End of an Era

The sale of my house closed on Friday afternoon. Sean went with me, and we sat there as the buyers signed a thick stack of papers. I only had to sign four, one of which was an agreement that no money would be exchanged between us beyond the actual terms of the sale--which of course was the entire reason for my presence at the closing! That bit of illegality took only a second, as I slipped the check into the buyer's hand after everything was signed, and then it was done.

Everyone else was in a good mood during the proceedings. The buyer's husband, who is a Nigerian immigrant who speaks eight languages, including French, engaged in a lively debate with their lawyer about things like the existence of happiness and of freedom--neither of which of the husband believed in. The lawyer was obvious a very intelligent and interesting guy, and under other circumstances I would have been delighted to listen to their conversation, but under the circumstances I just wanted everything to be over, and mostly didn't even look up. After all the time and energy and sheer frustration that had gone into getting this deal done, I hadn't anticipated how sad it would make me to actually sign the papers. I thought of my parents, and how that house was in many ways the symbol of their hopes and dreams, the place that they made a home for us, the place where we were all together...and here I was, having to sign it away to a new family. Once again I felt, hopefully for the last time, the anger and sadness that it was my responsibility to do all of this.

Despite all of my prior resentment towards the buyers, I recognized later, when I was calm, that they were very friendly and polite during these proceedings. I had to laugh to myself, though, when the wife mentioned to the lawyer that they would indeed be having a lot of big parties because they have a big family--the thought of my neighbors' faces when that happens! Oh, they'll be missing us even more that day. Of course I also thought of the paint cans, and laughed to myself again.

So here it is, a chapter that's almost closed. I haven't deposited the check yet. I still have to get in touch with the probate office and find out if it's OK with them that we skip this silly idea of a trust altogether. In addition to the sale price, there was a deposit check for $5k, and I joked to Sean that Jen would never know if...and then we dreamed about which country we'd choose to go to this time. Egypt is number one on our priority list, but since Sean is so firmly set on seeing Jerusalem and the other sites in Israel, and because they are so conveniently close to each other, we decided that our next trip abroad will be a lengthier combo tour of the two countries. Of course I'm not going to actually steal the 5k to finance it, however tempting it may be.

In other news, I'm into Churchill's third volume, "The Grand Alliance." It covers 1941 as things finally get into high gear after Russia and the U.S. are drawn in. In tandem I've been reading (sneakily, in Borders, because I don't feel like buying it) a book about the complicated relationship between Churchill and FDR, which provides complementary information about Churchill's psychology and the imaginative revisionism of his writing. Basically, it points out that no one is an objective chronicler of their own history. Churchill made his relationship with Roosevelt seem much more evenly balanced in terms of affection than it was because that's the way he wanted it to have been. Roosevelt was always the beloved and Churchill always the suitor, which apparently reflected Churchill's upbringing as the child of parents who neglected and ignored him. Pathos makes good reading!