It All Ends Up Under Water Anyway

The first Friday in November was supposed to be the closing day on the Lake Claire house. Someone wanted to buy the place, and we wanted to sell. The difficulty came when it was revealed that selling to at the price the buyer wanted to pay would cost us over 40k in realtor commissions. It was a simple miscalculation on our part; we thought that commissions were part of closing costs. SURPISE! The husband and I laughed our asses off in panic and fear when we heard about the 40k, as we didn’t have 1k to clean up the yard in Lake Claire, let alone 40k from anywhere to pay realtors’ commission. Even if someone offered to loan us 40k, I wouldn’t continue to throw good money after bad on the place.

Maybe on Friday some sort of strange financial miracle will have occurred, and the house sale will have gone through. I seriously doubt this. Loads of well-meaning friends and neighbors have offered us bits of advice, because no one can believe we’re losing the Lake Claire property. I remain convinced that foreclosure is the best move, as any other option presented to me somehow puts us in more debt. Even having part of our mortgage forgiven (unlikely, but whatever, we’re trying everything) would generate tax debt, as having loans forgiven is measured as income.

We need to take the loss, but no one can believe that betting on Atlanta real estate generated anything less than profit. I have assured everyone that we played every delaying and COVID relief card we could, which is why we’re losing the house thirty months after quarantine started. I just really want the financial hemorrhaging to stop by the end of the year. It is unknown if that will happen, but I can hope.

My maternal grandfather appeared in a dream to me this week, as he sometimes does. He wanted me to move back to the low country, back to the area his family had lived continuously for 400 years before his death. I had to explain to him again that the Atlantic is rising, and most of the coast of Georgia will disappear within my daughter’s lifetime. He just shook his head. “Not all of it”, he insisted. “There are places with high ground”. Maybe I argued, I can’t remember. Probably the dumbest property purchase I could make – assuming I ever have the capital to own anything again - would be on the coast, so maybe it’s in my future anyhow.

I have a similar dream about Grandpa whenever I’m about to drive to the low country. Grandma only shows up in dreams about travel to far away places. I dreamt of Grandma Alice when I was in London, in Berlin, in Costa Rica, in Hawaii. Grandma Alice wanted me to see the world, and when I’m asleep I wish I could have her with me to see everything. Grandpa Brown wanted me to stay connected to the family, so he shows up when I’m anywhere within a couple of hours of Brunswick. Now there's no close family there, but part of my brain still thinks he wants me on the coast.

No matter what happens with the Lake Claire house, the husband and I will be living within our girl’s High School district for the next three and a half years. Our youngest is just in the first half of ninth grade, so it would take something extreme to make us leave. Frankly, I hope to stay in our current rental townhouse for at least that long. I hate moving, having done it so many times before I was thirty. If I live until retirement though, maybe moving to the coast won’t be such a bad idea, as the land should be very cheap by then. Going out in a hurricane any time after seventy doesn’t sound like a bad way to go either now that I think about it. So maybe climate disaster will have the upside of cheap real estate and a quick natural end in my family’s traditional lands by the end of my life. Who knows what will happen? It’s 2022, and the world is on fire. Nobody knows anything. We’re all just doing our best.