The real deal

Before Girlie was born, Hubs and I left Atlanta and moved to a much smaller town, Greenville South Carolina. He had been working there for about a year at that point, traveling Monday through Friday to consult with a couple of textile companies. Tired of being alone, I decided that I should move to where he lived. Our downtown Atlanta condo wasn't the ideal place to raise a family and we were starting to think about having a baby, so scary as it was to leave the city, it seemed to make sense.

When we were looking at houses we met a real estate agent who took us around Greenville. We finally settled on a house that she had listed and she became the dual agent, representing us and the sellers. We felt like it worked for us, she wasn't allowed to divulge information to the seller about our situation, but the couple who owned the house were a little annoyed that their agent now worked for us too. For this reason, dual agency is not allowed in many states, but South Carolina was not surprisingly behind on that law.

Anyway, we got to the closing and the agent was there, but the buyers hadn't arrived yet. She chatted with us about the difficulties of being in the middle of our deal. She was pretty proud of how she handled it, and looking forward to getting both pieces of the agent fees.

She said in the biggest low country southern drawl ever, "I'm a real negotiator now, y'all." As if she hadn't already been an agent, with her own company, really her name was on the sign, for years.

Hubs and I laughed about that for ages afterwards and it became a private joke between us. We changed negotiator up to whatever we were going through at the time. After Girlie was born, "I'm a real Mother now, y'all.", etc.

Eventually we forgot all about it. But the other morning, as I was getting up at 5 AM to sit at my computer and work on some writing it came back to me - the feeling of moving to that small town, that woman being amazed to be something she already was, and everything that came with the whole bizarre situation.

And I can't help saying it to myself, in low country southern, "I'm a real writer now y'all."