Three days and three sleepless nights later, we heard from our realtor that “Fanny Mae” accepted our offer.  We only had to secure financing, sell our home, pack, move, and unpack. Easy, right?

Buying or selling a home is completed primarily by fax or email, so we stayed in Salinas and began packing. First task—Gathering boxes by daily trips to the Salinas High book room, where Ms. Patricia gladly unloaded her extras. Ms. Patricia runs a “tight ship” of books for 2500 students, while high on her stilettos, but that’s another story.  UPS delivers daily to the high school, so we had a good start on boxes. Second task—picking an agent. We posted a shot of our home; cast a description on FB to see if we could garner any nibbles. Sure enough by the next day, a parade of cars “drove by” (lookey-loos) and a realtor-neighbor knocked on our door with a portfolio of impressive materials. Gloria seemed young and eager, yet we had a scheduled meeting with Linda, our friend of 30 plus years. Gloria’s bubbly enthusiasm buoyed us—“This house will sell fast. It’s in a great neighborhood with excellent schools.”  And she suggested a price, which wowed us.

When Linda and her partner Kevin arrived, both long-time Coldwell Banker Realtors, their assessment was not as ebullient as Gloria’s.  A quick look at our house through their eyes, and we began to see things we neglected over the years, especially, the mismatched floors, such as medium oak in the living room, lighter oak in the master bedroom, bamboo in the kitchen, plus peel and stick oak in the kids rooms, the latter retained black marker drawings from when our kids were young.  A few years earlier (okay, probably much earlier—but not more than a score), Dale ingeniously installed a “white board” on their bedroom wall, actually a white Formica countertop turned upside down, so our kids could express themselves; problem was containing their creativity, as it overflowed onto floors and doors. At some point, Sam, our youngest, drew a beautiful piece of art—stick figures really—on the back of the garage door. I considered nailing a frame around it, and then rethought I shouldn’t reinforce her behavior.  Whatever, I never had the heart to repaint or repair, so the floors held our kids’ artwork intact. At least, Allie’s blue room, during her blue period, was now white. During Allie’s high school years, she painted the entire room including ceiling, the bluest sky-blue with floating white clouds. It was her room. Since it was too blue for my taste, I kept her door closed. When Sam, our youngest, took over that room, she repainted it.

M’s room reflected her taste—the only room in the house with carpet—and not surprising a blue color, had soft yellow painted walls. M. moved away for college and grad school, never returned except for random visits, daughter #2 followed, then finally the youngest. Bedroom #1, formerly the blue room, became Dale’s office, the middle bedroom, which all three girls occupied at different times, morphed into my office, or storage shed—depending on my projects, while bedroom #3 the guest room. With our fledglings flown the nest, time for the parents to move on.