Home Stretch

It looks like it might just happen. I have crossed all fingers and toes, have not canceled my email subscription to realtor.com (just in case that might be interpreted as excessive confidence), have not canceled our homeowners’ insurance and replaced it with renters’ insurance, have not given out our potential new address, or even had change of address cards printed. It hasn’t happened yet. The papers are not signed and in my possession, and therefore it has not—in my mind, at least-- happened yet.

Maybe it is just that we are not on the spot watching it all progress; or maybe it’s just that we have had so many glitches along the way that they seemed (at times) insurmountable. I have never been so close to walking away from a sale or purchase in our 40+ years of selling and purchasing. It has been a grindingly long process from last March’s optimistic schedule to this March’s weary agreements and addendums. But it looks like it might just happen. Finally.

Today our buyers are signing the papers and the money is changing hands. Not into OUR hands, of course, but into the hands of the next closer of the next deal, with our name and loan number written on the tag. I’m not sure we will even see any money, other than numbers on a HUD sheet (or ‘closing document’ as they are apparently now called), where the proceeds from our sale are balanced against our obligations for the purchase, and found to be approximately equal. Funny how that works.

In any event, if the papers today are shuffled just right, and the papers two days from now are likewise stacked and shuffled, we will give up one set of keys for another, rent back for a month or two, and start arranging a move for the month of May. I can file all the emails and texts and documents and information and addresses that have decorated my laptop for far too long. I can move on to more decisions, more scheduling, more accommodations. The lady at City Hall who arranges moving van permits has probably not forgotten my name, and I bet I can remember how to pack china.  I suppose I should be nostalgic, but I’m not. I’m simply ready to move on.