Home and Family

My sister has just left, after a one-day visit to my place for the
long weekend. It was 24 hours of sisterly good times, including
dinner out with the little man---complete with mini-cheeseburgers
for him, and supposedly 80-proof pomegranate lemonade for us
which tasted absolutely virgin to our well trained palates---, a
living room viewing of The Phantom of the Opera (wish I could
have figured out that pesky surround sound thing), and a long
luxurious midnight dip in the hot tub.

Because it was 99 degrees, we had an impatient 9-year old along,
and my sis's arthritic knee was acting up, we took a very short walk
indeed along Greenbelt Lake. Just far enough to show her from the
outside what the view would have been like from the house we tried
but failed to buy on Monday. The entire adventure seems so ill-advised
in hindsight. It's scary, and quite sobering, to realize just how short
the distance is between walking through an open house, and having
the loan officer on the phone and the real estate agent sitting next to
you on the couch with the paperwork, while you're simultaneously
reciting your employment history and lack of bankrupcy filings in
the last seven years, and figuring out how fast you can liquify every
asset you've ammassed to make a full price non-contingent offer on
a house that is far too expensive for you in your real life, let alone
that you never even knew existed it 24 hours prior. In this
market!? With our life?! Were we completely, completely
insane?!?!?!

I'm thanking the housing gods that someone was even more
aggressive than us in their desire for a 180+ lakefront view.

Our real estate agent, a lovely, warm, funny, spunky woman
we have known since the moment we set foot on Greenbelt soil
14 years ago, referred to the property as a "Prize Home". This set
off alarm bells in my head that I ignored for the several hours
following, in which said Prize Home could conceiveably be mine.
I can now hear anew the reverberations of these alarm bells. I'm just
not a Prize Home kinda gal. Hell, I'm gleeful about the trunk full of
1990's t-shirts I discovered in my basement a month or so ago, cuz
now it means I don't have to really shop for clothes for another, I
dunno, year? So it is safe to say that I don't own even one Prize
Outfit. How could one go to closing on a Prize Home without the
Prize Outfit?! My car? A 1998, bought in 2000. First car I ever
bought. Used. From Carmax. And I plan to drive it into the ground.
Which I expect to be around 2011. So, no Prize Car for the Prize
Home driveway any time soon. The list can be considered to go
on, and on, and on.

And yet, it was the only house I have ever felt that way about.
The only house I could picture every member of my family---past,
present and future---enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner within. The
only house that called to me so clearly, "Come sit on my porch, and
watch the lake undulate below you, and marvel at the dappled sunlight
through these old trees, and daydream and read and plan, and I dare
you to ever try and leave here!"

To my sister, it was just another house. No big deal. Perhaps she
was saying so just for my benefit, but it was the first time I really
heard it. And today, one week post-bid, I am thankful that I didn't
respond quite strongly enough to the call of the Prize Home. Cuz
who knows how long it would have taken before the call of the
Prize Outfit reached my ear, or the call of the Prize Car?

I'm happy to leave the Prize Items for the self-appointed winners
in the world. Because today I can still entertain the possibility that
in six months I can go down to part time in my real job, and pick up
some studio work in my off hours. This will likely, of course,
never happen, but at least today it is still a real possibility.

A topic for another day is "What good is it having options if you
never exercise these options?" For today, I'm going to be happy that
I still have options. Lots and lots of options.

I sit in one of my two houses. Both little and broken. No boxes to
pack. Plenty of time to think warm, fond, nostalgic thoughts of the
men and women in my life who have sacrificed much in too many
wars of recent memory. Thanks, folks. Your simple spirits
embue my humble home(s). And what a prize that is.