Involving the economy of contentment

I will attempt to comment upon current events.

Now that my hearing and other senses are returning, after nearly two weeks of being more or less under weather and beneath covers, I pick up from morning news shows a snippet about home sales.

"If people don't buy houses," the anchor person intones, "you'd think it's only a problem for the sellers, right? But this hurts the whole economy, because..."

(OK, I don't remember the reasons; my brain fogged out again.)

Sipping hot orange juice I recall days when restlessness struck me each time I passed a for sale sign stuck into the lawn of an intriguing house. It was years ago, the kids were young, and life, though interesting, sometimes begged for a hint of romance, adventure. A different house and neighborhood might fit the bill, I thought.

Then Tim's TV station built and transferred to a new building. I convinced myself, for my husband's sake, we ought to move. He likes riding his bike to work, after all, and the new station's miles farther away. We ought to live closer (in one of the well-to-do surrounding neighborhoods).

It had been one thing to desire a new residence after we'd moved a couple hundred miles and while we were living in a too-tiny second floor apartment with ceiling heat and no air flow. Back then after much effort we'd found our own home to buy, and with the joy of a prisoner released I'd asked God to keep us settled for a good long while.

Five years later I passed those beckoning for sale signs, in front of houses that were, well, if not the most fabulous, at least a step up from our 1950s-style 'hood, and, besides, they looked so...different. I wanted different. I longed for change.

We made one offer. Rather a long shot. The next day people from California offered cash for the seller's price. Oh, well. I sighed. I drove over to that street a few times afterward, and sighed again.

Today I'm glad. Thank you, Californians. We might have done that different thing, but as it turned out we can now glimpse the end of the mortgage tunnel on this house. It's still a ways ahead, but in that other house the debt journey would loom long still. Or would I have tired quickly in that place and traded up again in a few years? No progress, because we'd progressed.

I wonder this morning. Might this housing crunch, as it's called, cause other families to breathe thanks a few years into the future? Maybe staying put rather than selling one place to snatch up another can relieve a lot of us. I've come to appreciate my neighborhood more than I could've realized. Might others focus energy closer to the four walls in which they must stay put? Reach out to neighbors, build a corner grocery, a park? Or even simply wash windows, coat walls with fresh paint. Not for buyers or in order to move on. For this little same old place.

Tim still rides his bike whenever possible to work. He's buff.