New Vision

We found out our littlest one needed glasses. This was a shock, since no one in either family has vision problems, except in growing with age. I took him for the big appointment and except for the stinging drops that dilated his eyes, he was fine. We were the ones feeling the most traumatized. When told he has an amblyopic eye, both my husband and I went into a kind of shock of loss. You know the stages:
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.
It went a little like this:
1) No, he doesn't have a real eye problem, they will find out he just may need a patch to wear in the evening or they will find nothing.
2) That doctor was probably a quack! He just wants to use all his fancy toys on our son and use him as a guinea pig, then give him a prescription so he doesn't look bad! I don't think we can trust him!
3) Of course this isn't going to be permanent. He will probably just wear them for a year and his eyes will return to normal.
4) Was it all the coffee I drank while pregnant with him? Why didn't I check on this last year? It has to be my fault somewhere in this.
5) He looks so cute in those glasses! Let's get him another pair for sports!

My son, of course, is fine with it, especially now that he can see better. He keeps slipping them down his nose to look over them, and then happily pushes them back up, when he realizes that they really do work. His first pair were the Magic-Clip dark metallic blue frames that have magnetic clip-on sunglasses that he said made him look like a rock star. We went back for the sports glasses (that look a little like swimming goggles) and he said he feels like a superhero in them. The best part is we feel comfortable letting him wear them during soccer, on the trampoline and wrestling with big brother.
It is nice to have that taken care of.


This was our biggest week of sales so far. We sold our dining room table, sofa table, canoe, weight set, lamps etc... I am not sure what it is, but with each major item sold, I feel like I need time to process the change. Interestingly enough, I am allowing for that without apology. Now some people may say, its just "stuff" and, of course, we can replace it when we need it. But I am staying true to my heart and realizing that it is more than that.

There is a subtle pressure in our society to "settle down" and make a nice home for yourself, really nice. Our whole nation seems to be caught up in a remodeling and designing frenzy that could be compared to the Victorian Era. We were caught up in it. After we finally bought our first home in Edmonds back in 2001, I thought, this house is cute. We don't have to do much. But looking at the aluminum, rental-like blinds that filled the house bugged us both, being new homeowners. So new blinds were in order, which turned into research that only real wood blinds that matched the trim would be the only option for the best trendy rich look that will never go out of style. "A great investment," sales people would tell me at the window covering stores, "Any improvement you make will come back to you when you sell." So we bought that idea as well as the blinds for the entire house.

Now, at this time, we had no idea that we would ever sell that house. I remember we used to sit in the backyard that had wind breaking Poplar trees that lined the neighbor's property with ours. They made such a beautiful rustling sound in the wind. We used to sit on the grass in the middle of our small back yard and talk about how happy we were, how much we loved our little 1400 square foot home, and how we can see staying there until the kids have grown. "Perfect," we used to call it.

It was perfect until the day we were installing our newly-ordered cherry stained wood blinds. One month after purchasing the home, one of the previous owners came knocking on our door. We had befriended the previous owners, against our realtor's advice (never talk to the people you are in a contract with, he told us- though we found out it was because he had lied to pressure us into a full price offer).
With 2 boys, slightly older, they seemed so much like us and very nice and down to earth. They had only moved a couple miles away into downtown Edmonds, which is closer to the water and the view of the Olympic Mountains. So the wife came knocking on our door with a serious look on her face and pulled me outside to talk. She asked if my 3 year old was playing with the neighbor boy, who was five. "Of course," I told her. She then told me, she thought they were too far apart in age and that she never dreamed they would play together and that it must stop immediately. "Why?" I asked.

This is when perfect turned into nightmare as I found out the story of molestation by another neighbor boy, who also had been molested, though she didn't know by who. She told me that my neighbor boy had inappropriate behaviors and that I needed to watch him at all times when playing with my boys. It was then that I asked her for the truth. "Is this why you moved out of this house?" Her face twisted in anxiety, hesitating, but she had the decency to answer honestly. To say, "Yes."

That was it. We had to move. I was obsessed with the Snohomish County's Sheriff's online sexual predator information list and I found a safer area to move to (though you never really can know). We found a home right away. We rented our first home knowing that we would lose money if we sold it right away and moved into our new home within 11 months, 10 months after we heard the bad news.

The second home was ugly. Not much to speak of, only the view of the water. We were in the "right" neighborhood, in the ugliest house for blocks. "We can fix it up," I told my husband. So we worked for 2 years painting, removing, replacing, crashing walls, adding windows, sweating, laughing, yelling, crying, and finally adding the granite and stainless as pieces de resistance. We were done.
We sent a Christmas card to our Home Depot.
We thought for a short time we might stay in the house, but when we found out how much more money our house was worth (in only 2 short years) and how we no longer enjoyed this remodeled house (that was filled with stressed and toiled memories), and with a trip to Bainbridge Island, we decided to sell it and our first house and move on.

So here we are on Bainbridge with the thought that we had finally found our place to settle down. We were serious this time. Everything about the house, the location, the neighbors and the community was perfect. We did choose to remodel the house to make it even more perfect. Then came time to pick the furnishings. Never before had we spent so much time buying the perfect furniture to go with our perfect new life in our perfect new house. Each one matched the walls, the wood, and the motif. Each one was made well, and was sized to fit perfectly.

Now, as each item is sold and taken away, those ideas and energies are also sold and taken away leaving an empty space.

I breathe...

We have sold perfect and replaced it with ideals. Like our son, we found out we also had vision problems, and similarly with his new glasses, new vision has come to us as each space is left empty. We stop and release the past... and see clearer towards our future.