family news about Mark

Maybe I can finally relax and uncross my fingers for my son and his family.
A year ago, the closing bell rang for his computer contract job in New Orleans. They spent an intense month cleaning, painting and preparing their house for sale, sold it the first time it was shown and zoomed away for a long overdue vacation, thinking he would look for work on the Internet as they traveled.
He looked. He sent out his resume via the Internet, but nothing happened until the Wesley Clark campaign provided him a hectic few months of work. He loved the job. They loved him and his computer dedicated and directed energy and skills.
The party ended all too soon and he still did not have a permanent job.
He considered taking up invitations to share his expertise with a couple other presidential campaign projects. In the end he decided he could not afford the time and miles away from his family which those jobs would require.
We kept hoping he would settle in Arkansas, but the job market didn’t work that way, but it was time to add, “willing to relocate” to his resume.
Shortly thereafter a small, family company in Lancaster County Pennsylvania asked him to come. He did an Internet search of area housing for sale and found a centennial home the family liked. His wife, tired of all the coming and going of this past year, sent him to check out the job with the admonition, “I took care of the details for settling in the last few times, this time it is your turn.”
In what seemed days to me, he had flown out, taken the job, pre-qualified with the bank and signed a contract to buy a 130 year-old, two story home with full attic, basement and a big barn. Across the street, a park awaited the children and down the road he discovered a bike trail made from the old railroad bed.
I checked out the website of the house. He included photos of needed repairs, the worn-out genteel ambiance and intricately laid, hard wood floors.
On the Internet it appeared to have wonderful potential.
On site it smelled horrible. The previous owner’s cats had never found the litter box, but they sure found the carpet.
They spent their first weeks pulling up carpets and arranged to have the floors re-finished. Meanwhile, they widened the living space by tearing out walls put up some 85 years ago – according to the dates stamped on the sheet rock under the layers of wall paper.
The children enjoyed discovering the house and its left-behind treasures. They spent a couple days sliding plastic sleeves over the individual cards of football card collection they found.
The floor refinishers came and erased the scars where added walls had once stood – and the stains from the cats’ impudence. The new look renewed my family’s quest to uncover the house beautiful under the years of decline and decay.
I checked my son’s weblog the other day. Mixed in with his musings in computer lingo are before and after pictures of the floor. Refinishing made an astounding difference.
I can hardly wait to see it in real life and give my twisted fingers a chance to relax by touching the freshly varnished wood.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)


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