I think real estate has become my greatest diversion, inspired by the pioneering spirit of my late mother, who passed early this year.

Back in the late 1940s, my mom acquired a home in a Hallmark Movie like way, which I will share in the future. Then, in 1977, my mom bought the old neglected house just adjacent to our family home in Hackensack, NJ. You could say she nearly “cornered the market”!

I was busy getting ready to get out of town to begin my Freshman year at the University of Connecticut (Go Huskies)!

“Why are you buying that old Croce place?” her kids asked.

She explained it was a good rental investment. And it was. My brother and I often recall all the tenants that called that house home, his family included, for over four decades! Some of them drove my mother crazy, others came and went quietly and she recalled them fondly.

When I graduated UCONN and returned home, my parents and I invested in a condo unit in Hackensack. It was my first investment in real estate and remains an active rental with a long-term happy tenant.

My mom inspired my late sister as well. Manette always wanted to live in one of the large elegant stately homes on Summit Avenue across town from our childhood home. I remember her actually trying to find a way to purchase one when she was only 17! Later, with a tip from my brother who was renovating one of those manses, Manette and her husband, David, acquired a three-story beauty that even featured an elevator. 

She loved that home that became the gathering place for holidays and many other family occasions. By that time, Rich and I were living in a log home we’d bought at the Jersey Shore, another place filled with sweet memories. 

Manette passed grateful that she’d had some memorable times in her Dream Home. She lived a good life there and enjoyed her pool and garden in a wooded oasis just 40 minutes from New York City with David, her son Zac, and their adopted pit-mix, Styles. David is still here with us, but mother, son and dog live on in our hearts. That house has since been sold. Many, but not all, who’ve been widowed, find it difficult to maintain a home once shared with a spouse or significant other that has passed.

And that brings me Full Circle to the present. Last week, after renting that old “Croce Place” for two years, its current tenants became proud home owners after expressing a desire to buy the home they’d come to love! I wish that family, and their four cats, a bright and beautiful future. 

I’ve also made the major decision to sell the home Rich and I so lovingly created in Southeast Georgia and met with the Listing Agent earlier in the week and it will be on the market next week. It has served as my lovely haven and will make someone very happy. It’s not an easy decision emotionally, but one that makes sense.

There are new vistas to conquer!

I’ve grown fond of living here in a log home in my rural Florida Lake Country community. It took some time to to adjust to a very different lifestyle, but a year has passed and I’m ready to let go. There’s also a new development on the horizon, bringing me closer to the life on the water I’ve envisioned. At the very least, it keeps me positive to reimagine new ways to live.

In the past 4 years, my life has taken several distinct forms. Sometimes I can’t even stop to think about it so as not to be overwhelmed. I call my new “space” Jer-ga-da, comprised of my life in New Jersey, Georgia and now Florida.

I think that’s why I’ve become almost nomadic, looking for new opportunities to grow and experience life knowing that I’ve come through the gauntlet and have faced challenges I could never have imagined just a few years earlier. 

I make daily choices to keep on keeping on, Moving Forward in a way that makes sense to me, grateful for the legacy I’ve inherited.

Have a restful weekend.