Yesterday’s little plug of sentementalia drew me onward ever onward: back out into the mid-morning heat (and in Arizona that IS heat) and into the depths of our lovely little neighborhood.
Yes, it is lovely! I was soooo lucky to stumble upon the Realtor who brought me here. The place is kind of a best-kept secret…and it is well-kept. The houses are tidy and nicely painted…the yards, whether grass or desert-landscaped, are handsome and clean…the towering trees: gorgeous gushers of shade. What a beautiful place to live!
Now that I’m old, one of my fondest wishes is to leave this lovely little house to my son, Ian the Great. I believe he likes the place…but even if he doesn’t, selling it would deliver a sh!tload of money to him. One way or another, he would profit: either a pretty house large enough for a family with three or four kids, or a highly salable place whose profit would set him up in business wherever he chose.
Sometimes I think…if I were young verging on middle-age, would I stay here if all my relatives croaked over?
Huh. As with everything, it depends.
But if I had a decent job that paid decently — my son surely does — I would think likely! Very likely.
If I needed to go somewhere else to pad the retirement fund..well…it would depend. And “depend” means an awful lot of things…
…depend on whether I had kids and where I wanted to send them to school
…depend on where the extended family lived
…depend on what the Honored Spouse wanted
…depend on future prospects for this proposed “decent job”
…depend on our idea of a desirable cultural life
…depend on whether the spouse and I could survive a 110-degree summer day…
Yea, verily! As we scribble, it’s only about 98 degrees out there — downright chilly!
Seriously: I don’t consider that very hot, having grown up in balmy Saudi Arabia and spent most of my adulthood in the Sonoran desert. But it just could be that normal humans would regard this place as an outpost of Hell.
Personally, I don’t. I think it’s frikkin’ gorgeous, an outpost of heaven. But…each to his/her own, eh?