I don’t know about raising children, since I haven’t had any. My family was so insular, I don’t think I had a village growing up, unless you count my teachers and my pediatrician.

But I do know this: It takes a village to sustain a late-middle-aged, debilitated, single homeowner who’s clueless about fixing things. My village comprises a great many support people, by whom I mean people that I pay to help me keep my life in order.

All of us lucky enough to live above the poverty line have some people, of course. We have doctors and dentists. Some of us have shrinks and even more of us have therapists. Most of us have car mechanics and hairdressers or barbers.

Oh, for the simple life. The other day someone knocked on the door. It turned out to be My Realtor, bearing a beautiful large poinsettia. She sold my last house and helped me buy this one. Neither transaction was big enough to warrant the poinsettia, but I’m guessing realtors in this town are having a tough time as university enrollment keeps going down. I’d long ago decided that if I ever sell this house I plan to use her again. So, astonishingly, I have a realtor.

I also have a housekeeper. Probably hundreds of people around here have housekeepers, but most of them work or are over 70. I’m just weak. So when I have to refer to this person in conversation, you’d think I had a chicken bone stuck in my throat. How it comes up in conversation when I find myself in so few conversational situations is a mystery, yet it does. Often I find myself referring to T. as “the woman who cleans my house for a couple of hours every other week,” which is an awfully long ride on the merry-go-round. Yet to call her My Housekeeper sounds so…possessive. So elitist. So needy.

That’s not all. There’s also My Lawn Guy (who doubles as My Gutter-Cleaning Guy), My Tree Guy, My Garage Door Guy, My Handyman, My Electrician, and My Piano Tuner. The last three would have no idea that I consider them in this vein, since it’s been two or three years since I called any of them. But I intend to use them again, so there you go. I recently acquired My Carpet Cleaner (a man, not a machine) and My Snow-Shoveling Duo (a young man and woman much friendlier than the tough-looking guys in scruffy pickups who usually drive in from the country to shovel driveways after a snowfall).

Then there’s My Roofer. He has probably repressed the memory of me and my last house, which developed a series of bizarre leakage and mold problems that required patches, eventual re-roofing, a ridge vent, and a specially designed series of vents around the chimney. (I will write about this house someday when I’m sure I can hang on to my emotional equilibrium. I’ve referred to it elsewhere in this blog as the house that hated me.)

When I was working, I had My Massage Therapist (who was also my friend and a former co-worker). For well over a decade he kept me able to work despite painful tendinitis in my wrists and elbows. Eventually he talked me into acquiring My Rolfer, who also helped a great deal. But My Massage Therapist abandoned me to head the local community college’s massage therapy program, and after I quit work I could no longer afford My Rolfer. For three weeks last year I had My Personal Trainer, until I realized that he was going to kill me. Not on purpose, but still. It turned out that I was already too debilitated for My Personal Trainer’s lowest level of assistance. So far I’ve avoided needing My Caregiver, but I figure that’s next unless I can be my own personal trainer.

I have no need for an accountant, but I like My Lawyer, although I don’t like her law firm’s fees very much. Soon I may gain My Financial Consultant, whom I hope I won’t have to consult very often. Once would be enough, really. I can’t see the fabled one percent through a telescope from where I sit, but because I had to retire early and because my sister is disabled, I need to be fiscally prudent.

I even have people for after I die: My Funeral Home. Last summer I was getting things in order so that my death would cause my sister as little burden as possible. I’ve been terrified of death since I was a little girl, so when I decided to move on this, I did it fast. Within the space of an hour, I realized that I needed a “pre-needs” contract, called the funeral home, found that I could meet with them immediately to set up a contract, did just that, and returned. It may have been the fastest pre-needs transaction in the funeral director’s experience.

It was one of those days when I’m always on the verge of tears, and on such days I usually behave strangely. More strangely than usual, that is. I kept stressing that I needed a contract immediately. The assistant, a skinny, prematurely wrinkled woman with jet-black hair and several layers of makeup (practice?), summoned the funeral director, to whom I again stressed the urgency of the situation. They seemed surprised that someone so young wanted a contract. I knew I just wanted (pardon the language) a bare-bones agreement, no service, no urn. A fast reader, I blazed through the cremation contract, had them make a couple of changes, thrust a check at them, gave them my prewritten obit, and made sure my sister wouldn’t have to do anything.

As the assistant guided me through the labyrinth of rooms to the front door, the tears started in earnest. She asked if I was all right. For some reason I cannot train myself to simply answer this question with “Yes” or “I’m fine.” I seem to have a sort of hyper-honesty genetic mutation that results in some unfortunate, peculiar, or embarrassing answers. “I’m not well,” I said stiffly, and made a break for my car, undoubtedly leaving the woman convinced that I had a terminal illness and that they’d be firing up the furnace any day.

So I’m pretty well covered. I feel bad that I’m so incompetent and that my village is so big. On the other hand, it is pleasingly amiable and few of its members get called upon very often. I comfort myself with the thought that there’s an entire ritzy support tier that I’ll never have to have, nor could I afford. I don’t have a gardener (or a garden), a pool guy (or a pool), or a horse boarder (or a horse). I don’t have a chauffeur, an interior decorator, a party planner, a social secretary, or a chef (I need one). Although my friends may regret it when they see how I’m dressed, I don’t have, god forbid, a personal shopper.

And I don’t have, I’m happy to say, a ghostwriter. For better or worse, where this blog is concerned it’s just me on the loose taking a walk outside my village.