gossamer, a chimera, slides through our hands as we try to scoop it up like super fine sand.
Imagine yourself as a person in possession of a middle income job in, say, a technical field or some other endeavor that has usually been a refuge for employment of the unexciting but steady kind: relatively recession-proof, moderate pay level, nothing glamorous or risky, safe.
Say you married at 32. Maybe you married a working person, another boring-on-paper individual. Employed, decent credit, not spendthrift but not miserly. You have two kids you waited a little while to have. Enough time to "afford" them, i.e., your job, your partner's job was relatively safe, employer-paid insurance in place. Economic compact cars no more than five years old and paid off, house with a traditional mortgage, purchased in 2007 with the safe down payment. Everything in place. Everything safe.
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