Dream House, Take 2

Dream House.

Chef heaven. Double ovens, gas range, gorgeous granite countertop—I picture myself ladling out gourmet soup. And if I drop a bowl? No problem. Cork flooring cushions all.

The place is perfect. One-level living, spacious rooms, views of naturalized parkland—we LOVE it! Seizing Dreamer’s hand, I pray aloud, “If this is our house, Lord, hold it for us.”

Next morning, while signing our bid I recognize the owners’ names. Long ago we attended church together.

God must want this for us.

All night I alternate between “Don’t count your chickens” and mentally furnishing every last room.

Come morning, we send the owners a winsome personal letter and our bid—15 K over list price.

God loves us, so things will go well. Right?

Turns out other bids have preceded ours. All day we hope our old friends will choose us.

Nope.

Therapy Option #1: Write

(To the tune of “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow”)

The Real Estate Song, or Let It Go, Let It Go, Let It Go

with apologies to Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn

Oh, the bidding wars sure are frightful,
And the dream house so delightful.
Our offer turned out too low . . .
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Well, the market is really hoppin’,
And it shows no signs of stoppin’.
I wish we had lots more dough . . .
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

It’s no wonder I sit here cryin’
As our hopes are slowly dying,
But today’s nearly through and so . . .
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Meanwhile, back at the rancher

I pray.
And pace.
Grieve.
And growl.

Mostly growl.

Therapy Option #2: Bake

Anger spits and sizzles in me like a downed power line. I was so sure the house was meant to be ours. I imagined Dreamer’s faith being renewed in the process of buying the dream house.

Heat works its way up my throat. A hard lump. I swallow it down.

In my one-butt kitchen with its erupting linoleum and elderly laminate counters, I mix cookie dough. Granite and cork are overrated. So are kitchen fans. Around me the air congeals, laden with sugar and fat. I breathe it in. Maybe it will sweeten my thoughts.

Nope.

I slip cookies onto the rack to cool. This, I can control. Unlike crushing dismay.

I am breaking my heart over a house, looking behind me with longing. Like Lot’s wife.

Tears come, briny and fast.

As do reminders of mercy.

No brimstone. No judgment.

Relief, finally, is remembering God is good. And always, always worthy of trust.

Then believing it. Slow work, sometimes.

My knee goes down, my gaze lifts.

I have a goofy song.
Fresh cookies.
And Time.

I eat 6 cookies, still warm and gooey, taste the sweetness, a promise of things to come …

UPDATE: Friends, thank you for your prayers! Parkinson’s has been ruled out. Dreamer recently underwent a brain MRI and will have an EMG on Dec. 21. He’ll consult with an M.D. specialist sometime in the New Year. Both our daughters are also experiencing acute physical challenges, including surgery in December. I’m learning a lot about grace.

We’re dialing back the moving process, for now.

Catch up on our story here.

Photo by Jamie Strett for Unsplash.

Bowled Over: My 3-angel Day

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Bowled Over: My 3-angel Day

Angel #1

The young coed leaps from her car, arms spread wide, calling, “I want this tent!”

News of our Giant Downsizing Giveaway has reached her, secondhand. Now, she caroms amid tables laden with things we’ve used and loved—including Bill’s camera equipment. He has captured decades of travel and family history for us through his lens and unerring eye.

The young woman asks, “You’re really giving all this away?”

I’ll call her The Bright Angel (as in a kind and lovable person). Our first giveaway recipient, she’s unknown to us and becomes increasingly dear as her enthusiasm escalates.

She points to my table of artwork. “You made these? How did you do that? They’re amazing!”

Her delight over more camping gear burgeons into spontaneous twirls of gratitude: “Wow, I really really love this. Thank you!”

Angel #2

Simultaneously, our beloved friend from Seattle unexpectedly drops by. We’ve been on her mind. Knowing nothing about our giveaway, she arrives bearing a gorgeous orchid.

“Beauty that asks nothing of you,” she says.

Angel #3

Our Seattle friend and I sit indoors, catching up with each other.

Reports of The Bright Angel’s armloads of treasures reach me via Kristin, our Giveaway Angel daughter, who welcomes newcomers, draws and mounts signs, re-stages depleted displays, and replenishes goodie trays. She keeps our spirits high.

At one point Kristin relays The Bright Angel’s latest question: Do I maybe have a smallish tray—oh, and a shallow box!—for shaking and storing dice?

I rummage through my studio and produce two small vintage cigar boxes.

When I finally step outside, both boxes are gone along with a lot of other stuff The Bright Angel needed. Her taillights wink as she drives away.

I feel like the good fairy in a story, albeit incognito.

The hours effervesce, with friends hugging us and promising good homes for our treasures. All day, we give away pieces of ourselves.

Near sundown, I unplug the coffee urn, bring the leftover treats indoors.

Dreamer and Kristin replay The Bright Angel’s wide-eyed glee. “It’s really free?”

And I glimpse how the good and beautiful God may sometimes feel, watching we needy mortals bowled over, again and again, newly astonished by unexpected largesse.

When have you been bowled over by one of God’s giveaways?

Second Thoughts & Horseshoe Crabs

by Laurie Klein 18 Chiming In

There’s a trick to the “graceful exit.”It begins with the vision to recognize
when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over—
and let it go.

It means leaving what’s over
without denying its validity
or its past importance to our lives.

Including one’s home.

Still downsizing …

If only I had the que sera sera serenity of the horseshoe crab—which literally saunters out of its own skin. Leaves home behind.

How the cuts are made

For years, inside the dark
recording booth, alone,
in the electric halo
of an adjustable lamp,
I narrated audiobooks.

Now I survey my archive—towers of babble—60-some books recorded on tape. Cassette tapes, in our digitized age, seem irrelevant.

When the studio switched to CDs, many audiobooks were not updated.

I may own the sole remaining copies.

I didn’t always like the stories, but I gave them my all—honest, empathic, vestigial work, as in: “forming a very small remnant of something once greater.”

Words arise, like posterity. Legacy.

I set aside a dozen classics for our grandkids.

Second thoughts

Might Goodwill welcome the rest?

I pack 50-some titles, deliver them before I can change my mind. Employees may toss them, but I won’t be a witness.

More remain. I visit our hulking, rented dumpster, imagine chucking them.

Second thoughts clamor. I’ll decide tomorrow.

Dreamer, on the other hand …

For decades, Dreamer shot slide film. Last week he tossed unused slide carousels. Second thoughts prompted retrieval. Currently curating thousands of slides, he’ll convert them to digital files.

He’s retrofitting: “bringing a proven model up to date.”

Second thoughts allow fresh discernment.

I scan my waiting titles. I could do likewise …

Needless?

Needless can mean obsolete. Redundant. Superfluous.

Seems I never quite believed my achievements would vanish.

Yet into each absence, the One who loves us best still speaks.

And I love a good story …

… especially one from an ever-relevant Book, narrating tales of a remnant people …

and other wonders, like horseshoe crabs and second thoughts and traveling light.

The One who invites me to be need-less delights to meet my needs.

Those remaining tapes?

I feed the dumpster. Offer up ego. Yet again. There are endless ways to voice “Once upon a time.”

[For now, making the graceful exit] …
involves a sense of future,
a belief that every exit line
is an entry, that we are
moving up, rather than out.

―Ellen Goodman

How has a grace-full exit moved you toward an uncommon entrance?

For prayer: Dreamer sees the neurologist next week.

Thanks for sharing this cyber-sojourn.

Depth Perception

by Laurie Klein 40 Chiming In

Depth Perception

“Yell,” Dreamer says,
“when the trailer hitch is exactly
6 inches from the rear wall.”

Six inches?
That’s the length of my hand.

I plaster myself
into the far left corner
of the RV storage unit,
40 feet from the door.
Side margins equal
the space between my elbow
and first set of knuckles.
Which are white.

“What if you can’t hear me?” I holler.

But he’s already revving
our 32-foot Behemoth
up the incline, into the unit.

Half-way in, he brakes,
folds his side mirror flat.

“Driving blind,” he calls.

Success now rests
on his hearing plus
my depth perception.

And I’m nearsighted.

Somehow, by trusting each other, we pull it off.

Backing Up

Even as I daily resolve to move forward, embrace Change, backing up plays a role—especially as we try to downsize 45 years of shared life. Nearly 3 decades in our current house.

Have you read The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, by Margareta Magnusson, aged somewhere between 80 and 100?

Granny-mags, as we fondly call her, urges streamlining. We respect our heirs’ emotions and precious time by downsizing while we’re still able-bodied.

“Death cleaning
is a permanent form
of organization . . .”

Death can be a friendly presence, directing priorities.

Go back. Item by item.
Remember and reflect on
the small joys of a long life.

Tucked within books and yellowing files I find childhood stories our daughters wrote. I find grade school stories by yours truly, saved by my mother.

Depth perception turns fluid—Mom’s behind me now, somehow alive, guiding me as I dismantle home.

Just as Mom might say,
Granny-mags offers this:
“There is always a young person,
starting a new life.”

Growing a home.

So donate. Leave notes in those books you’re giving away.

Bless someone with that desk or table, and share vital or funny things learned or written or served there.

Downsizing

One snippet of history, passed on, provides the needed distance to let go. My vision widens and deepens, the way having two eyes makes depth perception possible.

What is depth perception?

The ability to judge the distance of objects
and the spatial relationship of objects
at different distances.

I’m freeing myself from tunnel vision:
the fear-driven caching of stuff—things
I’ll never miss. Junk.

By day, we downsize.
By night, online, room by room,
we study house after house.
We divvy the list, mostly still feel
we are driving blind
yet joyriding, this time
in a ’78 ragtop Super Beetle,
a fresh wind stirring memories,
thoughts, fears—
all this chaff blowing out the back . . .

Health update: Med-wise, Dreamer’s cardiologist says to “Stay the course.” He sees the hematologist today, October 4th.
We await the referral to a Muscular Dystrophy specialist.

Photo of eye by Daniil Kuželev on Unsplash

Saving Time: 2-minute Warning

by Laurie Klein 49 Chiming In

Saving Time? Yes, let’s.
But first …
my 50th High School Reunion:

Saving Time Cake — photo by Vicki Rieder

Only after flying to Wisconsin
did I realize
my former adolescent peers
were, and ever would be,
the keepers of my awkwardness.

They might bring up Rod McCool’s bash
where, handed my first beer
(no clue about pouring slowly or
tilting both can AND glass)
I baptized myself and
his absent parents’ white couch.

My boyfriend’s chagrin.
Rod McCool’s “!!&%#!!%#!”
Foam and lager and reek … O my!

At our most awkward,
we tell ourselves
we’ll never be cool enough.

Half a century later, I was
that clueless girl again, stalling,
afraid to brave the reunion.

During the first 2 minutes
no one mentioned my beer gaffe
(or numerous other follies).
Within those 2 minutes
and thereafter, I was hugged.
Kissed. Thoroughly welcomed.

I felt like Cinderella
twirling at The Ball.

O to be recognized,
touched at our wincing core,
that guarded, wistful corner
of the heart seemingly
doomed to always feel 16.

2 minutes
and my old outsider status
vaporized. I’d entered
a saving time. A healing time.

Which brings me here, now:

Scheduled to vanish,
2 minutes of daylight will
daily disappear,
until we turn back
our clocks, on November 4th,
and we are awarded 1 free hour
for a little more rest,
a little more dreaming …

Do you need rest?

Or a new dream?

We do.

My husband’s health is spiraling down.
Partly, it’s the genetic hand dealt him,
likely exacerbated
by the aftershocks and insults
anesthesia sometimes visits
upon the psyche and body.

We’ll see a UW Medical Center expert on Muscular Dystrophy
and 3 local specialists in other fields.

And we’ll move. Downsizing is here. For real.

One-story living,
one living story
unfolding …

I’ll share more in future posts.

Meanwhile, we’re turning back the marital clock,
recalling our madcap youth,
Dreamer and me in the Rambler,
cruising into a new town, setting up house.

We’re priming our souls for adventure,

**an invitation to the as-yet undreamed …**

ps At the reunion, my friend Wendie gave me this:

Daylight Saving Time: more here

Catch up on Dreamer’s story here

Stopwatch photo by Matt Lamers for Unsplash

Therapy Option #1: Write

with apologies to Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn

Meanwhile, back at the rancher

Therapy Option #2: Bake

Bowled Over: My 3-angel Day

Angel #1

Angel #2

Angel #3

Still downsizing …

How the cuts are made

Second thoughts

Needless?

Depth Perception

Backing Up

Downsizing

At our most awkward, we tell ourselves we’ll never be cool enough.

Which brings me here, now:

Do you need rest?

Or a new dream?

We’re priming our souls for adventure,

an invitation to the as-yet undreamed …

At our most awkward,
we tell ourselves
we’ll never be cool enough.

**an invitation to the as-yet undreamed …**