My current book club book is Indigo Girl. It is a historical fiction novel about 17 year old Eliza Lucas, left in charge of her father’s plantations in colonial South Carolina. She fights every day to make a profit from the indigo crop and stakes her family’s fortune toward it but experiences nothing but failure upon failure. She says “I was a butterfly pinned by its wings to the canvas of my failures.” I stopped there for today because that so accurately describes how I feel at this moment in time. But of course Eliza’s story is now history and I know she goes on to marry one of the signatories of our Declaration of Independence and is credited with beginning growing indigo successfully in what was to become the US.
Left with two little investment houses as my only resources at the conclusion of my twenty year marriage two years ago, I have tirelessly worked to secure my family through hard work and wise investments, to grow that little into enough to sustain my five children through college.
This year I staked all I had to purchase a house that I beautified with a great team and a lot of sweat and panicky nights. It’s value was doubled.
I was also under contract to buy another house to beautify but 3 days before my closing the finance company I was working with and which had approved the property and issued final terms withdrew due to COVID. Left high and dry I scurried to find alternate financing but no one was lending. Everyone was panicked and running for cover.
I fell on my sword and pleaded with the seller to split the escrow with me, to share the burden of the unprecedented COVID pandemic. Instead she hired a lawyer who has not stopped at winning the escrow when the judge did not find COVID a valid excuse and now seeks on top of that tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees as sanctions.
I could never have conceived that something I entered into to provide more for my family would cost me so dearly. I could not have imagined I would fail so deeply.
All I can do is learn and remember that, like Eliza Lucas, this is not the story’s end. I believe money is not finite. The more people try to take from my family the more opportunities arise. I say to that attorney who opposes me, at Jesus’s suggestion, if you would like my only cloak, please take my tunic too. You are a man and I am a single mom of 5 (8 if you include our non human members!) in a new land but I give it freely in love. You must need it more than me and I hope it fits you as you hoped it would.
Notes From Real Life 