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| Some big beautiful castle I'll never get to set foot in stolen from here |
When I was a kid, my mother moved around..a LOT. I went to at least 10 different elementary schools, and kindergarten was the ONLY class I have ever been in for an entire year. She was a single parent of five kids, and she did the best she could. She thought having a man in her life was a way to provide stability. So we moved every time she found a new boyfriend. The irony of that escaped her, I suppose. But we did have my grandparents who were always very stable, and lived my entire life in one house.And that made me want a house of my very own. Somewhere I could put down roots, and raise my kids in a neighborhood. Somewhere there was a park, and a cemetary ( I was a weird kid) and maybe water nearby.
Unfortunately, that never happened. I was as much of a vagabond as my mother had been, and fortunately for me, my children enjoyed the adventures of traveling. From the time they were very small, until my youngest child turned 15, I never found a place I could call 'home'. ( I could also never find anything else, because I liked to throw everything out when I moved)
And then a visit to a friend changed everything. I found the home I had been looking for all my life! It was in an old neighborhood ( all of the houses had been there since the late 1800s), in an old part of town that was accessible to everything fun to do. There was a playground park right down the street, and sidewalks. REAL sidewalks!! The riverwalk was just a few miles away; the old cemetary even closer! The city that gave birth to the Pony Express is filled with churches and bars, libraries that take up historic buildings with glass floors, and one of the most beautiful parks I have ever seen.
After 37 years of looking, I finally found home,and I couldn't afford to buy it. My heart broke into pieces, but I took what small bit of money I had, and bought a tiny little shotgun shack in a different neighborhood, in a different part of town. It wasnt the same, but at least I was there in the same small city. I am a little embarrassed to admit how often I would walk the neighborhood my vacant dream house lived in, or how often I would sit on the porch and imagine having friends over, or just a few moments of blissful peace to read a book... Ok, Im a house stalker. I stalked that funny looking, boxy house with its huge backyard and the original punched tin ceiling. But there was just no way I could afford the house payments on what I made a month. It didnt matter, because the loan agencies weren't too keen on supplying funds against my "unstable" income source. I even tried asking with the cleavage on display. No dice.
When I got the call from my mother that she needed help, I closed up my battered little shack, and hauled myself and my daughter( and three cats and three large dogs and a bad left front axel that decided to stay on the interstate in northern Georgia) back to South Georgia. Gram had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, mom was having some medical issues, and truthfully, I needed the break from the constant needs of my little money pit.
I went to visit my dream house just before I left Missouri. Still vacant, still for sale, still everything I have ever wanted in a home. Today I logged into the real estate website that holds that listing, to find out my dream house is only $40,000. Unfortunately, with my savings depleted by my shack, and helping out my parents, there is no hope of attaining that beautifully weird little house on my own.
I think Im going to start selling my organs. You know, my kidneys, or maybe my liver. I thought about asking 40,000 people if I can borrow a dollar. I think it would be easy to pay it back that way, and if I cant pay someone back for some reason, well..they
are only out a dollar.
*sigh*
So...can I borrow a dollar?
