A Fish Story

I came thisclose to getting into The New York Times. But they tossed me back in with all the other gasping-for-attention guppies. The sea is full of em.

Here’s how it went down: About two months ago, we got our housing assessment from Fairfax County, just one county over from the home of Manassas, what NPR deemed Ground Zero of the housing crash. ( Actually, it could have been more than two months ago, because Robert, knowing my well-fed Money Issue Monster, didn’t tell me the bad news until I asked.)

We were officially underwater.  Our town home, bought in 2004 for 325K, had lost $75K as easily I lose socks (and wallets, cell phones, etc.). We owed about $10K more than what the county assessors thought it was worth.

The  system was in back its favorite place: squarely against me (Yes, I was taking a global financial crisis personally). Had we not aggressively paid down our mortgage, writing bigger checks each month that required on our 15-year, no-ARM-twisting loan? Had we not resisted the temptation of a cuter neighborhood with cuter houses full of nooks and crannies and built-in bookshelves, because the bidding wars were as ridiculous as the plumbing was one flush away from budget-busting overhaul?

Didn’t matter. We were surrounded by a glut of unsold homes. Glut. Glub. Glut.

Suddenly, I was part of the news I’d been editing for the past three years. The Washington Business Journal was my vantage point during  the bubble pumping.  There I rolled my eyes as our reporters wrote about a former Best Western being razed for $7  million  penthouses in Rosslyn, a concrete neighborhood of Arlington that’s biggest selling point was a view of Georgetown. I saw dozens of renderings of  retail-on-the-bottom, condos-on-the-top developments on sites home to gay clubs and wig stores in S.E. Washington, pitched on a Field of Dreams business plan in anticipation of the new Nationals Stadium. I protested way too little, writing one puny editorial retaliating against an easy target: McMansions.

And then I got a front row of the fallout, working on AP’s Finance Washington desk from November 06 to July 07, constantly seeking synonyms for “meltdown,” as in mortgage meltdown. (Rot was my favorite.)

But as much as I held the evidence in my hands, I was shocked to become a victim.

The day after getting the news, I checked my Facebook page and noticed a friend had posted the Times’ article about a fisherman’s poet gathering. There, bailout analogies overflowed, lifeboats were in short supply and many thought the wrong folks were being tossed lifelines.

My head swimming with the assessment figures, I responded immediately on her page with my own fishy finance stanza.

Then I noticed the Times wanted readers to submit their own takes. I threw my lines in.

A kind editor promptly threw it right back, because I’d used a curse word. He suggested I rewrite and resubmit.

I did and thanked him for cleaning up my language and meter.

My poem become  an Editor’s Selection and Readers’ Recommendation by the end of the day. Here’s what pulled them in:

My house assessment makes me wish
that maybe I should just be a fish
For a grouper, “being under water” is no trouble
they’re free from the torment of the housing bubble
But as much as I carp about my sinking house and 401(k)
at least I won’t wind up served with a nice Chardonnay.

— Amanda L., Falls Church, Va.

Shamelessly and full of glee, I forwarded the link to my mom, my sister, my friends and even my first J-school prof I’d just friended on Facebook!

I hadn’t thought of my mortgage once.

The next day, another e-mail from the same editor. They were compiling some poems to publish in the Sunday Times and wanted my permission, hometown and full name.

I could barely sit still and tried to focus on the word “consider” in his e-mail to anchor myself and not get too hopeful.

Didn’t work. I even imagined how  I’d update my Facebook status on Sunday. At least I didn’t run out and buy the paper first thing that morning. Robert, always my most loyal fan, did. But I waited until I finished working out to open the Week in Review section.

As soon as I saw the mess of poems they’d gathered, I knew mine hadn’t made it. I joked it off, made one more poisson play of words — something about the editors having some bad fish. But getting cut from the Times felt worse than finding out how much our house wasn’t worth.

Two weeks later, the bank denied our refinancing. This time, the news came without a big splash. I’d let myself calm down and believe my husband’s reassurances that, unlike those underwater who’d continue to sink, we would continue to pay down our mortgage every month and weren’t planning on moving anytime soon. And maybe there was some poetic justice in the appraiser’s verdict — I’d make such a big, public deal of it, using it as a grist for my metaphoric mill, maybe I deserved to feel the full force of denial.

But I didn’t regret writing the poem. Despite the bank’s refusal, it let me rework my mortgage on my own terms.

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