Downsizing: We Close. Stuff Appears. - Dr. Ed Iannuccilli
Monday, September 12, 2022
Though it wasn’t our first closing, this home purchase was different. As I remember from years past, people . . . bankers, lawyers, realtors, buyers, sellers . . . were in attendance. Not this time. This closing seemed to happen somewhere in space. We never met with anyone. Our lawyer was in another state. We completed transactions online provided our scanner was cooperating, and our aggravation score was less than five. Oh sure, we had a walk-through of our new home with our realtor on the day of, but that was it. Everything had been signed and delivered in advance.
Nowadays, stuff happens in a cloud; supposedly, the money-saving, secure, dependable, easy-to-use, invisible, unpalpable, environmentally friendly, instantly available, and vast storage space somewhere out there. Perhaps fog is a better descriptor. The same seemed true when we bid on the house. For the lack of interaction with the seller, we might as well have been on Mars. Hmmm, perhaps something will be coming up for sale there soon?
Whatever. We are now in the process of settling in. The pods magically resurfaced, popping into the yard from another place in space. We filled them a few weeks ago and almost forgot they existed, near forgetting what was in them. Now two half-ton behemoths appeared and will need to be emptied. Would my stuff (here I go with stuff again) still be there, kinda like the old question, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” I opened the doors. Lo! Behold! Our stuff was there, unruffled by its time in space.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTI have a thought. Does the Welcome Wagon still come? And do they bring stuff? Are they an upsizing stint in the downsizing shuffle?
I didn’t realize that the Welcome Wagon’s personalized greetings have touched the lives of over 100 million households, including American Presidents in their new abode, The White House. How neat. It was founded in 1928 by Thomas Briggs who was inspired by stories of wagons that would greet westward travelers, providing fresh food and water for the journey. Briggs created Welcome Wagon to embody this same spirit of hospitality, hiring hostesses who were friendly and knowledgeable about their neighborhood, and who delivered baskets of gifts, local information, and coupons supplied by local businesses.
I’m not sure why I segued into old thoughts of The Welcome Wagon. Then again, relocating has turned me around a tad, my brain not necessarily clicking in logical sequences. I’ll just return, as I often do, to my old neighborhood where the welcomers were the ice cream man, a fishmonger, a ragman, and the Cushman bakery man. Who will come by my narrow lane now? No matter. The pods will be in the way for a while.
Invisible closings, welcoming people, stuff, pods, the cloud. All of it but none of it matters at the moment. We are beginning to settle in. Rather than a closing, we are experiencing an opening, and we are eager.
Dr. Ed Iannuccilli is the author of three popular memoirs, “Growing up Italian; Grandfather’s Fig Tree and Other Stories”, “What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner” and “My Story Continues: From Neighborhood to Junior High.” NOW, he has written his fourth book "A Whole Bunch of 500 Word Stories."
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