RE: Assessing some breaking news on Cuba

I am happy, and they are lucky, that they have a father and husband that will do the work to stand and deliver.

One day, when we had been flooded for the second time in two years, Citibank was found to have just up and written a new mortgage on my home I had never even seen, much less agreed to, after purchasing our lender. The payments I was making on the mortgage I had agreed to and signed were being applied to this new note, and Citi had written me that I was falling behind on my payments, even though I had been making Herculean efforts to stay current - and was current on the mortgage that was legal, that I had signed - while spending $T's of dollars and unknown hours of work repairing the flood damage, again. I had consulted an attorney and he had told me I'd need to pay him the equivalent of ~3 mortgage payments a year, as well as pay Citi what their mortgage demanded, while the lawsuit was in progress, which he estimated would be 10, or even 15 years, because they would just keep throwing paper at the court in the hope that I would die, because then they would win. Eventually I just walked away, because I already could not afford the extra ~$500/month Citibank was demanding. I bought another house, a better house, with gated acreage out of town, where elk would graze some mornings, and I did not borrow from a commercial lender to buy it. I paid off that private money mortgage in three years so that no thieving bank could steal my house again.

But before all that came to pass, while we were still in the house Citi was stealing, I thought it was funny that stealing a sandwich was a crime, and police would violently kidnap you and keep you in a kennel like a dog with other hapless captives for it, but stealing a house was a civil matter that the victim had to prosecute themselves, and the thieves often got away with it because people like me didn't have the money to prosecute them. I was joking with my wife and kids about it, and they were laughing heartily, deep belly laughs. While deep inside I felt bleak, hopeless even, I didn't let on how I was facing a dilemma I couldn't solve, and all the work I had done, more than tripling the value of the home in two years with all the repairs that turned into improvements, was going to Citi and not my family. As I looked at their joyful faces, I realized that they didn't care about the money, that they didn't care that Citi was stealing years of my hard work, and neither did I. What we cared about was having a home, and laughing together as we worked in the hot sun. I realized too, that those were the good old days, that one day would look back on and remember as the good times. I was right.

Never let mere money, stress, or a few years of hard work, get in the way of loving your family. My kids may not even remember that moment, but I will never forget it.