It's Too Quiet!

I hear the word "foreclosure" every day.  On the news or in real life, "foreclosure" is very, very common word these days.  Whenever I hear it, I wonder about the people who lost their houses.  I know there is a person or a whole family behind every foreclosure.  I know they shed tears and spent many an agonizing sleepless night. But they remain invisible. 

I never hear someone say "I lost my house to foreclosure".  So where are all these poor souls who must be going through very dark times?  None of them seem to be talking.  Where did they all go?  I can only assume they are suffering in silence and isolation.  I ache for them.

I have been able to hang on to the house that I live in -- despite teetering on the edge of foreclosure a couple of times in the past year.  Though I have not lost my home, I DO know what foreclosure feels like up close and personal.  I used to be a real estate investor.  I rode the real estate market down with the recession.  I may not have had to pack my belongings but I did lose SEVEN houses by surrendering a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure.  It was agonizing.  I can't imagine the horror if it had been my home.  I hope I never get the lesson in what that feels like.

I had a conversation about financial strife with an attorney yesterday.  He said to me "I hear stories like this three to five times a day.  Everyone is struggling." 

But no one is talking about it.  We are all just suffering in silence.  We aren't even talking to each other.

THAT is why I write this blog.

Capitalizing on "The Tesakiah Luck"!

I named my second daughter Tesakiah -- Tesakiah Caroline Alexandra Harjo, to be exact and complete!  It's pronounced like Hezakiah from the Bible. 

In case you don't know and are interested, my other daughters are Emily Meredith Cheloteka (She-lote-ka) Harjo and Sara-Grace Isabella Shedachi (She-da-chi) Harjo.  And while I'm over explaining: Tesakiah means "bright star", Cheloteka means "locust" or "sounds of the summer night", and Shedachi means "little sister" in Navajo.

"Tesakiah" is my own variation on a Harjo ancestor's name.  There was a Seminole chief after whom a whole band of the Seminole tribe was named.  His name was Tusakiah Harjo (pronounced Tusa-guy-a, actually).  The name was mentioned frequently in the Harjo family.
 
When I was about 7 months pregnant, we went on a day trip to Harjo ancestral territory in Seminole County Oklahoma.  We visited the decaying log ruins of one ancestor's home.   We drove by the old family church and stomp dance grounds where each family had a little "summer house" they stayed in for week-long ceremonial gatherings.  In the midst of all this family history,  I pondered the name Tusakiah  and it occurred to me:  I could change the U to an E (Tusakiah to Tesakiah) and we could get "Tess" or "Tessa" out of it for short.  That clenched it.

I LOVED the name!  But I wrestled with whether I should strap a big, long, unusual name on my poor, unsuspecting, little baby.  I soul-searched on it and I just had the strongest feeling that my baby, still unborn, wanted to be a Tesakiah and not Kamillah or Alexandra or Jessica or Allison or Melanie (other names we considered).  And I was right!  Tessa LOVES her name!  Whew!  And I just know that someday there will be lots of great-grandchildren with Tesakiah in their name somewhere who will talk about "Grandma Tesakiah" with awe and romanticized reverence!

The Chinese believe that every name has a certain amount of "chi"  (luck or good fortune) and that all the people who share a particular name divide that name's chi among them.  Therefore, if you are a "John", your chi is massively diluted.  A "Winchester" would have considerably lesser dilution of his chi. 

And then there's Tesakiah.  As far as I know, she is the only Tesakiah on the planet.  She has ALL the Tesakiah chi to herself.  And the theory supports itseslf because she is very, VERY lucky! 

On her 6th birthday, we were hanging out at ToysRUs and she won the in-store drawing for a Cabbage Patch dolls.  That's our favorite example of "the Tesakiah luck".  But there are more.  She's called the winner of the Kentucky Derby a time or two.  She can pull not one but TWO stuffed animals out of those darned claw machines where you put in 50 cents and futilely try to pick up well-wedged-in stuffed animals with a limp-gripping mechanical claw.  Lucky things happen to her all the time.  Luck just seems to follow her. 

Yesterday I took Tessa with me to pair of realtor open houses.  We saw two wonderful vintage houses, had a lovely lunch and a delicious dessert, enjoyed pleasant conversation with other realtors, and put my card in the drawing for a $50 prize.  I do this sort of thing regularly.  A free lunch and a cash drawing will get me to a realtor open house at least once a week.  Plus there are multiple drawings at the monthly realtor board meeting and occasional in-office drawings.  I have never won a thing.  But -- you guessed it --  I had "the Tesakiah luck" with me yesterday and I won the $50 drawing!  Hooray!  Fifty dollars seems like $500 to me about now!  I'm thrilled! 

Now I'm extremely tempted to check Tessa out of school 3 or 4 days a week to go to realtor open houses with me!  Do you think the school would understand that if she's a major household breadwinner?  Or maybe she could pick some lottery numbers for me...