"Can I take a look?" Peter turned out to be naturally curious. He had an easy style and never appeared self-concious, like a kid. Bill liked him. "Sure. Come on in" he got off the ladder and put down the brush: "and make me an offer I cannot refuse." Through the open garage Peter strolled in, passed the kitchen, and came under the pitched roof of the living room. "I like those huge panes." He pointed to the triangular gables above: "They light up the whole place. My roof is flat and I had to install skylights." Those giant panes impressed Amy and Bill hunting for their first home. The couple had little cash but the Great Recession of 2008 gave them some options. And they liked this sunny house the best. "You can see flights signaling SFO through them at night." Bill looked up and said. He used to do that, curling up in the sitting room sofa and staring into the star-lit deep blue beyond the glass as if it were an oceanarium and tiny mystic fireflies scuttled by, flashing red, amber, and green, heading to their destination across the bay. "The previous owner was Irish." Peter continued: "They sold it around 2006 and bought another house in Palo Alto plus a gas station. I used to dog-sit for them when they were away and I remembered a short wall here." Peter pointed to about four feet behind the front door. "I hated it." Bill thought it ridiculous to open the door and walk into a wall and knocked it down soon after he moved in. He loved to see his boy's glee while toy cars zooming across the new floor. It made sense. After the lucky devil good-neighbor Paddy, the next owner bought it at a ridiculously high price and soon defaulted on his mortage, and after being neglected for months, if not years, the house was taken over by the bank. It was a typical story during the financial crisis led to by years of easy money and lending standards. Then Bill came. They used to drive up from north San Jose every weekend to work on the house they just bought. Lacking experience, Amy painted one bedroom deep blue with high-gloss paint. Bill nailed a good layer of plywood onto the concrete after ripping off the dirty old carpet but, fearing expansion, he left ugly gaps at the edge of the floor which even baseboards couldn't hide. Looking back, however, he saw these as the "right" mistakes (as opposed to Yogi Berra's "wrong mistakes"), valuable lessons hard to come by any other way. Home improvement wasn't computer software. Plumbing, e.g., might look straightforward on paper but one couldn't just copy and paste and fix the kitchen drain once he worked out the diagrams in the book. What one understood he often failed to apply, not without first making mistakes and learning from them. "Have we made a decision yet?" Bill continued with the joke. "I've tried to get my daughter to buy." Peter's face lightened up: "We'll make a hole in the shared wall, push a button when dinner's ready, and she can come through. Not to mention she'll save money." Next he sighed: "But she said no. She said she had money, didn't mind the rent, and would rather spend on traveling." "Young people. They don't think the way we do." Bill was sympathetic. He was also alarmed by what he had just said: he had become one of the older people (and it didn't matter he was the same cheapskate 20 years ago). That might be why others seemed nicer to him these days. The woman opening the door of the yoga studio greeted him with a smile as he passed by. Kevin at the bike shop tested his battery for free. Angela from the Starbucks in the nearby mall refilled his cup and once even brought him a croissant. (He thought he should return the favor with something more than a thank-you but didn't know what. So he stopped going there for coffee.) It all made sense now. |