The Phobic Do-Gooder

 A Pause in the Workday 

An office building where I used to work is wrapped in tall, wide windows. One winter day, something hit the glass not 20 feet from where I stood. There was a loud thump, and when I looked, a dark shape fell.

Image, Teece Aronin

I hurried to the window and peered down. On the ground, a sparrow lay on its back, its head submerged in snow. Its little breast rose and fell, rose and fell, and if it hadn't been for that, I would have sworn it was dead. 

I worried that if the bird didn't right itself soon, it would suffocate, but I hesitated to help. I love birds, but I love them from a distance because I'm a little bit phobic about them - fish, too. I think my fear is that they'll flap or flutter in my eyes.  

One of my coworkers came over to see what I was looking at, and because she was famously tenderhearted, I asked, "So, Jean, what are you going to do?"

An Origami Bird

While Jean was off looking for a box and I kept useless watch over the sparrow, one tiny leg sprang up and then the other, as if an origami bird were unfurling in the snow. 

Next, the sparrow flipped right-side-up, blinked, and looked around. It wore a party hat of snow on its head and another, smaller one, atop its beak. 

Suddenly, there was Jean, gingerly traipsing up to the bird, cardboard box in hand. When she got close, the bird took off but fell again. Jean came closer, and this time, when the sparrow took off, it kept going, faster and higher until it was clear that it needed neither Jean nor the box, and certainly not me. It disappeared into the wild, gray yonder.  

I need to get over my phobias before they stop me from helping when there is no Jean around. The fact that something is different from us doesn't mean we don't share the world with it, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't help. 

Besides, maybe some of the things that flap or flutter have a phobia about me. 

Absence Note

I've been worried a lot lately. I've been so worried in fact, that it's taken me from my blog entirely. The only times I've thought about Chipped Demitasse over the course of the last few weeks is when I kicked myself for neglecting it. This blog is very important to me yet I've been entirely absent from it.

A lot has been going on. My mother, who is dearer to me than even a wordie like myself can express, is facing serious health challenges. And I'm a single, working mother of teenagers, one of whom has temporary but difficult health issues of her own.

If being a single, working parent with a sick mother and a sick kid and all the responsibilities those things entail weren't enough, I decided to jump ship from the financial Titanic I call renting and am in the process of buying a house.

Buying this house included a three-day period of torturous anxiety where I obsessed over my monthly cash-flow, fearing it would become an even smaller trickle than it already is once I traded the "freebies" of renting (heat, maintenance, etc,) for the "costies" of home ownership. I earn a perfectly fair wage, but face it, life can be expensive for single parents. Those three days worrying about money are the kinds of times that try the souls of single, working parents and prospective home-buyers.

The utility bill was one of the things I worried about. I have no idea what heat and AC will run in this new place. The seller, as luck would have it, winters in Spain and summers in Northern Michigan, so there is no recent, realistic history of the house's energy use. And someone with the financial means to winter in Spain probably wouldn't turn down the thermostat at night even if he was here. I got so stressed-out over this phantom utility bill that I researched the cost of firewood in case our main source of heat had to be the fireplace. I'll love having a fireplace again; I just didn't want to have to sleep on the floor in front of it.

"Ugh," muttered my tried soul. "Ugh."

Then yesterday I sat myself down and lovingly chewed myself out. I picked up my smartphone, went to "notes," and tapped out a list of ways this house will benefit the kids and me in quality of life alone. So, not even thinking about financials, here is some of what I came up with:

- A two-car attached garage with two steps into the kitchen. On grocery day, that would eliminate the current trek across what feels like a football field in the summer and tundra in the winter, followed by a knee-grinding, nose-bloodying three-story ascent to the apartment. This aspect of renting, I decided years ago, is why God made teenagers.

- A semi-finished basement perfect for tossing said teenagers when I need some me-time. As a renter, me-time at home could be had only in my bedroom, or, if I needed quiet too, in the bathroom with the door closed and the fan on. I once consumed two glasses of Merlot and a Hershey bar with almonds while sitting on the lid of the toilet.

- Hardwood floors and a level, fenced-in back yard for our dog who has accidents in the apartment when nobody reads the signals in time to haul her down the three flights of stairs, like a grocery bag in reverse, and out to the football field/tundra in time to do her business.

- Money saved on dinners out, one of the few luxuries I allowed the kids. Their lives had changed so drastically when my husband and I divorced. I moved them out-of-state because we lived in a region with such a high cost-of-living, I couldn't find a job that would support us in anything higher than near-poverty; sadly, I'm not exaggerating. But with a back yard, we can roast hotdogs and marshmallows, and maybe restaurants won't seem that important anymore.

The kids and I still laugh about a night years ago when we were still a nuclear family. We were out on the deck roasting marshmallows when my daughter's caught fire and in her surprise, she whipped her stick behind her. The marshmallow hurdled through the dark, blazing like a meteor. To kids, mine anyway, laughing yourself sick over a fiery, flying marshmallow beats a restaurant hands down. 

Thinking about all this, I calmed down. Then I did the math I had done days ago but had gotten too freaked out to remember I had done. I calculated that with a fixed-rate monthly mortgage roughly half the amount of my rent, and with rent going nowhere but up, there was no way, short of buying in Bizarro World, that a house wouldn't be better for me financially. And I'm grateful to have a bit set aside so that unexpected maintenance costs won't be AS big a disaster.

Those three days of abject terror taught me some things. First, when I examined the benefits of buying the house, my blessings politely raised their hands asking to be counted - blessings like my kids and the fact that I can buy a house at all.

With blessings like those, why should I worry? Besides, thinking is helpful; worrying isn't.