Selling House- Buying House-Do not Attempt During Grief

         Before my mom died, we had been contemplating moving. Our neighborhood had been undergoing a transformation during the last ten years and it had made us question staying there. 

       When we had first arrived, it was composed of residents who were in their seventies and eighties. During the cool evening hours they would work in their yards; trimming perfectly shaped hedges and neatly trimmed edges along the sidewalks. Their houses were always freshly painted, and if their garages were opened, all the tools were lined up in perfect rows on peg boards. They always had a small amount of change for buying fundraiser items - candy bars from the orchestra kids, popcorn from the Boy Scouts, and Girl Scout cookies. Were they all friendly elderly people who ask about your day or greeted you during your walks - absolutely not. One older gentlemen had stopped caring about the state of his house many decades ago, and the latest addition of an old and greased stain recliner chair on the front porch was only the most recent eye sore of the street. Additionally, the children avoided his house for fundraisers because he often came to the door in various states of undress. Nothing exposed, but a lack of concern for his condition. 

      And then the older residents would move out. Some went to nursing homes or assisted living places. Other residents went to - well, I don't know the state of their eternal souls, so we can only wonder where they went. As they left, the houses, being part of a working class neighborhood, were bought by investors for rental properties. It didn't take very many years for the hedges to lose their sharp edges or for the yards to fall apart. The street started to have another beat, another rhythm to it. On weekends, you could listen to the neighbors two doors down yelling, shouting, and threatening each other. The more drink, the louder it was. And they weren't afraid to reprimand the neighbors either. Oh, and if your dog is barking louder than their fight, they're going to band together and start yelling at you. One time the neighbors above them couldn't keep their break up private and they were yelling in the street. They yelled at them to take it inside. 

      One time someone on the run had dumped a gun in one of the yards. My daughters woke from their sleep because the movement of flashlights in the backyard had awoken them. It was law enforcement trying to find the discarded weapon. Another night it was gunshots just a few doors down. The drug houses had started moving in. I'm sure our experiences were nothing like the inner city, but for our once quiet and family friendly neighbor, it was a troubling change. 

     Two weeks after my mom died, a house came up for sale across town, on the Westside. Ohh, a different zip code. The desired zip code of our town. Yes, our small town only had one desired zip code. The other zip code included the North side, the downtown, and our neighborhood. The post office had a separate zip code for the PO Boxes. If you lived in the annexed part of town that had bad water, roads that ended in weird dead ends, and where people could get a way with shooting off illegal fireworks, that was the last zip code. 

     We just had to put our house up for sale. It only needed a new bathroom, the sheetrock fixed in the basement, and a new roof. Suddenly, I put a frenzy of energy into preparing the house for our listing. I enlisted Hero Hottie into putting in a new vanity and floor into the bathroom. Enlisted? I think I was half crazed with something that had overtaken me. It wasn't grief -- it was the opposite of grief. It was avoidance. The more energy I shifted into preparing the house, the less I had to think about the state of my heart. You would expect that as I repaired, cleaned, and organized my house - the ever widening grief would diminish. 

     Hero Hottie liked the idea of moving Baby Blueberry into a different school district and so he poured his energy into the bathroom. Which as we pulled up the floor, we realized it needed a whole new sub flooring. He gritted his teeth and got to work.

     Grief blossomed and bloomed like the dandelions taking over my lawn. What was a house, a home, except something you escaped from when the pain was too much. My parents haven't given me an anchor of wood and shingles in my childhood. The only stable thing in my life had been my parents, especially my mom. 

     And she was gone. 

How to Avoid Change

      My parents grew up as Army brats, moving place to place, never settling- never finding their roots. A rolling stone collects no moss which is funny that during my childhood they should end up in the Pacific Northwest because everything collects moss there. Get lost in the woods there- don't look for the moss on the North side of the tree.
      The moss also grows on the West, South, and East side. And if you stand too long it will grow up your legs too.
         When they had me- what they wanted out of life and what it took to carve out an existence were on two separate ends of the stick- so they moved- often. It's a side effect of being poor.
           We moved every few years, about the time it took sensitive me to make a friend, it was time to put all my belongings in the vegetable and fruit boxes collected from the stores and become the 'New Girl' at school.
          And I didn't do 'New Girl' well when I was little. Heck, I don't do it well now.
          Damn insecurities. So God has been spending the last four months trying to push me out of my comfort zone.
         Stepping away from your comfort zone requires change.
         Something else I realized I'm not all that great at. I thought I was better with it, with my childhood of moving but nope, I hate it. Just about the time I find my place and it's fitting me like a well-worn slipper, something changes.
        Since I have spent the last four months quietly fighting the fire and the sharpening, I will give you my tips for avoiding change.

        1. Pretend it doesn't matter. If the change is something you can't handle, just pretend you don't care. Develop and master a shrug to give when someone brings it up.

        2. Lock your heart away and never give any part of it away. Or like on the TV show, 'Once'- learn how to take your heart out of your chest and bury it in the backyard. I love the fantasy aspect of that show, the scientist in me says, 'uhh, how can the blood move through your system without a heart?'

        3.  Learn the fine art of cussing at kids scooting down your sidewalk, while you water your yard and complain about the weather. Complaining about the weather is a great cover. You can bitch and moan about it being too cold or too hot. Too windy, too stale, too anything. It doesn't matter. Your heart doesn't hurt when you complain about the weather.

        4. Blog about avoiding change, so you can avoid further change. It's like a form of procrastination, but even better because you feel like you're doing something useful at the same time- giving advice- while still managing to avoid change.

       5. Refuse to move from your comfort zone until God pushes you out of it. And don't worry- God, the universe, the smarter part of ourselves,- is great at reminding us that we have to change to learn and grow. Otherwise, I suppose we end up like every rock and tree in the Pacific Northwest, covered in moss.

     6. Don't get a Gibson. Seriously, with a dog that chews up everything you own, including shoes, toys, and furniture, your environment is constantly changing on a daily basis. Also, you have to avoid growing attached to anything because it might be a chewed up mess of broken parts and dog drool the next morning. -But he's always sorry. It's not his fault that the expensive, unused baby diapers rip apart in such a fun way.

    7. Don't have children. Just about the time you get use to a stage- they change. Talk about change in motion. Childhood is a constant collection of changes, perhaps that's why we don't like to do anymore changing when we reach adulthood.

   So there you have it. Why I've been gone for three or four months without a peep. I've been avoiding changes. But I'm at a point where I can no longer avoid the changes coming -so here's my leap of faith- which for a writer always comes with the written word.

   Or perhaps I'll take my own advice and start to complain about the weather.

Monday Musings...

Change...

    Like the characters in stories, the ones we read or the ones we write, it's always about change. We are introduced to the character in the moment of their great change, when their entire world has fallen apart and they are vulnerable, broken, shattered in the inside. And throughout the story we travel with them as they find strength and possibly faith to carry forth from the depths of their despair and find a level of happiness suitable to the type of story we are reading. Obviously fairy tales having the 'they lived happily ever after' and a tragedy ending with death but with meaning. 

     I am writing in generalizations, obviously every story is different but the main concept is the same. We don't want to read a story about Bob who eats oatmeal everyday and then dies. What did he learn? Where was his growth? What was the change? 

      And so life is like our stories. Or more like our stories are like life. We are always changing, growing, learning. At least we should be. If we stop, then our minds turn to mush and not even zombies want to eat them. (Just kidding, I'm sure zombies eat even mushy brains.) 

       I think people avoid change though because it's painful. It hurts. What change in your life ever happened without making your heart hurt, or your eyes threaten to ruin your makeup or (gasp) make you face yourself in the mirror. That one hurts. The old can you handle what you actually see in the mirror trick. Stories have used this technique to show their characters their flaws, their weaknesses, themselves. Painful process. 

      Charles Dickens' used ghosts to force change in his character. I think that technique might frighten a person into an early grave. (grin) 

      People like to wait until the New Year to start changing but it's just another excuse to put it off. I think if we really wanted to change shouldn't we do on the first day of spring, a time of renewal, growth, nice weather? Not start in the dead of winter when our own doom and gloomy winter blues make it hard to accomplish change? 

      Realizing change is going to happen to us even if we fight it should make us more inclined to control our own destinies, our own fates. At least to a certain degree, I couldn't control the dryer dying neither can I save my old Buddy dog from his own fate of dying from cancer. I rather have a dead dryer than watching my wonderful canine friend suffer but some change we can't control. 

      But some change can be controlled, or at least directed. I may never be a well known author but I won't even have a chance to reach that point until I make an effort to change and accomplish things that put me on that path. One day I might actually grow broccoli that doesn't go right from stalk to yellow flowers without producing florets but I won't know that if I stop trying. Someday I might finish learning a foreign language but short of being plucked from my home and dropped in a foreign country that's not going to happen unless I make an effort.

      So if you were a character in a story, what change might you see? What change would you direct in yourself, your neighborhood, your community, your country? Many good things in history did not happen until a person came along and wrestled change to the floor by the horns. Painful, sometimes gory, but much better than just watching from the sidelines. 
      And it certainty beats having mushy brains.