• For Sale

    You’ve heard a picture is worth a thousand words, but have you ever considered words can have infinite meaning? It’s the beauty of language; this thing our gray matter dreamed up to communicate. It’s so complex it’s a wonder we can keep it straight, and it explains why so many of us have trouble capturing its intricacies in print.

    Just the words “for sale” can mean several things to different people, depending on context, inflection, or tone. They can explain one’s principles or one’s property, their meaning completely different. They can conjure countless stories from your imagination: like the broken dreams of a sign in a small, abandoned shop downtown, or the excitement of a brighter future posted in the yard of a modest home.

    To me, they mean giving up. I knew the words were inevitable for months, but my heart didn’t truly accept them until last weekend. We agreed to call a realtor and put our home up for sale.

    Funny word, “accept,” or maybe just the wrong one. I feel anything but accepting. I feel resigned. I feel broken.

    I feel crushed by responsibility.

    Don’t try this at home kids, I’m a professional. I’m of course referring to self-pity.

    If I was more ambitious we’d have more income. If I wasn’t sick we wouldn’t have so many expenses. If I was more disciplined we wouldn’t have quite as much crap we really don’t need.

    Whatever the reason, we find ourselves in the same boat many others do, maybe even you.

    For years our income sat still like a naughty child in time out. Expenses went up. A lot. A few of those expenses were discretionary, like my recent vacation, but many were not. Every year we went through the budget, cutting chunks here and there in order to tread water. Every year it got harder to find big chunks. This year they’ve been scattered, small, and most importantly: not enough.

    So this weekend we met with the realtor. We signed some papers and sprinkled them with a few initials.

    A sign goes up in the yard next week.

    Everywhere I look inside I see other signs, the ones that spawn memories.

    I’d sooner clip off a little toe than sell, but it’s the right move – the smart move. We have the plans drawn for the addition that will become our new home, after (if) we get our price.

    Now I wonder, emotions torn.

    How long?

  • Nostalgia

    The monkey cup

    A long time ago, in a place far, far away…

    I was a small child growing up in our first house. I knew what I liked and I knew where to find it. A kitchen chair was all I needed to make it to the next step: the kitchen counter. From there I could stand up and reach the top cabinets. That’s where the Pepto-Bismol was hiding.

    With my favorite cup in hand, I poured myself a generous serving of the only one that coats.

    Oh that was good.

    Then one of my parents found my favorite cup, my activities betrayed by…

    … the only one that coats.

    Unbeknownst to me, a phone call to poison control was taking place while one of my parents tended to me and my favorite cup. Soon after I learned more than I wanted to know about induced vomiting.

    The episode cemented the monkey cup in the Legend of John.

    Caveat: John may have mixed his meds this morning.

    My father had surgery yesterday. It was nothing serious: hernia surgery. However, even though my father was ambulatory* after the surgery, my mother can’t be left alone and my father was still not one hundred percent. So I came over to stay the night. It’s not like it’s out of the way, or a tremendous burden. The second house I did my growing up in is just a mile or two up the street.

    One of my endearing qualities is I always go rooting around the house looking for memories when I come over. That’s how I came across the long lost monkey cup, hiding in the bottom of the china cabinet.

    Now you can know and love the monkey cup as much as I do.

    *The word my sister the nurse used – I’m clearly not that smart

  • In between

    Most trips my wife and I took since our wedding were merely travel – complete with a detailed itinerary. They involved as many relatives as possible. It was misguided, but it was how we measured a trip’s success.

    You probably know at least a few people like this – folks who don’t think a trip has worth unless they need a vacation afterwards.

    Do you know what I like best about a vacation? I like not thinking about what I want or need to do next. This doesn’t always happen when we travel – thus the distinction between travel and vacation. Vacation may be a subset of travel, but it doesn’t take business to take the vacation out of a trip. Last week I had a vacation.

    We went to Ocean City, New Jersey. Why New Jersey, you might ask? It’s where my brother-in-law’s parents met. Long story not so long, they went every year for nostalgia’s sake (and because they had fun), my sister went after she met Mike, and she talked us into joining them, renting a second floor condo looking out over the five mile boardwalk, the imposing dunes, and the Atlantic Ocean. In short, she made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. I don’t need to tell you this was a vacation, not if you’ve read my earlier posts.

    While I’m glad we went, today was time to go back to work. Yesterday was supposed to be the day but I had a doctor’s appointment – and, well – I felt a little unwell. Is it possible I just had a case of post-vacation blues? That’s something only me and my thermometer know, and neither one of us talks much.

    Why is it so hard to go back to work after vacation? Unless we hate our jobs and the people who share space with them, returning shouldn’t be all that bad. We’re returning to life. Real life. We’re returning to people we generally like, to jobs we find at least bearable – if not rewarding. I’d imagine a few people feel more at home at work, those lucky enough to have a job that’s more than a career – a calling.

    Tonight I’m just not buying. You see, for me a vacation is a glimpse at perfection. It’s like drinking water all your life then tasting a sip of fine wine, but only just that sip. Water doesn’t taste quite the same after that sip, but why should that be? If we generally enjoy life (when not suffering from depression), why loathe it’s return? (In my case it may have something to do with that depression.)

    In my mind I keep going back to a conversation while we were in NJ. It was one of the more serious conversations… most of them were rather light. A topic and a few tangents were discussed, but my cynic’s lightbulb went off and I quieted the group with a single line. “I think the problem is too many people in this world are too stupid to understand or accept that the world we live in is gray.”

    I warned you it was going to be cynical. And yes, I know it loses something without the context, but sums up why I can’t come to grips with the return to work. In my mind’s eye, vacation proves the purest white exists, and I lose a bit of my grasp on reality. That, and I’m just as stupid as a lot of folks out there. Life is rarely that perfect. We should recognize, savor, and celebrate it when it comes along, but realize it’s not forever. It’s not sustainable. Life is messy. Life can be a struggle – to each in his or her own way. The trick is to balance the light and the dark, to live in the gray, sustained by the moments of light – at times making our own.

    I think about the peddlers of “success” manuals, the “you can be happy all the time” crowd, and religious zealots (talking about these mysterious plans, or giving away free toasters with each first time prayer). I probably think about them too much. I think they are a lot like a vacation (from reality). I think they pose a real danger.

    It’s when we think everything can always be perfect that we’re ripe for disappointment.

    We can strive for it. We can look forward to those moments when we achieve it. But I don’t think we should always expect it. Not from ourselves, or our lives.