The Mortgage Wolf

I couldn't do it. Standing in my garage clutching my car keys, none of it made sense. The final walkthrough of the house was scheduled for Monday or Tuesday. No one had given me any instructions about the cashier's check. I hadn't seen a final draft of the loan documents. I'd just gotten an email from the real estate agent that I didn't understand. And wait, the voice inside my head said, you're almost 60, and shouldn't you be downsizing? And my, that's a mighty big loan, my dear--you'll never live to pay that off. Debt opened its maw like a fairy tale wolf, and its big bad teeth were aimed at my throat. No one's got my back, I thought. So I cancelled my appointment with the escrow company.

Oh, I'm still going through with the deal. But I'm going to do the final walkthrough of the house before I sign the loan papers. And instead of rushing downtown to sign loan papers and rushing back, I had a  leisurely four-hour meeting with my financial adviser planning for this and that. Afterwards, I crawled in bed with the heating pad, music on my laptop, both phones, and Adrienne Rich's book of poems, "Diving into the Wreck." And despite the angst, one of the thoughts I didn't have was that it would have been worth it to stay married. Nope. It's better to take out a giant loan all by myself. It's better to know what it feels like to be loved. It's a joy to buy a big house where there's room for my family, and in a couple of months when I'm walking down to my boat dock about to paddle off in my kayak, if I feel the eyes of some monster on the back of my neck, that monster won't be my signature on a piece of paper, it'll be the shadow of a man who barely tolerated me. I'll dip my paddle into the water. I won't look back.

Thinking

I've done a lot of thinking the last few days. Some of it angst-y. Some of it more serene.

I've followed a couple of weird impulses. Like going to an open house for an old craftsman not too far from where I live now. The house is on the Register of Historic Places which would mean no property taxes, and in my head, I've already spent the money I would save....which is not saving it at all, is it?



Then I researched where I could live without paying state taxes. Hmmm. I imagined myself in various places all over the map.  But the states where I could stretch my dollar like a piece of soft sweet taffy aren't exactly whetting my appetite.


My divorce is pretty much behind me. It will be several weeks before the agreement to divide our joint assets is formally recorded or entered or whatever by the courts, but I'm done. There's nothing left to read or fight over, or think about, or be hurt by. I'm looking at the last four years in my rearview mirror.

Vroom. And eating my own dust. It's just now, I think, that I really feel the empty nest.

and the absence of the dogs.

If someone asked me out of the blue if I wanted to sell my house, would I do it?

In less than two weeks, I go back to the east coast for the Big Radiation Vacation. Maybe I'll fall in love with the city of Baltimore, or decide to buy a tiny old house trailer and live near my brother for a while and see how this whole radiation business for  my mom works out.

I could take her to see her sister every week. Because who knows when that last grain of sand in the hourglass will sift to the bottom.

Real Estate Queen

In the dream I’ve bought a house. Its paint job is the color of the “flesh” crayon —but I can change that, I think. Inside it’s just plain weird, but in sort of a good way. The sellers are middle-eastern, perhaps, and they’ve gone nuts with mosaic type effects in all the wooden surfaces. The kitchen floor is wavy tiger stripes of different woods. There are actual tiger-in-the-jungle murals composed of  wood on a couple of the kitchen cabinets. Other patterns, too—harlequin and checkerboard, but those are more muted, and it’s all so weird and exotic that it might actually work if we can just get rid of the tigers, I think. 

I want to show the house to my friends, so they follow me through the hills in a separate car to get there. I’ve seen these hills in other dreams. They wind around and around, and there are mansions tucked away where you can barely see them, but I always get lost. I’m lost again, and I’ve lost my friends so I get out of my car and walk to a high point on a little path that turns out to be someone’s yard. “Hello,” I call to the man I see below me. "I’m lost, but I’ve bought a house somewhere around here.” The man and I talk for a minute, but I can't remember what we said.

Despite being in the hills, my house is on a wide street. There’s some kind of  plateau around here—if I can just find it. When I look over the edge from the path, I see Tina and the rest of my friends puled over to the side of the road standing outside their car. I know she’d like to get un-lost because she probably wants a cup of coffee. I call down to her, “On the very bottom shelf of my freezer, there’s a large zip-lock bag. It’s got some Starbucks Christmas Blend in it,” I say. And then I figure they'll get back to my place on their own. I want to go to my new house.

Finally I find it. There are four or maybe even five bedrooms. I choose the one with an east-facing window. C. and M. won’t want the sun waking them, I think. Now I’m so excited that I get some of the things I've packed into my car and begin to move in, but then it occurs to me that we haven’t actually closed the deal. We’ve only made an offer. I don’t think of this until I’m about to set my jewelry box in the room. I think about hiding it in a drawer, and then I realize the sellers are only leaving some of the furniture--not all of it. When one of the daughters of the seller appears, I greet her. She’s thin with black hair and has a hijab pulled off her head and resting on her shoulders like a cowl. When she smiles I see that her two front teeth are green porcelain outlined in gold. It’s off-putting at first, but I get used to it. The green is almost translucent and I begin to find it beautiful. I tell her I’m jumping the gun, but I’m so excited about the house, and I hope she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t seem to mind at all. Soon I’m puttering around in the room again and find a religious cloth of some sort. Woven in blue and black. There are symbols and maybe the Blessed Virgin. Ooh. I hope they leave that, I think. I’m more and more excited about this place. The floors are beautiful with all their colors of wood. And my room has a curving built-in couch. It faces the windows and the bed is set above the rest of the room on a platform. It's a beautiful place. I've got to call Bob (my real estate agent) and close the deal.