I’ve resisted writing about it because I don’t want to face it: the foreclosure process has begun on our home mortgage.

Wells Fargo sent us the letter last week. I was at work and M got the letter and emailed me, “What do we do?”

Practical-minded, all-business me, I replied with a string of questions. I said he should call them and get all the questions answered. I approach roadblocks as games, most of the time, when I’m in a good frame of mind. “You can’t” hardly ever really means that. It translates almost perfectly to: “Many people wouldn’t, and if you think you should, be prepared to struggle.” And those are terms I can accept.

He got through to Wells Fargo and was told our mortgage may qualify for re-negotiated terms and is currently being reviewed by attorneys. We will be contacted. Otherwise, there’s nothing we can do. …unless we want to pay up.

I am worried that the boot-us-out-of-the-house team will be more efficient than the work-out-a-plan team. I have no intentions of moving out of this home. We will somehow, somehow find a way. I want to stay here, where Miss T can walk to school. We love our neighbors, our old creaking house, our aging postmistress who lumbers painfully up all the steps to our mailbox.

Actually, it could be a good thing, right? Maybe they can work out a plan that will help. We’re really only a few hundred short, now that I stopped contributing to my retirement, and stopped having withholdings taken out for the girlie and me. We’ve almost given up completely that Mark will get a job. Have you listened to the news lately? People finding jobs are not what’s in the news. At the very least, having our mortgage reviewed could buy us a little more time. I’m due to get a tax return one of these days, which we could use to buy our way back into the contract. I’m due a promotion in November because I’m a spoiled federal employee who gets a raise even when the economy is in the tank.

So, we proceed again. Heads tucked down against the barrage, determined, pressing forward, trying to hold on to hope.

Omar chatted with me from Palestine this morning. “Things are the same, but we have hope,” he said.

“Hope is powerful,” I told him.

 

Easter Sunday, and we're enjoying a moment of peace. A precious commodity: peace.

I was startled into an unexpected revelation the other day. Talking with my man, I commented on how I have more peace in my family, more happiness and contentment, in my own home, than I can recall ever having in my whole life. It's remarkable to me because this is also the worst financial times I can recall since I was a child living in a two-room cabin with six people and no running water and no electricity.

In those days, I knew what it meant to be poor. As I grew through my teen years I vowed never to be poor again. I committed myself to accept any suffering but poverty. I refuse to go hungry again (ha ha, I picture Vivien Leigh as Scarlett, shaking her fist at the sky, "I will never go hungry again!").

My partner also had difficult times as a child. To him, poverty is being cold. When money is the source of my fear, I fear hunger. When it's the source of his fear, he fears being cold. That's what a poor childhood and winters in New England will teach a boy.

Flash forward to 2009. Here we are, poor again. Possibly as poor as in those days, but it's hard to tell, because in the 80s people didn't have the option to live on credit cards. If they didn't have money, they didn't pay the heating bill, or buy food. If we don't have the money, we sigh and pull out the plastic.

In the intervening years I forged ahead to rapid financial success. I was able to send money to my mother. I stopped telling my father when I got new promotions and made more money than he did. The paychecks were good, but my personal life was a disaster. It became more and more of a disaster as time went on. Turns out, though I didn't know him at the time, my man was also doing very well financially. And his personal life was also a disaster.

Luckily both he and I have managed to do some learning, growing, maturing in those years. About the time our financial worlds began to fall apart, we were also making strides to become better partners to whomever we ended up with in the future. We're far from where we want to be, but we are happy to be together.

I've been wanting money all my life. Now, when I don't have it, I am happier with my partner than I've ever been. There must be a lesson in there.

Still. It must be possible to be happy with my man AND to buy groceries.

Hope tugs at me relentlessly as it has done to all humanity since Pandora's egregious behavior. We will get through this together. At least we are together. And we'll provide a beautiful loving home for our daughter. We will all eat enough and stay warm. Somehow.

It's Easter Sunday and the tall young woman who used to be my baby sends sparkles of delight through the house with her childlike glee. She played with every single item in a heaping Easter basket, and went outside in the rain to find eggs. Like I did so many years ago, she'll beg us to re-hide them for her all day long.

Now it's after the egg-hunt. After breakfast. After calls to Daddy and Gramy. We're content and safe and loved. And as much as we struggle, this truly is a beautiful life.

There were a couple of days last week warm enough to put our clothes out on the line.

We first strung the clothesline halfway through last summer when our hand-me-down drier finally gave it up. We couldn't afford major appliance-shopping, so we spent $7 or so on line and clothespins.

I was thinking poverty, poverty, poverty as I hung those first clothes out in 2008. Oh, how I hate reminders that I don't have the income I wish for. It makes me extra-sensitive to signals, causing me to interpret them in a darker light than what is reality.

Turns out, when I got over feeling sorry for myself, I realized that I LOVE clothes on the line! There are plenty of fabulous reasons to hang clothes out, namely, that I'm not stealing energy from the Universe with my excessive use of electricity. I can do good for the planet. My clothes smell delicious when they've been out in the fresh air for a few hours.

I also love scratchy towels. When you line-dry terry cloth, each little nub of cotton is firmer. Drying off with one of these towels is as close to getting a massage as I usually get. I vigorously scrub my face, my legs, my back, my feet. It feels so good! The water wicks away instantly without the use of fabric softener I always throw in the drier. I feel good about myself, and I feel healthier. My skin gets all pink with blood pumping through and I'm ready to begin the day.
  

 

On the way home from work last night on the bus, I was listening to This American Life with Ira Glass on my iPod. One of the stories was told by a son, painfully watching his parents suffer in this economy. His parents had both recently lost their jobs, and were in a place in life I recognized. They were beginning to cut back on their expenses in ways that make sense to people who have enough. It’s that first stage of sacrifice, where one gives up the things that have always seemed like a little bit of luxury.

The father was contemplating environmental work in Iraq, and the son was horrified. We went through that too, when Mark first started talking about going to Afghanistan, people who heard about it were shocked. My mother flatly refuses to accept that it could ever happen. The mother in the story was going over a long list of possible job fields, trying them all out in her mind. Thinking about jobs in terms of what would suit her best.

It occurred to me that I’ve actually been granted a boon while the suffering is beginning to rage about me, affecting more and more people every day. We have already been in the stage where many are just now approaching.

We panicked already. We shed tears of despair. We’ve already gone through lists of desperate strategies in our minds, looking in vain for something we hadn’t thought of that will save us. We have stopped fantasizing about what jobs would be nice to have, and have started the humbling job search for anyone willing to hire Mark, on any terms. We have cut our coffee consumption in half because it’s one of our most expensive grocery items, and switched from Peets tea to Fred Meyer brand tea – 100 packets for $1.98. We already received the foreclosure letter from Wells Fargo, and got the letter from Bank of America taking my level of credit on the Master Card from $37,000 to $500. …and my balance is already zero. They’re just protecting themselves from me: a liability.

When so many more people are being forced to understand how bad our economy really is, and how it translates into innocent peoples’ lives, there is a growing sense of worry emanating from America. The boon is: we’re already on the bottom, and can see the uphill climb that will take us out of here. The despair and panic are in our history, which is a relief.

It’s a twisted way to feel grateful, but gratitude is always a good place to be.

…than this day a year ago.

 

1)      The last time we went out to eat, I had to shell out more than I’m used to. That upset me until I realized it’s because now there’s three of us instead of two. Today is better than this day last year because my daughter is living with me.

2)      When I dried off in the gym this week, my towel was scratchy. Today is better than this day last year because we are using a clothesline to dry our laundry.

3)      My President spoke in Ankara, a message of peace to Muslims, which my President last year would not have done.

4)      We are unpacked and settled into the house. Last year at this time, we were maneuvering around boxes. We didn’t have a stove/oven. The house smelled like stinky dogs and mold and tired generations. We pulled out the horrid drapes and a lot of the carpet and opened some windows.

5)      Today I know a lot about my job. This time last year they were just beginning to let me leave the books and start working on real veterans’ claims. Today they let me make decisions on behalf of veterans without any assistance.

6)      I no longer live in the same state with Barney. Woo Hoo!

7)      T has braces, and they are paid for, and I ended the years of agony, wondering how we were ever going to get the braces she wanted. Her teeth are already noticeably straightened.

8)      We’ve had many happy days in front of a roaring fire. A year ago today, we never used the fireplace for fear it had been neglected too long to work properly.

9)      Today I know that it snows in Portland. Last year I would have bet a whole paycheck that Portland would never see two feet of snow in a week. And I would have lost. Ha ha! All four seasons, baby! This place is awesome.

10)  The huge tree is gone. No more roots crushing our foundation. No more squirrels spreading millions of pine cone shells all over the patio as soon as I sweep it, or filling the rain gutters of our house and the neighbor’s with pine cone pieces.

11)  Our home has had many improvements – new paint, carpets gone, new buffet and bookshelves. The front porch steps have been rebuilt and painted a reasonable color, rather than Kelly green.

12)  The ivy is gone!!