A Few Thoughts

I spent the afternoon holding a darling three week old baby. She was born to a couple who had looked for months and months with me for the perfect house. I've written about them before, how hard it was for all of us, how much I despaired that they would ever find something. There was an urgency to it also because the wife was getting older by the minute (aren't we all?) and she wanted to be settled before having another child. The child I held was that dream baby.

There are so many faces to a real estate purchase or sale. These people sold their home with me and their buyer came through me also, right about this time last year. She since has changed jobs and relocated - I hadn't taken the file out of the car before she called to list it! She rented it herself, but what a wild year we've all had.

Yesterday I had lunch with another woman who has become a friend. As we sat at Bluewater - she likes the flatbread veggie sandwich, I love the ahi tuna and avocado salad - she said that I was "the first person she met in Skaneateles." That's true - the Realtor often is. We don't always have as much fun as we had that day, looking back on it, but there are memories always. She now is fully immersed in the Skaneateles lifestyle, has made countless other friends, and is very happy to be here as are her children. And likes her house, too!

I had another call from a woman who will retire soon. She wants to leave the town in which she's lived for years and move up to Syracuse. She has friends and relatives, lived on the lake in the summer, and feels that a larger city will better suit her needs as she ages. But the tug of the known life is hard to break - so between the time she writes me "Yes, I'm ready!" and my response she usually reconsiders. It will happen the way it's supposed to in the end. But as a Realtor I offer options, make more concrete the vision.

I saw a little stone house today as I wound my way through the countryside from Auburn to the new mother's house. I thought how sweet it would be to live on a large piece of property in a small cottage, to tend a garden (I brought her roses for her daughter, Rose) and keep more dogs and cats. I could write then by an open window with a deep ledge....not yet. I enjoy too much what I do, the lives I touch that touch me back.

I am deeply grateful for this experience.