The time it takes to pull out or fill a dent when people trade paint.

Accident repairs are pretty cut and dry when you tool into an auto body collision repair place to tally up the fix it up charges. The pushed in rear tail gate on your SUV means fractions of an hour for each of the detailed steps to remove the damage. Smooth the wrinkles and give it a couple coats of the original color with a clear sealer on top. For the voila, good as new. Or almost.

But life is a little different than tallying up the .3 hour to remove the chrome trim.

The moving on to the .2 hour to apply the bondo filler. Or to drill the hole, to pull out the crease. To replace the entire section that was messed up in the smash together gnashing the metal, plastic, rubber, glass of the iron horse. At least, hopefully, no one got hurt.

Mechanical work in a Maine car repair shop is cut and dry.

Easier to outline how long the procedure should take if you have the skills in the trade you call your career. But fixing problems in a person’s past, way back deep down inside their childhood storage slide show. Places they don’t wear on their sleeve, talk about in public or private.

Not like sliding your index finger down the thin pages of a shop manual to determine how long is this procedure supposed to take. To untangle knots, cut out the burdocks.

In someone’s infinite wisdom of what is supposed to be normal. What to expect to complete the healing and maturity process. To put you back into the pink. Up on your feet. Or closer to that shade of the picture of health color for you as the support around a person can muster up.

It would be easier to bar code scan a person to learn from their past.

Where they are in the present day. And what their hopes and dreams are for the future. To navigate them back into safe, familiar waters. For the back on track. Or swamping out the trail of a brand new path. To charter a new healthier course to tack with whatever way the wind blows naturally around you.

Maybe it is just hold on, bracing for major change in life ahead. Or as it happens and the smoke finally settles. To crank your head around and access the situation. Then beef up the stuff deep down inside. The place where we all pick ourselves up by the bootstraps. And are way way stronger for it on the other side of the rewiring, adjustment to the thinking they had going in. That might have been stinking.

Family living in Maine, where we do our best counseling outside four walls.

On the open front porch sitting in wicker or pre-molded plastic chairs from a big box store. Or sitting on that log, a stump for splitting fire wood place skyward. Around a camp fire deep in the Maine woods. Listening to rushing water of a stream or river. the crickets, crackling blaze of mixed hardwoods. Softwood kindling.

To perch, purge, place your scattered thoughts back together. Like the detailing done to the scarecrow after a savage experience.

Flying monkeys, oh my. Or to just unplug and recharge after a long haul success or personal milestone. Where something very important to tackle and conquer was completely to make it all just fine and dandy. Celebration happening in the pause before right back it to swing with both arms, kick with both feet and journey on.

In the game of life and trying to get through the least scarred, learn the most possible. Along the road of frost heaves, potholes, detours and new sunrises when it becomes a brand new day. Maine is one drop dead gorgeous backdrop for whatever excites or ails you. Put her in your background to improve your foreground.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com