Everything that is done in the world is done by hope*

July 20, 2008 | Category: In My Life

When you're making 6 figures, you got options. You can live in the city, near the city, or in some palace left of nowhere, just down the lane a mile or two.

But when you're contemplating something a lot less finer for a lot less coinage, then it's time to draw a line down a piece of paper and really weigh what you get for what you give on the geological side of things.

This is not a post about real estate.

Several years ago, CD and I decided to reevaluate how and where we were living. We knew if we were going to cut back to his salary, that it would be smart to move somewhere more rural. And, hey, our dream is a log cabin on a lake somewhere so it wasn't like we were twisting our own arms.

I had a lot of fun, we did really, researching and traveling to different places and getting the flavor of them. All of us enjoyed comparing the realities to the ideas we'd get in our heads, the discoveries, the sort of Hemingway-esque romance of it all.

Last summer, we got the house ready to show and put up on one of those 'sell it yourself' sites. The world hadn't crashed yet, but you could smell it in the air like rain. So even though there was a list of things still to be done - we were willing to lose some of that sweat equity to get it sold.

And then? We didn't sell it. And then? We didn't go anywhere.

So every once in a while, I get these emails; "Hey - you talked about moving for, like, eons. What's up with you still being where you is?"

Instead of continuing to point lovely people at the archives, which don't actually explain why we didn't move, I thought I would actually explain why we didn't move.

Ready?

For a couple of years, I've started to get headaches. I thought it was stress. I thought it was my Lupus. My doctor thought it was blood pressure. My other doctor thought it was lack of sleep.

Last fall, as the leaves began to turn and we started hoarding up firewood, my medical team got together and decided we should pop the hood and take a look.

What was found is a 7.7 x 3.6 x 6.0 cm cyst causing a mild mass effect on the posterior aspect of the cerebellum.

Just an FYI, that sounds a LOT better in inches. Also, in Latin. Just saying.

It's benign in the scary sense but a bugger in the 'that's bigger than a ping pong ball' sense. Arachnoid cysts tend to remain static, but obviously this thing has maxed out all the closet space I got in there and if it grows, someone's gonna have to chase me around an operating room with an industrial Black & Decker.

There was a huddle of scrubs-wearing folk, and I got a couple of new pills to take (God help me), and the go-froward consensus was that I'd have more scans and more tests and there was some other stuff, too, but that was the purple cow on the farm.

CD took it the worst of anyone. I mean, we've taken a lot of crap from each other (and because of each other) over the years, but we're crazy for each other like Nathan for Haley and we're banking on a lot more lifetime.

He thought and thought about it, and then he came home from a visit with his counselor and he said "We're not moving. This is where our friends are, this is where your doctors are, this is where I know the fastest way to 3 great hospitals and every 24 hour pharmacy in a 5-mile radius."

I sputtered and reminded him that we'd just taken out an equity line plus almost maxed our credit cards just to get the house almost ready to sell.

He looked me straight in the eye and said "I don't give a shit."

He said that in his deepest heart, he believed that this medical team - the one I've had for years and years - would be our best bet for getting me healthy and keeping me alive. And it didn't matter if we had to doggy paddle the money, and it didn't matter if we screwed our credit, and it didn't matter if it was rational to anyone else. This is what he believed, and for this reason - we couldn't move.

I tell you, I believe in many things - I believe in God, Jesus, Buddha, Democracy, socialized medicine and the magical properties of kisses. I believe in global warming, kindness, the necessary equality of humanity, and in the power of Bono and Gates to make money talk where goodwill falls short.

But in that moment, I believed in nothing more than what I saw in CD's eyes. He didn't blink, he didn't break, he captured my faith with his. And so I did the only thing I could do; I agreed.

And that's why we are where we is.

And even thought we sink, inexorably, to nothing... I believe it will turn out all right. It has to, in the end. Because until it does, it isn't the end.

(* Martin Luther King, Jr. said it first)

Stumble It!