37 : The Big House Hunt

It must have been around seven o’clock in the morning. My alarm clock was Yali, wailing in full distress over the laundry basket.

“Yali… what is it?” I asked him, pulling the sobbing young man onto the bed.

He pointed tearfully into the laundry basket. Suddenly, all tears ceased as he found what he was looking for. A pair of sidewalk-chalk dusted sweatpants from yesterday.

“Pants! Pants!” he pointed with great enthusiasm and a huge smile, dimples included.

So I helped him on with the pants and out to breakfast. Farm fresh eggs and sausage; living in style.

A few hours later, the sermon had just started. Puck rested his neck on the back of the chair while listening to the introduction…

“I want you to imagine for just a moment that you’re a Jew in 1st century Israel. You may be a shopkeeper, a farmer, a common laborer…”

Puck leaned over to me and whispered loudly in my ear, “I’D BE A SEWER CLEANER!”

It was later in the afternoon. Puck opted to join us on the house hunt, and already had a very good idea in his mind, just what exactly he was looking for.

“We each get one vote, Mom. And whichever house has the most votes, that’s the one we get.”

“So what’s your criteria?” I asked.

“A medium-sized yard. Close to the Vermeers. Close to school. Close to church. Carpet in some rooms. Does the house you looked at yesterday have a fireplace?”

“It does.”

“Oh. Okay. My vote’s gone, Mom. It’s gone. I vote for that house.”

About an hour later when we arrived at our first house of the afternoon, Puck had a few more thoughts. “Decent, decent. I like the laundry chute. But I just can’t figure out where it comes out. That could be a problem. I don’t want to put my clothes down there and never see them again.”

And of course, he had hopes of a room of his own. Earlier he gave his reasons.

“So when I go off to college and win awards, I want to put them on the wall in my room. And when Yali goes off to college, he could win awards and put them on his wall, too. So we need two different rooms so our awards won’t get mixed up on the wall.”

But I’m pretty sure he was more concerned about that laundry chute than anything else.