Changes I

K has moved into real estate, though she hasn’t quite working part-time at her old job. She likes the security it provides. I tell her that things are going fine with real estate: she’s just helped a client buy a house, she’s got two other clients she’s helping, and one of them might be completing two transactions using K’s services. “It’s all only potential earnings,” seems to be her mantra, and that’s why she’s reticent to quit her hold job completely.

It was a little ironic, then, that one of the memories that popped up in the Time Machine widget at the bottom of the page had to do with our first day out house hunting.

Criteria, Part II

I read through what I wrote then and realize that neither K nor I really knew what we were doing. That’s to be understood — it was the first time we’d bought a house. Still — were we really so green?

That’s one of the reasons I continue writing this thing — evidence of how much things have changed.

How E and I play-build has changed. It used to be something we did almost exclusively in his room, using blocks and Legos and Tinkertoys and whatever else we could find. It still is, to be sure.

But we often find ourselves outside building something more substantial. Or at last more in the Boy’s mind’s eye, that’s what we’re doing. His plans are often overly-ambitious, as every eighth-year-old’s plans should be. But as we begin working, more realistic goals form.

One thing that will never change is the sadness we feel on May 27 from now on — the one year anniversary of Nana’s passing.

I look back on that day and remember very little about it. I know took the dog for a walk around lunchtime and listened to Mozart’s Requiem. I know Papa and I had a scotch on the back porch that evening. But it was Memorial Day — it slowed the pace significantly, which perhaps was a good thing.

And what of today? A year on? Papa still gets blindsided by it occasionally. That’s to be expected; that will never go away. I do, too. Also to be expected.

Changes II

I was going through some pictures from 2003 around K’s family house at Easter. I hadn’t realized how much things had changed.

Those saplings in the neighboring lot — they completely hide the house now. That pad of concrete with an outdoor oven on it — enclosed and roofed. (That was done long before we left, though.) That fence to the left — hidden by a taller fence of wood to hide the field behind it. But the house itself, the one in the background still under construction — exactly the same.

That little baby, K’s nephew — a seventeen-year-old high school student. The field behind the happy family — storage for a building materials company. But the swing — still there, still exactly the same. The wooden seat has possibly been replaced, but who knows. Maybe it’s still the same one.

One more change — the most significant: