Does Your Elephant Have A Name?
October 10th, 2008 Categories: A Realtors Life
You know it. You’ve been there. It’s the elephant in the room. Something you’d rather not know. It nags around the edges. Oh, there’s an elephant in the room! It’s the moment in time when everything changes.
Writers write about what they know. But sometimes the elephant in the room steals the paper and pencil and the words get stuck.
This is a blog about real estate, my community, my neighborhood and helping people realize their home ownership dreams. I take no small amount of pride in what I do. I love to share what I know. The hope is that I can help someone who needs it. Some people say that I’m a really good Realtor. I try to be a really good person. Mostly I succeed.
Like most of you, I’m not a financial expert. I’m still struggling to understand who, what, when and how? The answers I don’t have are the same ones you don’t have.
I keep thinking about a time when it seemed like the grownups knew what they were doing, then I remember that I am one:
Sitting on the front step with my Mother next to me, there was a faint but persistent ringing sound off in the distance. It was the sound of a truck that had co-opted the name of a children’s nursery rhyme – Jack and Jill (you know, the one who fell down and broke his crown).
I sat quietly, not saying anything, but full of inner hope, until I heard my Mother whisper, “don’t ask”. So I didn’t. A nickel was too much money. I didn’t say the words, but I thought them…”Why? It’s not fair!”
I went in the house, not wanting to watch my friend devour her Creamsicle. As though my Mother heard my unspoken words she followed and said, “Life isn’t fair Judy – maybe next week, we’ll see”. Words of wisdom for troubled times to a six year old.
As a Sargent in the Army and recently returned from Japan and Germany, full of gratitude that they survived the Depression and the War, my Mother and Father took their three children and moved from a home in the City to the suburbs. It was the GI Bill that that gave them hope and made it possible for us to live in a home where all the rooms were heated and there were no creepy crawlies.
Later there would be a refrigerator instead of an ice box and a washing machine instead of a bucket with a wringer and even a clothes dryer so that my Mother wouldn’t get bronchitis in the Winter from hanging clothes to dry. My younger Brother and I would collect and return Coke bottles for pennies to go to the movies. And we would get one of those new tech toys called a Television.
Fast forward Fall 2008, lifetimes and survival stories later – I thought there would be grownups! Where are the grownups? The postmortem details will be rolling out for sometime to come. The prize is greed and stupidity and truth is the casualty.
We should be shocked and saddened. I am.
But hope is strong and powerful. Hope always prevails. It’s the only thing that never changes. I’ll go back to doing what I do best and so will you.
Monday’s a holiday, Columbus Day. A day to celebrate discovery of our Country. A long week-end. The markets will be closed. Maybe reason and truth will return to the public discourse. We’ll know it when we hear it. Or not. And I’ll work up the courage to open the envelope that sits on my kitchen table.
It’s a warm October day here in Chester County. People are buying and selling homes in my neighborhood despite the doom and gloomers on the local and national news. A cool November breeze settles at the end of the day. A harbinger of November. I can’t wait. How about you?
