DeFede Columns

MIAMI (CBS4) ― BOXING UP A LIFE UNLIVED
By Jim DeFede

How much are your hopes and dreams worth?

Marcy Neth is offering hers on Ebay for $50.

The ad, which began running last week on the popular site, is headlined: "My Hopes and Dreams: A Box Full."

"Life is hard these days," she writes in the ad. "I'm having to relinquish my hopes and dreams. Hopes for independent children, dreams of following my hobbies to professional fulfillment, hopes of retaining some degree of success in my professional career."

Marcy, the sister of an old college friend, told me what brought her to this point.

"It's been a hard year," she began. She and her husband, Mark, and their two sons, moved from Chicago to a small town outside of Denver in January 2007. They had wanted to return to Colorado to be closer to their families and Mark had a job with a computer company waiting for him.
They placed their Chicago home on the market – setting a price lower than all of the others in the neighborhood so it would sell quickly. Within a few months they found a buyer and Marcy, 42, discovered she was pregnant.

"It was a bit of a surprise," she says, "but we thought everything was going well."

They bought a small house in Aurora but after closing on it, learned the buyer for their Chicago home wasn't able to get approved for a loan.

"It was just when the mortgage crisis really started to hit, and I know we shouldn't have bought the house in Colorado until we closed on the house in Chicago, but we really thought the house was going to sell," she says, her voice breaking with emotion. "We had a buyer. This was a guy who would have gotten a loan two months earlier, but now everything was so tight. And when the buyer couldn't get the loan, we knew we were in trouble."

Suddenly they were left with not one, but two mortgages totaling close to $3,000 a month. Mark's new job only paid about $65,000 a year and Marcy, a senior librarian for the Chicago Art Institute, couldn't find a job in Denver.

They had a baby on the way, and their oldest child, 7-year-old Charles, was diagnosed with a form of autism, known as Asperger Syndrome, requiring specialized care.

"I hate being in debt," she says. "And I have a real fear of foreclosure."
With the help of their family, they are barely able to make their mortgage payments. "It's a horrible feeling taking money from your parents when you are an adult," she says. "But we are lucky we can turn to them."
Nevertheless, she says, "We aren't making it financially."

Seven months ago she gave birth to their daughter, Beatrix, and everything Marcy and her husband do today, revolve around providing what their kids need and nothing more.

"We've been in complete survival mode," she says.

She worries it's affecting her kids.

"There are days when it is hard to be a good parent," she says. "And I'm worried that my kids can feel the tension and the stress. My 5-year-old has taken to saving every penny he finds. Most kids save their pennies to buy toys or Pokeman cards. And when we ask him what he is going to spend it on he says he's not, he's going to save it so he can be rich someday and take care of us."

Marcy starts to cry again.

"I don't want him to stress out about these things, but it's hard to hide. Kids pick up on everything."

A creative person, Marcy would knit and spin yarn as a way of relaxing and socializing with friends. One day, she says, she was working on her loom, and she felt guilty. She knew she could sell it.

"You hear about those people who can feed a family on $25 a week, and I don't know how they do it," she says. "It's hard for me to feed a family of five for less that $100 a week."

And so earlier this year she sold the small loom on Ebay for $100.

"How could I keep it?" she asks. "It was the equivalent of a week's worth of groceries for my family."

She thought about other things she could sell on Ebay. Finally, she decided to cut to the bottom line and sell her hopes and dreams. "I really did put the ad together sort of tongue in cheek," she tells me. "But it also comes from a deep core of stress and sorrow.

"And," she adds with a small laugh, "a deep desire to have a second pair of pants."

Since giving birth she doesn't fit in any of her old clothes and has just one pair of pants that fit her.

"I bought them at Costco," she says. "Fifteen dollars. They're good pants but I'd like to have another pair."

The items in her box of "Hopes and Dreams," represent different aspects of her life. "A life I can no longer afford," she says. "A life I'm leaving behind."

Inside the box is a ball of green handspun yarn she made, her last since she can no longer afford the fleece to make yarn.

She also offers a small bit of hand-woven fabric from the loom she sold and an art appreciation book, which "represents my professional life that has pretty much gone out the window." (Last week Marcy, who has Masters Degrees in Art History and Library Sciences, was rejected for a volunteer position at the Denver Art Museum.)

There is also a cookbook with recipes featuring pricey ingredients. "Who can afford saffron?"

"I also thought I might include a copy of the key for our house in Chicago," she says. "But I better not include the address."

Always the art historian, she notes her box on Ebay is derivative of the work of Joseph Cornell, the American artist who assembled items in a glass encased box designed to stir a particular emotion in those who would see it.

"His work would evoke feelings," she explains. "They would evoke a sense of a larger purpose."

I ask her what her box is meant to evoke. What is the larger purpose?

She takes a moment to think.

"Maybe to say goodbye to a life you didn't get to live," she says. "A little farewell box."

Click Here to view or bid on Marcy Neth's "Hopes and Dreams."

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