A Little Perspective If You Please

My kid is going through it.  Buying a house the first time is supposed to be an exciting, thrilling, start-of-a-bright-future experience but in reality, its intrusive, nail biting, painful and stressful beyond all reason.  My daughter and her husband just found out that the home of their dreams, a wretched short sale, probably won’t go through. Not because of anything they did, they were approved in record time actually.  But because there are two banks involved and they refuse to budge on who is going to eat what part of the loan(s).  Banks know their numbers.  My best guess is that if one or the other doesn’t get a certain amount out of the sale, it’s more cost effective to foreclose because of the tax break.  Now even an institution named Fannie something is involved and they aren’t playing around.  My kid is very upset but I give my girl credit, minutes after she got the word, I found her on her computer, looking at other listings.  She had already picked herself up, dusted off her disappointment and had started with Plan B.  She texted her real estate agent and made an appointment for going back to look at new listings next week. 

She was upset, clearly, but back to my theme of the week; she had perspective. 

After going through cancer with me, there is little that can rattle my daughter these days.  She gets more upset than I do but I attribute that to youth and temperament.  Even so, she works through set-backs and disappointments in a more mature, focused manner than she ever did, pre-cancer.  She knows there are worse things that can happen than two greedy banks slugging it out and she and her family losing a house in the process.   

There will always be another house is my motto.

Meanwhile, perspective folks, my kid has it in spades these days.  When her daughter Claudia tried to swing a tiny little leg up onto the couch for the very first time, my daughter actually cried.  It was a milestone that most parents wouldn’t get emotional over but everything little CJ does is celebrated and cooed over.  Even the new car seat gave way to a moment of misty eyes and winsome reflection.  The baby is growing up! 

We all had perspective when my six year old refrigerator died an inglorious death. The motherboard, the fan AND even the starter motor all committed major appliance suicide at the same time.  I would have bought a new fridge save for the fact that the one I had was a gift from my boyfriend who bought at a time when I had no time to research and buy one myself.  It was an incredibly thoughtful thing to do and this makes me loathe to toss it out even though I likely berated the poor appliance repairman about how things used to last thirty years not so long ago. 

He probably already knows this, come to think on it.  Anyway, we all decided to suck it up, wait for the new parts and make do with a secondary fridge that is a shade bigger than what college students used to store cheap alcohol and take-out food in. 

At least, I told my family, I now know what it will be like when I get that bazillion dollar apartment in Paris.  The refrigerators are pretty darn small in Paris.  The ambiance is worth it though.  And there is no such thing as a mediocre meal in Paris (it’s illegal or something) so why not eat out all the time?  Those Parisians, they know how to live.   

Speaking of Paris, I’m actually headed there in a few weeks. Yes, yes, I must have a really awful job so poor me, right?  My business trip actually dead ends in Paris and it turns out, it is far cheaper to stay an extra day than to try and fly home on a Friday or Saturday so looks like I’m stuck in the City of Lights for the weekend. 

My BFF gets it.  We were having her birthday celebration over the weekend and she asked what I planned to do with my spare time in Paris.  Aside from stashing away frankly contraband French cheese and rapidly going stale baguettes in my suit case, I told her I would be buying every single color I could find of teeny, weenie French berets for Claudia because that’s what the babies on the catwalks were wearing this season.   For real? She asked between forkfuls of amazing salad.  We were, after all, at Chez Panisse for this celebration.  No, not for real, I scoffed.  I will actually have no idea what fashionable French and Italian babies are wearing until I get to Europe.   But what else will occupy my time, she pressed.  Ah, for that we return to, say it with me, perspective.   This I will surely find at Sunday mass at Notre Dame Cathedral or while tearing up while gazing at the works of master artists at The Louvre.   

But for all my travel plans the fact remains that after cancer, I don’t need to go all the way to Paris to find perspective.  

It’s always with me.