white knucking

We accepted an offer on our apartment last Saturday. Then, giddy with hope, we drove southward and looked at seven houses, three of which were fifty-thousand dollars over our price limit, but of course we can offer anything we want, and even though there are no current job openings at Bryan’s firm, we gave tentative notice at Hamish’s preschool that we’d be pulling him out in mid-February, only to learn within minutes that our buyer’s buyer is still waiting to be approved for a mortgage.

We frantically IMed each other, seriously considering walking away from our buyer, or any buyer, until April, so that Hamish could finish the school year and give me that childcare break, because once we start paying a mortgage, childcare goes down the tubes. Am I insane to choose a driveway, parking lots, trees and a back yard over first-rate childcare? Part of me thinks I am insane for giving it up, mid-year no less, and my Jewish guilt knows no bounds regarding the good people we’ll be leaving at the preschool, but part of me thinks I’m insane to walk away from a decent offer (the buyer’s buyer will most likely be approved), and have to re-clean, re-list, and re-chew my cuticles hoping we’ll cultivate some new interest in our place.

This triangle of things we must accomplish—sell, job, buy—has eddied into a tornado. But we got on this stormy ride, and at least in this moment, we’ve decided to see it through. When we played Hamish that R.E.M. song the other morning, "Everybody Hurts," I wept over Hamish's half made sandwich and Bryan admitted later that he shed a tear too. My knuckles are white from all this holding on for dear life.