I found this picture in my pc and it reminded me that there was a time in Will's life where this storm of uncertainty did not rule our lives. This was just after Will came home and Mike Cosgrave came by to collect his prize for coming closest to guessing Will's birth weight (10lbs 4oz).
It reminded me that even though 95% of the days in the past 17 months have been tainted by this struggle, that it is still possible to be unconditionally happy.
In the fall of 2000 Dina and I were living in South Boston in a condo owned by my brother Carl and we were engaged to be married the following October. We had both had enough of living in South Boston's parking and traffic situation, especially after totaling Dina's car at the intersection of L and Broadway. Therefore, we took the money from the car being totaled, pooled it with all the savings that we had, and started looking for a house. Just before Christmas we put an offer on a house in Braintree and it was accepted. We moved in at the end of February 2001 and started fixing it up.
It had everything we thought we would need for the next 10 years or so, a good yard, three bedrooms, 1.5 baths and a walk up attic and an elementary school right across the street. We knew that we could spend a lifetime in the house if we had to, therefore we had the safety of not having to move if we started a family.
However, as I have a tendency to spend too much time imagining 'what could be' instead of focusing on 'what is' I ended up creating a problem. For some reason I was convinced we needed an addition on the house, and became so consumed by it that eventually I convinced myself and Dina that we could not raise a family here. This was reinforced after Dina's baby shower when the house was full of gifts and I instantly became convinced that the house was too small.
We had a great street, a great house, great neighbors (with a baby just a few months older than Will next door), and we were happy. Then we decided in the fall of 2004 that perhaps it would make sense to pack up a newborn, sell our house, and move.
My parents had finally decided to sell their house. They bought their house in May of 1972 and luckily for my Dad and for us, my mother was willing to move once she learned that we had expressed interest in buying the house. It had the exact same number of rooms as our current house, but every room was a lot bigger.
A small kitchen suddenly became a large eat in kitchen. All three bedrooms where bigger, the ceilings higher, the shed became a garage, and the street became a dead end. Our claustrophobic feelings where suddenly addressed without the pain of living through construction. All seemed well in the world.
And then we moved.
And suddenly, less than 60 days later, Will was diagnosed with cancer and nothing has been the same since.
Recently, I drove past our old house, a place where we lived when the world seemed full of limitless joy and opportunity. When your dreams started becoming reality, and all that you hoped for was starting to come within your reach. I have such fond memories of living there.
I drove by and the house looked horrible. The lawn looked like it had not been cut once this summer (literally, it was a foot high). The shades were all drawn and it looked like the house on the block where the crazy old lady with ribbon candy and 75 cats and every newspaper for the pasts three decades stacked in the living room lives.
Suddenly, it dawned on me that ever since we moved we have had a horrible string of luck. It looked like the house had been under the same relentless pounding that we had been taking since we had moved.
I immediately felt horrible about what I had done to my neighbors. Each family that bordered our house, or was across the street, had great people that were easy to talk to and the kind of people you HOPE you get as neighbors. The kind of people you want around when raising a family. And I did THIS to them?
It then occurred to me that perhaps our string of bad luck started when one of my neighbors bought a voodoo doll and cursed us for selling to some nut.
I think maybe I'll go cut the lawn over there this weekend and see if it breaks the curse....if nothing else it would be good for a laugh when/if the owners came outside and I flew off the handle on them, telling them to shut up and get back inside.
