Surprise!

I am not sure exactly when it was that I began to realize that I should not get to excited about everything going really well and being too happy about it.  Maybe it had happened my entire life and I just did not pay attention.  The fall of 1978 I had so many things to be happy about.  I had finally graduated from college, sold a house in one day, survived more than a month living in a motel in a different city, moved into a pretty nice house and had great new friends in the neighborhood.

Wes was in school, joined a soccer league and extremely proud of his room decorated in race car wall paper and bedding.  Wally was just happy being at home with me and playing with his toys. Studying for the Medical School Entrance test meant getting up in the wee hours of the morning but I was used to that.  Even though it was going well there was a certain degree of panic I tried to ignore.

Then a phone call from Dennis's sister made a ton of bricks fall on my head taking away all of my happy, positive thoughts.  The story of Judy, Dennis's sister, is a long one but to be brief she had a little girl while still in high school.  There was no marriage and Dennis's parents had helped raise her.  Judy did marry a super guy while in college who was a great father to Ninette but the marriage did not last.  Now Judy had some long-haired husband/significant other that Ninette did not like so she wanted to come live with us.

Excuse me but what fourteen year old girl is ever happy with her parents or much of anything else for that matter?  Dennis's entire family operated on the opinion that you should do everything possible to keep this girl happy.  So on a Friday night I am informed that Sunday the daughter is coming to live with us since we have an empty fourth bedroom.  Did I throw a fit?  No.  Did I state that having a fourteen year old girl you really didn't know come to live with us might be a problem?  No.  Actually I was dumbfounded as with Dennis you had no recourse to argue especially when it came to his niece.  Saturday was spent buying furniture for the tiny, extra bedroom when I should have been hiding in the basement or at the library studying for a test three days away.

Sunday Judy, the long-haired guy, Ninette and two full grown English Sheepdogs arrived in a beat up old Mercedes which Dennis referred to as a Nazi car. I would have gladly taken one of the dogs instead of the daughter but I was not afforded that opportunity.  Monday I spent the day getting her into school.  That included taking her to a clinic to get shots she had no proof of. Somehow I managed to be nice although it was an effort.

Tuesday I had to leave early for the test so I talked Dennis into going to work late and spend the morning getting the kids to school and Wally to our neighbor, Karen.  Actually I left a lot early and went to the Country Club Plaza and sat by the huge fountain for an hour.  I had discovered the fountain during the motel stay and found that listening to the water had a huge calming effect.  Somehow I was able to forget everything except what I needed to remember about math and science.

Arriving at the test site I was pleased to see that there was a mix of all ages taking the test.  At thirty-two years of age there were several people at lot older than myself.  The test itself felt like it went well, all six hours of it, except for the physics part.  That was no one's fault but my own since I had dropped the course at TWU when the instructor said he was going to flunk everyone in the class. Calculus based Physics is not easy to teach yourself but I remained calm and managed to put some answers down. Walking out of the test there was a huge sense of relief and now all I had to do was to wait for the results.

 At the restaurant on Thursday, Louie, the Maitre d', told me Barney had called and said he would be a few minutes late.  He brought a glass of wine and some bread for me while I was waiting and I studied all the other people in the restaurant.  Usually I did not have the time to check out the other diners and try to figure them out.  The same group of very well dressed men were in the corner that were always there.  Uncle Tom used to tell me stories about the 1920's in Kansas City, the Pendergast days and the mafia.  I would have to ask Barney about them as they looked rather liked some characters from a mafia movie.

When Barney finally arrived he was carrying a huge bouquet of flowers and a manila envelope. He walked over to the table, bent down and kissed me while apologizing for being late. I was totally blown away by the kiss as that had not happened before. Then explained that he had the feeling that I had not had a very good week and hoped the flowers would make me feel better.  He was laughing as he sat down and said he could tell by the look and slight blush on my face that he had rendered me speechless.  Boy, did he have that right.  I asked him why he thought I was having a bad week since we never talked on the phone in between lunches.  He said he didn't know but just had a feeling.

I told him the story about Ninette coming to live with us trying very hard not to sound too negative which was not easy.  As I filled him in on some of her past history he started to smile.  When I finished he told me all I needed to do was to try and show her while she was there what I had learned growing up and maybe she would be lucky and turn out like me. That was a nice compliment and a thought that I was going to have to work on. At least my story about the MCAT test was funny when I described some of the physics questions I attempted to answer when I actually had no clue.  He handed me the manila envelope and said since I was done studying for the test would I read the first few chapters of his book.  He was afraid it was too technical and wanted me to read it and make notes on what was not easy to understand on the first read through. I got a huge laugh from him when I asked him if he wanted me to check his spelling.

When he walked me to the car he said he could not make lunch next week as he had to go to a seminar in Cleveland.  It was going to seem very strange to miss a Thursday after three and a half months of lunches.  But there certainly were a lot of other events that would occur in the next few weeks.

Time to Settle In

The second lunch with Barney began with both of us thinking the other one would not show up.  Because we did both show up the conversations about catching up on the last eleven and a half years flowed more easily.  

He told me he had sold two houses that week and was writing a book on real estate. I thought that was pretty impressive but I remembered all the papers he had typed in college.  He suggested to me that I never write a book unless he could type it. I was a little surprised at that statement but he explained that the reason he always asked me if I had any papers I needed typed was that I was no doubt the worst speller in the entire world.  He said he could not believe I could write such intelligent essays with perfect sentence structure and flow with so many misspelled words. I had to admit that I knew that and although little Miss Prudie Patillo, my second grade teacher with her sturdy teacher shoes, wispy grey bun at the nape of her neck and flowered silk dresses, had tried to teach me phonics  I was more interested in skinning up my knees playing baseball and ripping the hems out of my dresses to learn how to spell. He took great pride in my having passed my American Authors class because of my perfectly written essays.

Luckily the restaurant was pretty empty by the time I told him I remembered what a great dancer he was.  He said he didn't go dancing much anymore at which point I told him it was too bad he never learned to disco dance. He flashed that smile at me, pushed back his chair and proceeded to do the John Travolta walk from Saturday Night Fever while humming the song.  Back at the table he struck the classic Travolta pose and said "How's that?".  Louie, the maitre d' and the few people left in the restaurant were applauding and I was laughing so hard tears streamed down my face.  Thursdays were turning into my favorite day of the week.

Back to reality on Friday since we were going to go pick up the boys that weekend.  I managed to get their rooms put together so it would feel more like home when they arrived.  Interesting that Levelor Mini Blinds had just come on the market when we built the house.  The Interior Designers that helped our builder with the houses suggested those for the windows.  Pricey as they were then I had ordered them for all the front windows of the house and they came and installed them that day. The wall paper and bedding would have to wait but at least their rooms looked pretty good.

Needless to say the boys were glad to come back.  It took them about fifteen minutes on Sunday afternoon to meet all the other kids on the street of which there were about twenty mostly in the same age range as Wes and Wally.  That was really fun for them as they played outside and rode bikes or were all together at one house or another. After the summer they had it was so great to see two such happy faces all the time.  What was really nice about the neighborhood was that the majority of the women were stay-at-home-moms so there was always someone home to watch over a gang of children.  

The other great thing about the neighborhood was that fences were not allowed. Moving from the Dallas area where the first thing anyone did when moving into a house was to put up a wooden privacy fence made it seem strange not to have one.  It did not take long to enjoy the fact that you could actually see and talk to your neighbors.  Lenexa West, as the subdivision was called, was built on gently rolling hills and all the yards with no fences really created a beautiful landscape. You were allowed to build a small dog run but that was a problem for us as the English Bulldog had difficulty breathing outside in any kind of weather.

Needless to say I was never crazy about the dog.  We had her for three years in the same house and the move was traumatic for her.  She could not make it up and down the stairs and ended up spending most of her time in the basement and was never a dog the boys could play with.  It was also worrisome that she had bitten a child while she was staying in Oklahoma. So we ran an ad in the paper to give her away.  To make a long story short the dog bit a high school boy right in the mouth when he was sitting on the floor with his Dad who was interested in the dog.

It was terrifying as she gave no warning whatsoever.  I got the boy upstairs and tried to stop the bleeding while his Dad called a friend who was a plastic surgeon to meet them at the emergency room. Dennis and Wes were gone somewhere to a race or something and when they arrived home I told him the dog had to go and right now would be fine.
That evening the boy's Dad called me and said everything was fine, not too much damage but needless to say he was not interested in the dog.  I offered to pay the medical bills but he very nicely said not to worry about it that accidents just happened.  The dog was gone in a few days and I didn't care where Dennis took her as I had become afraid of her.  Some would say that someone was watching over us that the man was so nice about his son being bitten but I just chalked it up to how nice all the people were in my new city. Goodbye dog number six.

Wes started school and I found a Catholic Mother's Day Out program for Wally on Tuesdays and Thursdays which gave me time to begin studying for the medical school entrance test I was scheduled to take the end of September. The New Neighbors League lady showed up on my porch one day with a basket of goodies and explained the program to me. In order to join you had to have moved to Kansas City from another town within the last six months. She explained that friends do not just pop up on your porch but you had to go out and find them - the group being a great place to do that.  It sounded like fun but I put off joining for a month as my mind was a little boggled by everything I had to do. Plus I already had a steady stream of new friends in the neighborhood popping up on my porch.

The lunches with Barney continued each week.  It was interesting that we had so much to talk about without hardly ever a mention of our spouses.  One day he asked me just when I had gotten so funny.  Was that funny as in haha or funny as in strange?  He said funny from the aspect that I always made him laugh and feel good about everything.  That was a pretty nice compliment and rather hard to answer.  The best I could come up with was that you could dwell on all the bad things that happen to you in life or you could look hard and find some humor in every situation. Maybe my dear college roomie, Cathie, had taught me how to do that through the years.  Anyway you may not see the humor at the moment something is happening but if you keep looking it is always there.  Mr Eagle Scout was a little perplexed by that thought and said he was going to have to think on that.

Maybe I should have known it was bad luck for him to ask me that question that particular day. Maybe I should not have been so cocky in my flippant answer about there being humor in everything. The following evening Dennis got a call from his sister that I would have great difficulty finding any humor in for months.

Friends and Wine Helped Me Survive

There were many doubts in my mind before I met Barney for lunch.  Once the question that would he even remember who I was got easily answered then I began to worry about just what I was doing having lunch with him.  Somehow having lunch with an old boy friend did not quite fit in my realm of the right thing to be doing.  All that went away from the moment I saw him.

Living in one small room with Wes who was eight and Wally who four was not the ideal way to spent the summer.  They did not have their bikes or Big Wheels to ride or their friends to play with,  eating out had ceased to be fun after the first week and it was very difficult to keep them happy and positive about this move to a new place. Dennis had constant complaints about everything from the construction of the house to the long drive to work and to work itself.  Staying positive in any way had become difficult.  Having Barney as a friend and spending time with him laughing made the whole process easier.

Many hours spent picking out paint, wallpaper, flooring and all the other decisions that had to be made in building the house finally ended four weeks after we had moved into the motel.  The house was done and ready for us to move into.  Somehow I talked Dennis into us taking the boys to his Mother's house in Oklahoma for a week so that I could move into the house without little ones under my feet. That was a very wise decision considering the problems moving into the house.

It had been very nice to find out that when Ford moved us from Carrollton, Texas to Kansas City that they would send packers to box up all of our stuff.  Previous moves we had done ourselves by taking a load in the car and putting it in it's new proper place.  That always seemed to be an endless task and then there were those final things that you simply did not know what to do with. The moving company packers just swooped in, pushed you out of the way and boxed everything up then marked the boxes with what room they came out of. In theory the unpackers could simply unpack the kitchen box in the kitchen, living room in the living room, etc.  Perhaps the theory was a good one since at the end of the day, everything was in its place and they took all the empty boxes away. 

So much for theory!  I didn't know that if you left trash in the kitchen garbage can or a Pathophysiology book on the washstand in the kitchen both would be placed in your new cupboards.  Boys Room boxes were a problem since there were two of them and since there were no shelves for toys they just dumped them out in a pryamid in the middle of the floor. Was the living room in the old house the family room in the new house or the family room in the old house the unfinished basement in the new house?  The washer and dryer in the old house was in the garage but in the new house it needed to go to the utility closet up two flights of stairs by the bedrooms.


Dennis had taken the day off for the event but he was busy having every thing in the garage put in its proper place. Naturally there were things stored in the old garage that he didn't want in the new one so Christmas decorations and my kiln plus all the ceramic supplies came in the house.  I was surprised that he did not send the bicycles and Big Wheels in also. By lunchtime I was looking for a closet to hide in and even thinking about jumping off the back deck.  Only problem was that the back deck was only eight feet off the ground which meant I would not die but only injure myself and never get the mess in the house straightened out.

Just when things were their darkest the neighbors started showing up to welcome us to our new home. The great thing was that some brought cookies and some brought wine. Dennis headed off to get lunch after I announced in the middle of a kitchen disaster, with no food in the house, that I was not cooking with six people in my way and the frying pan laying on top of some plates in a cupboard.  While he was gone I enjoyed some cookies and wine straight out of the bottle as who knew where a glass was. By the time he got back I was  all mellowed out from a half of a bottle of wine and could have cared less if they put the five week old kitchen trash under the sink.  I also decided that we had moved into a neighborhood with pretty nice neighbors.

The next morning I think Dennis decided to go to work and let me try to straighten out the mess.  As I started unloading all the cupboards in the kitchen onto the floor the gal from across the street came over.  She reminded me of Mrs. Santa Claus when I had seen her the day before.  Karen was short and round, had very curly hair, little wire-rimmed glasses and a smile that just drew you in.  She looked at my dilemma and jumped right in to help.  By lunchtime the kitchen was fully functional with everything put in its proper place.  I had learned all about all the neighbors, all the fun things there were to do and that she would turn my name into some group called New Neighbors.  She took me to her house for lunch, put a bunch of stuff in a crock pot to cook for us for dinner.  After lunch she had me gather up school information for Wes and we went and enrolled him in school since she was a teacher and knew just what to do.  From that day on there was never a morning without a phone call between the two of us checking on each other or making plans for the day. 

Dennis's Mom called that evening to let us know that the slobbering English Bulldog had bitten a little girl who came to play with Wes and Wally on the cheek and it had required stitches. Wes assured us that no one was provoking the dog but with words from an eight year old  who could know for sure.  It was a good thing that Warner, Oklahoma did not have an abundance of lawyers to jump in and sue us but we did pay for all the medical bills just in case. The dog had never shown any aggression in the three years we had her so it was an interesting development.

Perhaps all the events that occurred during the move to Kansas City and into the house were really good character building times.  Even though I did not get the house I wanted I did love the house - all five levels of it - that I got.  The neighborhood was the perfect place for the kids and I with lots of friends and many fun things to do. Kansas City was the first place I ever lived where there was actually a change of seasons.  Leaves turned beautiful colors in the fall, there was a lot of snow in the winter and the hot summers I was already used to.  There would be many more, shall we say, interesting developments in the next few years but my coping skills had certainly kicked into high gear.

I had not talked to Barney since I left the restaurant last Thursday.  When Thursday rolled around again I wondered if he would be there but I decided to take the chance and just go see. After the week I had moving into the house I needed to just get away from it all for awhile.
When I walked in the door the maitre d' said "Right this way, Miss Donna". Guess that was my first clue that Barney was indeed there.
He told me that he was not really sure that I would actually show up and he had called the motel to find out we were no longer there. Maybe it was more fun that we just surprised each other.

The Phone Call

It took a lot of courage to finally pick up the phone and call Barney after twelve years.  When I finally did dial the number and hear his voice all I could say was "Hey".  When there was a pause that seemed like an eternity all the reasons why I had put off making the call flashed through my mind.  He didn't remember me, what nut says "hey" instead of hello this is.... or he simply did not want to hear from me.  Just as I was about to hang up and forget the whole thing I heard "Hey, yourself.  Where have you been for the last eleven years, seven months and six days?". Somehow I managed to mumble something about being in the process of moving to Kansas City.  He stopped me in the middle of my rambling and said he wanted to see me.  Could I meet him for lunch tomorrow? Without any hesitation I said yes and he gave me the name and address of a restaurant and then added he could not wait to see me.

Even though a sense of relief swept over me after the phone call there were some serious doubts about my having called him. The best thing to do was to stay busy for the next twenty-four hours so I made arrangements for a babysitter and took the boys to the zoo for the afternoon.  I did drive by the restaurant that afternoon so I could be sure to find it the next day.  When Dennis came back to the motel that evening I told him I was going to have lunch the next day with an old Stephens friend and he just said that was nice.

I surprised myself by not really being very nervous getting ready or driving to the restaurant. Barney had always been easy to talk to and of all of the people in my life I had been more open and honest with him than anyone else. There was perhaps a little apprehension when I walked into the restaurant and the maitre d' asked if he could be of service.  I told him I was meeting someone, he smiled and said "right this way". As we made our way through the restaurant I saw Barney stand as we approached the table. There was that same smile, that same lock of hair that fell across his eyes and he had not changed a bit.
He came around the table gave me a big hug, said how glad he was to see me.  When I asked him how the maitre d' knew I was meeting him he said he showed him a picture of me.  He pulled a slightly worn photograph out of his wallet taken back in the Stephens days.  Wow and I thought I was the only one that kept all that stuff.

It is difficult to explain the feeling that crept over me the moment I saw him.  There is a lot to be said for staying in touch with family and old friends.  Ever since I had married Dennis I actually spent very little time with my family and had not seen or heard from any of my childhood friends except Pam and Cathie.  There is something special about people you grew up with even if you weren't best friends.  For some reason it always seems like you just saw them yesterday. The years, the disappointments and the bad times seem to just melt away.

We spent the next three hours talking.  I was afraid several times when he asked about a bottle of red or a bottle of white or said he couldn't believe I looked so good after all this time that he was going to burst into song like he used to do. When I teased him about it he just laughed and said it was rather like the scene from an Italian Restaurant by Billy Joel.  Instead of talking about Brenda and Eddy we discussed Pam and Cathie.  I told him Pam was in the L.A. area working at a bank and travelling around the world.  That I had pictures and postcards from all sorts of fascinating places.  Cathie, on the other hand, had married a super nice guy but they had split because he wanted children and she did not. Besides she was busy protesting pigs raised in cages and doing women's marches.

When the subject changed to he and I he said he had married Sarah six months after I had gotten married.  The marriage did not last even a year (I did not say "I told you so") and he did get his MBA from Northwestern.  For several years he worked in New York on Wall Street but finally came back to Kansas City and had a real estate company and did investments.  Six months ago he married a gal named Lauren who was going to law school. He seemed happy with his life which was really all I cared about.

I filled him in on the last eleven years, seven months and seven days as best I could.  He liked that I had two boys and that I had finally graduated from college. My big question for him was why the stupid telegram on the day I got married. He laughed and asked if it got to me.
He said he meant every word that it said, he did want me to be happy and wished me all the best but at the same time why would he stop loving me.  He asked if I had stopped loving him and I said no that I always believed you could and did love many people at the same time but maybe in different ways.  He actually said he went to Muskogee a few years ago to try to find me but someone else lived in the house and Dad's pharmacy shop was closed. 

He walked me out to my car when it was time to get back to the boys. That was when he sang "I'll meet you any time you want at our Italian Restaurant.  How about next Thursday?".  How could I say no to that?


 

Goin' To Kansas City

My recovery from the heart stopping moment after reading the phone book in the motel had to be quick as Dennis and the non-stop talking horrible real estate person showed up.  Since my three day trip to Kansas City was up in the morning there had to be a decision made on a new home before I flew back to Dallas. 

Why I was even in Kansas City looking at houses was the real question.  I wanted the old house with character, flowers and the white picket fence but was told by dear Dennis that when I made as much money as he did then I could pick out the house. So what did it matter what we bought especially on that day. Especially on that afternoon when I could hardly think or remember my own name. We ended up signing papers on a new house in the southern suburb of Lenexa, Kansas.  Actually it was a new house under construction. This would prove to be interesting as it was the end of June and the builder assured us would it be done before school started in September.  I never figured out why Dennis picked Lenexa as the Ford office was forty miles away in Missouri.

It was a pretty sleepless night that night.  I should have been happy we found a house, a pretty cool looking house, if it ever gets completed. I was not thinking about whether we could qualify for the loan of $75,000, the physical move itself or anything else of importance.  I was only wishing one moment I had not come across a name in the phone book I had long tried to put out of my mind and the next moment glad I did. It was logical that I would look for last names of people I knew that might live there but what idiot looks for last names that start with a Z? How many last names are there that even start with the letter Z? But there it was or there his name was in black and white with a phone number. It was Barney, my college love.

It had been twelve years, the day I married Dennis, since I had heard from him. He sent me a telegram that day wishing me happiness and saying that he would always love me.  The telegram was about as heart-stopping as finding out that he was living in Kansas City.  I was furious with him at the time thinking that he sent the telegram to get back at me for marrying Dennis but then I would think that it was really rather sweet of him.  Maybe it would have been better if we had argued, said horrible things to each other instead of just going our separate ways due to family, bad luck or just bad timing. Now what do I do?
How would I feel if I picked up the phone and called him and he said "Donna who"?  

Back in Dallas there was a lot to do in getting ready to move by the end of the summer.  Dennis would call everyday with a list of things for me to take care of - like I needed a list.  Towards the middle of July he decided we should go ahead and move even though the house wasn't done.  Ford would pay for a month's stay at the motel and all of our food.  The couple buying our house was living in an apartment and would be glad to get into the house the first of August. What sounded like a pretty neat idea at the time turned into a nightmare.

The packers from the moving company came one day and packed everything except what I thought the boys and I would need for the next month.  Not having to pack up, rent a truck and move ourselves was different from the seven moves we had made before. This was move number eight in twelve years. The truck came the next day and once it was loaded we packed the car which was a trick since it was the Mustang without a lot of extra room.  Somehow we all got in the car with Boodles, the slobbery English Bulldog, clothes for a month and of course, lots of toys and headed off.  About the time we got to McKinney Wes asked where the cat was. Back to Carrollton to find the cat sitting on the front porch. Second goodbyes to the house and off to Warner to drop the dog and the cat at Dennis's parents house for the duration of the motel stay.

After the first few days at the Holiday Inn I was beginning to see that this was not a real pleasant experience with a four and an eight year old. They would go out and swim for ten minutes and then spend the rest of the day jumping on the beds or fighting.  Going out to eat three meals a day got old pretty fast and I can remember how disappointed they were that no restaurant served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch.  Anyone remember the motel days before microwaves and little refrigerators?  So I finally resorted to loading them in the car at eight o'clock in the morning for breakfast and then driving around Kansas City until five o'clock in the afternoon when Dennis came back to the motel.

Actually the tours of the area were pretty neat.  There was something about Kansas City that made it fun be to moving there.  Maybe it was all the stories I had heard from Dad and Uncle Tom or maybe just the city itself.  The boys and I did all the museums, the zoo several times, found my grandparents graves in the old cemetery on the Paseo and strolled around The Plaza which was the first suburban shopping center built in the United States.  Kansas City is known as the city of fountains and we saw everyone of them. By the time the house was done I had driven on every street in both Kansas City, Ks. and Kansas City, Mo. and had quickly developed a love for the city and the people.

The house construction surprised me in that it seemed to progress very quickly.  The only problem I can remember was that one day I noticed they had put a sliding glass door in the kitchen.  We had made that one change in the house when we signed the contract.  With children and pets sliding glass doors were at the top of the list of things I hated.  The builder was very nice to work with and in a couple of days the door was gone and replaced by a French door with a window panel on each side.
The house was actually five different levels which I had wondered about in the beginning but as it neared completion I loved it. Going by to check on the house we noticed a lot of children in the neighborhood.
That was something that made both Wes and Wally excited about moving to a new place.

I had written Cathie, my roomie from Stephens, before I left Dallas and told her about finding Barney in the phone book and that I was not sure I should try to contact him.  She picked up the phone the moment she read the letter and asked if I had his number since she wanted to call him to say hi.  No, I did not write his number down at which point she called me a schmuck (one of her favorite words) and how could I be so stupid not to call him. I gave her all my excuses like he would not remember me or be rude or some other bad thing.  When she started calling me "Hansen" and throwing in more "schmucks" at me I knew she was losing patience. She reminded me that it had been over a month since I found his phone number and by now I would have stopped even thinking about calling him if I really didn't want to.  She had a point.

So I looked up his number in the phone book again - it was still there.
I dialed the number thinking I would get an answering machine or maybe a female voice and I would just pretend it was a wrong number and hang up.  That sounded easy enough.   The phone rang and a voice I had not heard in twelve years said hello.  All I said was "hey" and then there was an extremely long silence........