Spring is anniversary time around our house -- Ron and I were married April 29. But May marks another, newer anniversary, for it was in May 2007 that Ron left Michigan to work in San Francisco.
May was also the month when our realtor showed our house for eight days in a row, sometimes multiple showings in one day, and received no offers. We had priced the house at the amount we owed, prepared to take a bath on realtor fees and STILL couldn't move the thing.
So it was in May that Ron and I faced the prospect of paying both mortgage and rent for an undefined period, and that's when our move back to San Francisco ceased to be a fun adventure and became a perilous gamble. When Ron boarded that plane last May, we were gambling that I would generate enough income to pay the mortgage, that huge budget-busting house repairs would not crop up, that we would sell the house before the July property tax bill arrived.
Looking back, I'm breathless that we had the nerve. Two things gave us hope: My brother had agreed to rent the house from us and my work prospects at the San Francisco newspaper were good. Both panned out beautifully: Andy went crazy over the house and ended up buying it; and I'm still working at the Business Times.
So we're facing May 2008 from a slightly better position, with nothing more worrisome on the horizon than Benny entering kindergarten next year (which is actually a big concern, given the crazy S.F. process, and worth a blog post of its own). These days, instead of emptying out a storage space and keeping a house Swiffer-perfect, I'm planning a family trip to San Diego and working on a fiction project. I wish I could have seen a glimpse of the future last May, when I was arguing with basement contractors and setting up a garage sale.
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