I was fourteen years old visiting family when we learned that my grandparents won $35 million in the Florida lottery.
The place exploded with sustained cheers that ended with my Aunt chasing her middle-aged son out into the street screaming, “don’t buy a new car yet!”
It bordered on delirium; another Aunt heard the news and immediately quit her job.
My immediate family was more reserved, our fatalistic Irish genes contrasted with their Italian exuberance.
Nobody personified this spirit better than my oldest brother who simply shook his seventeen-year-old head and said, “we didn’t win the lottery. Good things don’t happen to us.”
He was right.
You can blame it on fate, my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s, or the more likely scenario of getting Slippin’ Jimmied by a Yellow Pages attorney but our collective cheer quickly turned to grief.
It’s a pattern I’ve noted often in life. But the reverse is just as true.
2013 was a tough year. We lost several family members including Mom. The holidays didn’t feel like the holidays. Times were dark.
2014 started off much better with a nephew born in each of the first three months: January, February, and March. That Memorial Day weekend, we hosted a big family barbeque for no reason other than to gather as a family.
It was as if a dark cloud had finally passed. With blue skies finally peeking through, a burst of sunlight filled the sky when Jenny accepted a proposal to become my wife.
It’s amazing how cyclical these things become. Grief and cheer: two sides of a perpetually spinning coin.
Jenny and I have effectively been quarantined with our 19-month-old daughter Senita for over six months now. We’re being extra cautious for a pretty good reason with one overwhelming exception: we’re moving.
As in simultaneously buying a new home and selling our current one.
The last thing I ever expected to do during quarantine was to abandon my home. But we’ve been looking for a waterfront home that meets our needs for over five years and couldn’t let this opportunity pass.
That’s how we’ve gotten to the point where just over a week from now we’ll (hopefully) be closing on a new-to-us house overlooking a reservoir two towns down the road.
It’s strange cultivating a better life for your family when every natural impulse is screaming to just hunker down.
The impulse to downsize the house we’re selling for staging clashes with the impulse to hoard a little something extra to get through quarantine. The two have reverberated through my life this past month like animatronic possums playing dueling banjos.
Da-da da-da da-da-da duh dum dum. Be sure to socially distance at all times and avoid non-essential people.
Da-da da-da da-da- da da da. But let as many people as you can inside your house while you’re gone and never think about not knowing what they breathed on or touched.
—
Da-da da-da da-da-da duh dum dum. Have nothing on your bathroom shelves or counters and hide any signs of normal human life.Da-da da-da da-da- da da da. But know that you’re one headline away from being unable to buy toilet paper for five months.
Da-da da-da da-da-da duh dum dum. Be sure to socially distance at all times and avoid non-essential people.Right now I’m simultaneously thankful for what I have but ever-striving to create the best possible home for my family. For me, that doesn’t mean the biggest, or the safest, or the newest – it means the most enjoyable.
Numerous studies confirm the truth we feel that being near water increases calmness, happiness, creativity, and health. That’s why we’ve been looking for so long.
Making matters even stranger is that although we’ve only had three houseguests since March, the house we’re buying is basically made for entertaining.
Why are we buying a house made for entertaining when we’re no longer inviting people over? It’s an affirmation that things will get better.
Dark clouds will pass, the sun will shine, and holidays will feel like holidays again.
Grief will turn to cheer and we’ll have a place to gather when it does.
If you enjoy my humor writing, please subscribe below.
If you want to syndicate this column, you may contact me here to discuss the details.
You may notice that I’ve disabled commenting on this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts by email at [email protected].