Happy New Year

A couple of days after New Year of 1980 began the house had gotten nice and quiet.  The in-laws had headed home to Oklahoma, hubby Dennis was back at work after two weeks off, whirlwind Wes was back at school and Wally and I had the house to ourselves.  Time to take the tree down and enjoy the peace and quiet. 

The dismantling of the tree was interrupted by the phone ringing in a strange manner. There were two short rings, silence, then two more short rings. I answered it to have a lady say Happy New Year, Donna. She then went on to give me her name and welcome me to my new answering service. What answering service was my question?  After laughing she explained to me that their services had been paid for by someone for three months.  I was given a phone number that I could give to clients instead of my home number and they would answer the phone and take messages when I was not available.

They would answer the phone, say I was currently out of the office and take a number for me to call back.  I could call in at any time to pick up messages and return the calls when it was convenient for me. I have to say this all sounded pretty cool to me.  No more calls during dinner or wondering if I had any calls when I was not home. The last thing she told me was that I did have one message and that I was to call Barney.
Well, that answered the question of who had purchased this service for me.

There is something pretty special when you call someone and they proclaim it had been nineteen days, sixteen hours and thirty-three minutes since they last talked to you. I hadn't calculated it out but that was the longest we had gone without at least chatting on the phone since I had moved to Kansas City.  It was nice to hear his voice and I asked him why he purchased the answering service for me.  He said since I was going to become the most famous Interior Designer in town people needed to be able to get in touch with me.  I laughed and he said not to laugh as he was spreading the word all over town. I tried to protest but he just told me to meet him for lunch on Thursday and we would talk about it.

Wally and I spent quite a bit a time at the wholesale place that week.  While I looked at fabric samples Wally got to be played with by everyone in the building and got to eat ice cream bars in the break room. We also managed to get in an afternoon of roller skating.  At five years of age Wally was getting to be a pretty good little skater and he was really fun to take places.  

I have to admit that there were several times in the nineteen days, sixteen hours and thirty-three minutes when I had the thought that maybe I should just stop seeing Barney.  I could make it sound so easy in my mind by just telling myself I would not call him and if he called me I would just be busy all the time.  After all, we were not having an affair, we were not making any plans of being together, we were just friends. I may have even believed I could just stop seeing him until the answering service or until he could tell me how long it had been since we had talked to each other or until I heard his voice.

Lisa called that evening to tell me they had moved everything into the house.  She said it was a mess but asked if I could come by on Saturday morning to look at everything and to meet her husband, Jim.  I agreed to meet them on Saturday morning as I was quite anxious not only to meet Jim but also to try to understand his collections and the strange designations for all the rooms. This was going to be interesting and I was getting excited for Saturday to arrive.

Naturally on Thursday I woke up to a very beautiful snowfall.  Luckily Wally's church school was open so I dropped him off and went to the Plaza to meet Barney. Ever since I had moved to Kansas City I had thought the Country Club Plaza Shopping Area was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. With a layer of new fallen snow on the tile roofs it was really special.  Barney was not hard to spot as there were not any other people sitting on the edge of the fountain with a gentle snow falling. Walking up the sidewalk towards him and seeing his smile when saw me made me realize that there was no way I could just stop seeing him. As complicated as our relationship was life would be much worse without him.

He grabbed both my hands gave me a kiss and said that now it was a happy new year.  I had to agree with that and we walked four blocks to the little piano bar/restaurant.  The bartender was glad to see us and referred to us as his favorite customers. Actually we were the only customers at that point which made it a great time for Barney to sit down at the piano.  He had brushed up on Barry Manilow songs over the holidays to avoid Lauren's family visiting from California. We had great time with some of them like Copacabana but some are pretty touching. 
Of course I knew all the words since I owned all of Manilow's albums.

We talked about him purchasing the answering service for me.  I told him he didn't need to do that but he wasn't listening.  He said I needed it since I couldn't answer the phone when I wasn't home and besides he might need to talk to me sometimes.  Never again did he want to go so long without seeing me or talking to me.  He also confessed to giving Jim and Lisa my name and I told him I thought it was a payback for my Gorda routine.  No, was his answer, I was due for a big payback on that one.

I don't remember who threw the first snowball on the way back to the parking lot.  I can imagine that people who might have seen two well dressed, grown adults in a continuous snowball fight for four blocks wondered about us. It was a perfect afternoon and a good start to what was to be a challenging new year.