An Awesome Grandmother

When I married Dennis I acquired a plethora of extended family that was one hundred and eighty degrees opposite from mine.  Both my parents had lots of brothers and sisters living in far off places.  The only relatives I had in Muskogee were my Dad's sister Della and my Uncle Tom. Dad was not too crazy about Della but my Uncle Tom was a big part of my life and probably a pretty good influence growing up. As for Mom's family the only time I saw them were the two summers we went to Wisconsin when I was six and seven years old.  All my grandparents had passed away by the time I knew what grandparents were.

I often thought the the town of Warner, Oklahoma was all related to Dennis. When his family all got together it was really difficult for me and something I never got used to. It was not that I didn't like them, I just had a hard time getting used to so many people in one place at one time.  Then there was the difference in food.  Even though I grew up in Oklahoma I had never heard of having beans and cornbread, poke salad, corn salad, white bread dressing for turkey, fried salt pork, drank iced tea or heard of biscuits and gravy for breakfast. I did learn to love the biscuits and gravy but the rest is still a big yuk.

I did, however, like his parents, Alpha and Allen. They were very down to earth people and always fun to be around. Allen in his overalls was very different from my Dad in his suit, tie and hat. Alpha did not wear designer clothes and was known to leave the house without hair fixed and makeup on like my Mom.  Needless to say after one family gathering of Dennis's family that my parents attended they managed not to ever show up at another one.

There was always a lot of laughter when we were with them. When Alpha came to visit it was always fun as she liked going places, it didn't matter if the house was immaculate or we had other things to do while she was there.  Most important she adored Wes and Wally and was the picture of a wonderful grandmother. Quite different from my Mother.

Alpha arrived on Friday afternoon and I did not ask how long she was staying since most of the time it would be in the neighborhood of two to three weeks. That was fine with me since I had work to do at Barney's, I could take her to the New Neighbors activities and all the neighbors were on alert to include her in any children's adventures while I was off working. I was also very lucky in that Dennis had much better behavior when she was around.

When I arrived at Barney's on Tuesday to start the wallpaper there was no one home.  That was actually a good thing since I could get started and have the time to work without any conversation.  To my surprise the the old wallpaper in the powder room was already stripped.  Someone had been busy over the weekend which made the work in the powder room go really quick. By lunch time I was ready to move to the kitchen.

Just as I got started trying to figure out if the awful angry rooster wallpaper was going to come off easily Barney came home carrying take-out food.  He said he had been trying to call me all morning. I had thought while working that they certainly got a lot of phone calls on what I gathered were two separate phone lines.  I didn't know I should answer phones while I was there which made him laugh and realize that we hadn't talked about that.  So, we worked out a system of rings and hangups on his office phone if he wanted to talk to me.  I could also give that number to my mother-in-law in case she had any problems with the boys. But it was nice that he brought home lunch and I had to tease him about him saying he wasn't going to feed the decorator again after the original price I had quoted him.

After lunch he went off to some appointments and I went back to wallpaper.  It was a really pleasant surprise when the old kitchen paper came off pretty easily and by late afternoon I had the kitchen ready for the next day.  I do have to admit that it was a little nerve wracking to work in someone else's house, especially Barney's.  Besides doing paint and paper in my own home, one friend's where I hung the wallpaper upside down and a couple of new construction houses that no one lived in I had no experience with customer's houses. I probably spent a huge amount of time being incredibly neat and tidy.  Maybe I learned to do a job the way I would want a person to who worked in my home to do.

I went home feeling pretty good about my first day on the job.  The boys had gone swimming with Karen and all the other neighbors.  Alpha had fixed dinner, the house looked decent and everyone was happy.  I breathed a big sigh of relief.  Funny how I had worried all day that there would be some disaster or another.  

I got a phone call later that afternoon from Frances at the Health Department where I had been volunteering for the last three months on Monday nights.  She said she really wanted to talk to me about my job.
Was I being fired from a volunteer position?  Does that ever happen?
We made arrangements for me to go by the office on Thursday afternoon. Maybe disasters happen other places than at home.

So Much For Serious Talks

From the time I was about twelve years old I had always been fascinated by old buildings and houses.  My family had one of those two bedroom tract homes built after the second world war in Muskogee. But I loved driving through the older part of town and looking at the huge old homes and imagining being lucky enough to live there.  

It did not help when my parents actually thought about buying an old house referred to as the "Bower" house. Sitting on a huge corner lot the two story house with a portico, huge trees and a four car garage with servants quarters above was a dream come true.  Inside it had a two tiered mahogany staircase and I could imagine at the age of twelve how cool it would be to dance down the stairs with a date waiting at the bottom.  With a curved music room, beautiful woodwork and very tall ceilings I didn't pay any attention the the peeling wallpaper from a leaky roof or the fact that the kitchen was circa 1930. I saw it all restored and beautiful but my parents saw more work than they could do so they opted for the new house in a new subdivision.

I spent a lot of time in Kansas City driving through the magnificent old neighborhoods and hanging out at the Country Club Plaza which was the first suburban shopping center built in the 1920's.  When Barney said to meet him at Kelly's Bar built in 1850 and that it was believed to be the oldest building in Kansas City I could not get there fast enough. 
Kelly's was was originally a store that sold provisions to those travelling west along the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.  It was even once owned by Daniel Boone's grandson.  In 1947 it began serving provisions of the alcoholic variety and has done so to this very day.

Barney was waiting on the sidewalk for me because even at lunch time it was difficult to get in the door for all the people and we would have never found each other inside.  We finally got a table and had lunch but there was so much laughter and conversations from other people it was difficult to talk to each other with out yelling. I just ate and studied every inch of the wood, the bar, all the people and decided it was one of the coolest places I had ever been.

After lunch we walked around Westport and looked at some of the shops before we found a bench to sit on. Time for me to find out what serious thing he needed to talk to me about. He started out by telling me how I had done a great job in putting all the paper, paint and window coverings together for his house.  Actually that was pretty easy since he told me what he thought he wanted and I knew him well enough to make the right choices.  I began to wonder if he was firing me.  Then he apologized for for putting me in the position of meeting Lauren but that I had done an amazing job of handling the situation.

Hmm....this was sounding a little serious and it took me a few minutes to respond.  Finally I told him that it was not the easiest thing I had ever done but I knew that when I agreed to do his house that I would meet her and I thought I had handled it pretty well myself. Then he gave me the opportunity to back out of redoing the house since there would be times when he was out of town and I would have to see more of her. Looking really sad he said he wished I had popped back into his life before he married her.

In all the time we had spent together in the last ten months we had never talked about either Lauren or Dennis except very casually. Lamenting about our problems with them I never thought would be a good thing and I didn't think it was time to start now. Barney sat there waiting for a response from me as I tried to figure out what to say. I guess I had known that this discussion would come up but it was not one I was ever going to be fully prepared to enter into.

Finally I told him that maybe it would be more difficult to see and work with Lauren if we were making mad passionate love to each other like we had done in college. Which was a sixties morality lapse on my part. Our situation is a little complicated with other people that depend on us and maybe by keeping our relationship more like friends I can deal easier with anything that comes up. If we were both happy in our marriages I would probably never have called him when I came to Kansas City and he would have never agreed to meet me that first time.  Maybe we both made a mistake thirteen years ago by drifting apart or letting go of each other back then for silly reasons.  The only time I have ever been mad at him was when he sent me the telegram on the day I got married wishing me the best and professing his love. But being friends, if you can call it that, is the happiest I have been in all these years.

Who knows what will happen between us next month or next year but I can't imagine him not being there.  The sound of his voice when he calls, knowing I will meet him somewhere or thinking about something funny he said brightens day and not only makes me feel good but also gets me through any bad things that happen. I may not have lost my early sixties morality but I do have my "big girl" shoes on and I can handle being with and working with Lauren.

Barney sat there for what seemed like a long time.  Then he smiled that smile and said that was quite a speech and maybe we thought more alike than he imagined we did. Too bad it was nearly time for me to pick up Wally as he wanted to whisk me off to a hotel.  I laughed and told him that I didn't always do what I really wanted to do.  He walked me to my car and gave me a key to his house so I could get in if no one was home. Driving to get Wally I had to laugh because it was Barney who needed to talk and I ended up doing all the talking.

Dennis's mom, Alpha, was driving up from Warner, Oklahoma the next day.  She was very good at taking care of the boys.  It seemed like every time we had a Ford Motor Company trip we had to go on she took charge.  I liked her a lot and we had always had a lot of fun together shopping, playing cards or her favorite, working jigsaw puzzles. The boys adored her but she was also pretty good at keeping them in line.  Very much different than my mom as she never babysat and I didn't think she even liked them around for more than ten minutes.

It looked like her visit was going to work out well and I scheduled working at Barney's three days the first week so I still had time to be do things with Alpha and the boys.  Of course just as I begin to think everything is going to work out well something happens. Wonder what a dull moment would feel like?

The Good and the Bad Start of Summer

Sunday proved to be everything I thought it would be with the starting of the construction in the basement. The picture above is a pretty good representation of the method we used to get the 82 pound sheets of drywall up in place. I was, of course, the one standing on the ladder holding one end.  It was an excellent way to build up biceps but a little difficult to keep the drywall from slipping an eighth of an inch before Dennis found the correct location for all the nails. It was a day of many expletives the children should not have heard from Dennis while I concentrated on happy thoughts, black stars and the thought that I would live through this.  By the end of the day a quick calculation showed there would only need to be three more days of ceiling drywall - if I lived that long.

After writing quite a few things about Dennis that were less than flattering maybe I should explain a few points.  I must say here that Dennis came home from work every night when he was not travelling, did not drink much, gamble, run around with other women or was physically abusive.  Those were all good but he was also terribly insecure, didn't really like very many people or want to be around them, had no patience with the children or me, had an explosive temper and nothing really made him happy.

Who knows what I imagined at nineteen when we got married.  Maybe he would have been happy if I had been different, wanted to stay home and bake bread, but that wasn't me.  In truth we were totally different personalities that did not mix very well together.  You certainly cannot change a person unless they want to change so through the years I learned how to keep the water fairly calm part of the time.  But I was very good at causing tidal waves by wanting to learn new things, meet new people and have lots of friends.  

The move to Kansas City magnified all the problems.  Dennis only wanted to move back to Dallas while the boys and I were very happy with the move.  It actually seemed like the happier we were the more unhappy Dennis became. It was quite a balancing act on my part and one I got pretty good at.  Somehow I learned to be the perfect wife when Dennis was home with chores done, dinner cooked and pleasant.  The moment he walked out the door in the morning I became the person I wanted to be. I also began the fine art of treating everything hurtful with a sense of humor.

Monday was the first official day of summer for Wes since school was out. I can remember how fantastic that felt when I was little so I had put Barney's house off for a week so I had time to take the boys swimming and off on excursions with all the neighbors and their children. I kept Wally in the Mothers-Day Out program on Thursdays so he did not loose his spot.  Lucky for me Dennis's Mom decided to come for a visit the second week so I had someone to take care of the boys and haul them around while I worked on paint and wallpaper at Barney's house. I always enjoyed her coming as we had fun together plus Dennis tended to be on his best behavior when she was there.

Barney called on Tuesday morning and said to not order the stuff for the sliding glass doors.  He had a guy come out the day before and was going to have them replaced with French doors since I hated them so much. That was a big hooray and great timing as I was working that week on ordering all the items for the house.  He did get all serious and asked if we could meet for lunch of Thursday since he needed to talk to me.  Yes to lunch and it was funny that in the past when he got all serious about wanting to talk to me I would get worried but not this time.  He had a place he wanted me to see that was pretty famous in Kansas City.

Dennis finally noticed all my stacks of drawings and order sheets for Barney's house on Wednesday night.  He never asked me how the appointment turned out on Saturday and with the construction ordeal I did not feel like mentioning it. He got a black star for that one.  Anyway I told him about what I was hired to do, showed him all the drawings and his only comment was did I really think I could do all that.  I must have mumbled something but at the same time I was thinking that maybe he thought some elf had come in and did most of the same stuff to our house. Duh! The last thing he asked was how was I going to pay for all the stuff I needed to order.  He seemed disappointed when I told him I had a deposit.

Barney had told me to meet him at a place called Kelly"s Bar - now Kelly's Westport Inn.  Since I didn't know anything about it I asked Karen if she had heard of it.  Turned out it was quite the place.  Kelly's was thought to be the oldest building in Kansas City and a pretty famous hangout.  On Thursday Wes went off to the zoo with the neighbors, Wally off to the Catholic church and I headed to Westport to see what Barney and I needed to talk about.

Interior Design 101

There is a song from a Broadway play that describes minutes that seem like hours before a pair of star-crossed lovers are to meet. Then there are those times when hours seem like seconds.

That pretty well describes how quickly the time flew by in between when I told Barney I would bring all the design stuff for his house over to show he and Lauren and the actual time for my arrival. Perhaps it was a good thing the hours passed like minutes as it was impossible to eat or sleep.  I was up in the wee hours of the morning going over every detail of the designs and deciding nothing looked right.  There was a lot of questioning of myself on why I couldn't just be happy baking bread, cupcakes for school parties and playing Candyland with the boys?

The good thing about the time going so quickly was that Dennis was not happy with my making plans for a Saturday.  He was going to have to take care of Wes and Wally which he was not good at and seldom ever did.  It seemed like if we did not start on redoing the basement that very day we could not do it at all.  By the time it was time to load the car and go to the appointment time could not fly by fast enough.  All I needed to do was to try to remember how to find the house.

I think I was actually shaking as I rang the doorbell but when Barney opened the door with that smile of his I regained some of my senses.
Meeting Lauren went fine.  She was perhaps ten years younger than I, very skinny with long blonde hair and sort of cute but there appeared to be an air of indifference about the whole decorating thing.  I think I began to feel much better when she did not look like Rachel Welch.

Barney helped me carry in all the stacks of wallpaper books, paint colors and fabric samples from the car to the dining room table.  We went room by room with what I had picked out.  Actually I did have a  couple of choices for each each room in hopes that something would be right.  It was pretty surprising when they agreed to the same things I had picked as my first choice.  Maybe I was better at this than I thought.  The big hit were the tri-fold screens for each side of the sliding glass doors instead of drapes that are always in the way. No need to tell them that I had no idea at the time how I would make them.

It was decided I would start in a week which would give me time to get things ordered.  Barney carried the stuff back out to the car for me and told me I was amazing. Then he told me I forgot something.  He informed me that REAL decorators would have asked for a deposit at which point he pulled out a check for $500.00 and said any time I needed more money just let him know. So I guess I now have a real job.

Driving home I must admit the appointment went much better than I expected.  Of course it was nice that I was able to put together the designs that they liked but I was really surprised at how well I handled meeting Lauren.  What panic I felt before the meeting was more about how I would react to Lauren than worry about the design concepts.  There were a couple of reasons why meeting her after all the time Barney and I spent together that made it go smoothly.  One was that we did not spend our time together talking about Lauren or Dennis.  What kind of a relationship would we have had if we spent all our time bashing the people we were married to?  More importantly even though we both joked a lot about going off to a hotel for an afternoon we didn't.  

My happy mood did not stay too happy after my arrival home.  Dennis had not seen Wes for a couple of hours and had no idea of where the almost nine year old had gone to on his bike.  My philosophy was he would come home when he was tired, it got dark or he was injured in some way.  Actually it was very easy to look down the street and see his bike, the only one in the neighborhood with a wing and a parachute, laying in the front yard of a house two doors down the street.

That solved he moved on to the basement.  I was about to start my lesson in Drywall 101.  Dennis had to help his Dad build things growing up in Warner, Oklahoma.  Some of the things they built were called apartments and a motel. Notice I am using the term apartments and motel rather loosely.  Anyway, he had passed Drywall 101 many years before.  My Dad built a fence once out of 2x4's and some sort of wire and a flagstone patio so I did not know much about building things.  The only thing I really knew was the time Dennis and I built Wes a really cool L-shaped bunk bed.  I think that was when I got the new name, God Dammit, Donna since I never could be in the right place at the right time to hold something in the right manner.

Anyone get the idea that we might not really work too well together?  Laying in the basement was a huge stack of 5/8 drywall each sheet weighing 82 pounds that I was supposed to hold up to the ceiling while he put in the screws.  Oh, this

is really going to be interesting.

Lots of New Things On the Learning Curve

One might wonder how someone can continually tell others "Sure, I can do that!" With no real clue as to how to do it.  Lifelong problem of mine which some would consider a severe personality defect.  Life may have been a lot simpler if I did not spend days living in terror trying to figure out how I was going to do something I had no clue what so ever about.

Driving home from the latest picnic in the park with Barney the fact that I had somewhere in the neighborhood of two weeks to come up with all the window coverings, wallpaper and paint for the downstairs of his house became frightening.  Add to that the fact that even though Lauren did not care what the house looked liked, she needed to be present to see everything and to meet the decorator. Going into a state of panic was not going to be helpful.

Barney"s House 

The best plan I could come up with was to go buy lots of graph paper and draw out all the window coverings I needed to make.  Thank heavens I had taken good measurements and I had notes as to what Barney wanted in the way of color and pattern in fabrics.  Wallpaper for the kitchen and the powder room were a little easier as I had done a lot of that for myself. Once everything was all drawn out Wally and I spent a lot of days looking a professionally made draperies to see what size hems were used and learned how to make pleated draperies without using the homemade pleater tape I had used before.

The company that Barney had me go to to buy stuff for my house was outstanding.  They carried thousands of fabrics and custom made mini blinds, vertical louvers, roman shades and woven woods.  I discovered that if I showed them my drawings they taught me how to figure the amount of fabric that I would need and how to price everything.  Having Wally travelling with me was a big help and every place we went people fell in love with the little guy and were willing to help his not-much-in-the-know-Mother. The result was a fast lesson in everything I needed to know about being an Interior Designer.

I am not sure how this happened, did I miss a meeting, did someone volunteer me?  I had been a member of the New Neighbors League for six months and I got a call that I had been appointed to be the editor of the monthly newsletter.  The newsletter, called the Pacesetter, was a once a month publication with everything anyone needed to know about the club.  It told about the monthly luncheon, the activities, the sponsors, what there was to do in Kansas City and a whole lot of other information. It ended up being about fifteen 8 x 11 sheets of paper printed on both sides that was sent out to 450 people every month. Who said I could do this?  I only had a vintage typewriter with a missing O. Oh well, add a typewriter onto the shopping list.

Dennis finally decided to speak again after five days.  He just came home from work on Friday all cheerful just liked nothing had happened.
That was fine, no need to start an argument on why all the silence. He did announce that he thought it was time for us to finish the basement as he was tired of the toys all over the family room. Actually I was all for getting it done as I was going to need the space to sew in.  The basement was actually a walk-out as it was on the downside of the hill.  It had sliding glass doors, a fireplace and plumbing for another bathroom.  We had framed in a twelve by twelve room when we first moved in for storage and if needed later, a fifth bedroom.

Dennis was curious about all the architectural drawings I was working on.  I told him a couple had asked me to decorate their house.  He said he didn't know how I was going to do that which I took as perhaps I was too stupid to do someone else's house.  He had no problem in me making a little extra money as long as dinner was on the table at the right time, the lawn was mowed by Friday afternoon, the laundry and ironing done, cars washed and house clean and then of course, no Mother showing up anytime soon.

My two weeks went by pretty quickly.  That happens when you have to do a crash course in Interior Design (is there really a college degree in that?), attempt to learn to type out the first newsletter on your new typewriter and get it to the printers, listen to Dennis carry on about what needs to be done in the basement because there is no way you can hire it done and Wes, our nine year old, is out of school for the summer.  That was going to make for an interesting summer all by itself.

There does not seem to be many pictures of Wes during the first part of our move to Kansas City. The reason is probably because Wes was like living with a little whirlwind, always on the move, always some calamity and definitely never a dull moment during his waking hours. Our neighborhood actually had about a hundred families most with school age children. If he wasn't racing up and down the streets on his bike with a wing and a parachute on it everyone he knew was in our house playing with race cars or just running in and out the door.He was actually a pretty good little guy but just always busy.

Barney had called a couple of times from from different places in California.  It sounded like his seminars were successful as I had begun to learn how to tell from his sometime careful wording how things were going. He called on Friday morning and asked if Saturday at 1:00 was okay for me to ome by the house.  In my most positive, cheerful voice I said sure.  There was a laugh from Barney and he said not to panic, we would get through this. Gee, I only had about thirty-six hours to slightly panic.