, although Rolf’s writing was a bit more flamboyant than his wife’s. A graphologist would probably say that they were both confident—and even dominant—personality types.
    Ruth decorated their large home in the style of the 1960s and seventies, buying plush, velvety furniture in shades of brown and gold that blended perfectly against wood-paneled walls. The carpeting was mocha shag piling, with a pattern of darker colors sprinkled across it. Her lamps and knickknacks were much more feminine than anything Rolf would have chosen, the end tables draped with starched and embroidered white linen, the matching lamps with either ivory globes or marble bases. As almostevery woman crafter did in that era, Ruth crocheted afghans in the ubiquitous zigzag pattern of orange, brown, and white.
    The Neslunds’ native stone fireplace with its thick wood mantel held a chiming Seth Thomas clock, and their walls were hung with numerous paintings, some of the ocean, some of flowers, some with big-eyed children.
    Ruth collected and resold antiques, but her favorites were the parlor furniture which had once belonged to Rolf’s mother in Norway.
    “I took it all apart,” Ruth recalled. “It came over on a ship and it was pretty well fractured. I restored the wood, braced it, glued it, and reupholstered it. [There’s] a little love seat with four parlor chairs. That’s not for sale.”
    Rolf was a man of the sea, his very blood seemingly infused with salt water, and on Lopez the smell and sight of the