This year, my pay check just barely covered my mortgage every month. I applied for a loan modification, but didn’t qualify because I was current on my payments. However, if I missed any payments, I wouldn’t qualify either because I make too little money. Catch 22.
It comes down to: I am too poor and too responsible to get a loan modification. The message from the bank seems to be that loan modifications are for people who are make enough money to pay their mortgage but didn’t plan well.
However, I made it through the year. I still have my house. I am lucky.
Yesterday, I started and ended my day with stories of losing your home to the bank. Mandy and Cisco gave me a ride to the bridge 10 miles up the road where I’d left off the night before. When I asked if I could chip in gas money, they said, “No, just mention us in your BLOG.” “Yeah, tell them how Mandy proposed to me and I said I had to think about it,” Cisco said with a hearty laugh. Mandy works at Boston’s Lake House Grill and felt like and instant friend. We talked about small town life, kids, family… and loan modifications. Her story sounded like an echo of mine.
Before I got in the car to head up the road she said, “Well, our house sold this morning.”
“Congratulations… I guess,” I said uncertainly. Home sales these days aren’t always cause for celebration. In this kind of situation, you lose and the bank loses. But as I said, loan modifications aren’t for poor people. However, she didn’t seem too sad. Like me, after a hard year, Mandy’s come back home to a beautiful place on the shores of a different lake.
Then last night, as my hosts and I sat around the table eating and sharing stories, the last story they shared was about losing their home, and how their community came together and made them a new home. Someone gave them the house. And everyone in the community came together to help repair it and make it livable and wheelchair accessible. Their friends and neighbors gave their time, skills and love and made a new home for this wonderful family.
The amazing thing about these two stories of loss, is how each couple told me that their life was better now. That with loss came freedom and clarity.
I will ponder this as I walk today, my new little home perched on my back: what does home really mean?
Love,
-Laura
