It was strange that Sunday afternoon that I should get a call from my brother, Paul.  He was not one to get on the phone and chit-chat and there were no problems between us.  We always had fun together when I was home for a visit but years of living many miles apart and busy lives do not make for a lot of family closeness. It didn't take long for me to find out the reason for his call.  Dad had passed away.

My initial reaction was how could this be.  I had just talked to him on Tuesday and he sounded fine. When you have two parents who have been divorced for years and never mention the other one's name you have to plan ahead to avoid uncomfortable situations.  Dad and I talked on the phone about once a week and with Mother coming to visit I called him before she arrived to avoid a sticky situation should he have called when she was there.

Dad had remarried a few years after he and Mother got a divorce.  In his usual style she was about thirty years younger than he was and had couple of almost grown children. My brothers and I tried to be polite but it was obvious from the beginning that she did not care much for us.  The feeling was quite mutual and I even nicknamed her the Wicked Witch of the West as she was an alcoholic and prone to not treat Dad very well when she drank.  My brothers had lots of stories about her that I really didn't care to hear but there is the one where she referred to us as lazy kids.  You could say a lot of things about my brothers and I but lazy did not fit any of us.

After working as a pharmacist for fifty-two years Dad had retired the year before at the age of seventy-four.  Without any hobbies, except for betting on college football games, or many friends I could imagine that being at home with the Witch was difficult. I always kept our conversations cheerful, tried to find some new medical or scientific fact to tell him along with the positive happenings around our house.

Was I surprised when Paul called with the news of him passing?  Yes and no.  I knew from him popping nitroglycerin pills during his visit and his disdain for doctors that talking to him about his health was not the thing to do and I actually guess that it was a call that I expected.  More than surprise it was the shock of realizing that the person who always protected me from Mother, thought I could do anything and was always positive was gone.  He built me a playhouse, taught me to ride a bike and drive a car but by far the best was how he taught me to be kind and to love.

I do have to say that he did die in what some people would think was pretty sad.  I have always thought he went out in style.  On a beautiful Sunday morning he went to the self-service car wash, had a massive heart attack and died instantly.  I could always imagine him in his white  shirt, hat, dress slacks and wing-tip shoes washing his car.  The man who never spent a day in the hospital and the man who wiped his cars off with a chamois every night in the garage died probably the way he would have wanted to.

My bothers made the funeral arrangements which was good since I knew nothing about that sort of thing.  At the age of thirty four I had only attended two or three funerals in my life and those were for people I really did not know all that well. He was not a church goer as the only time he attended church was when we were little so the funeral was more of a small memorial service at the cemetery.  There was some discord between my brothers and I from the fact that I did not want to view him in the casket. I wanted to remember him sitting at the kitchen table when we had our long discussions or painting the house in clothes people would wear to church or his smile when I would go into a long dissertation of why I needed a new dress. I had long gotten over the fact that friends would think he was my grandfather because he was older or that he loved Studebakers.

I was glad the service was short and there were not many people there.
The interesting thing is how many times through the years that I have thought when something good happened or I achieved some goal how much Dad would have liked it.  Or how he would laugh when I pulled some boo-boo.  Of course I miss him but at the same time I always feel like he is there.

When Mother's Happy......

There were good times and bad times for Mother to come for a visit.  This may have been one of the better times for her to come as things were going pretty well.  At least there was enough snow and cold weather that perhaps I was not going to have to go out and run three miles every morning with her. Plus she had seemed pretty cheerful on the phone for the last few weeks.  Dennis not so cheerful but what else was new.

In all honestly it had been a rough five years for Mother since George passed away shortly before Wally was born.  She had married George and moved to Oklahoma City in 1970.  If there was ever a prince on a white horse that rescued someone it was George. He was a geologist and one of the sweetest people you would ever want to meet.  They had a lot of fun together, flew all over the country in his little plane, spent a lot of time with all his friends and she was happier than I had ever seen her.  George's sudden death at age 54 was devastating to all who knew him.

Mother had a couple of male suitors in the five and a half years since George's death.  One we liked but she didn't and one she liked that we couldn't stand.  But I was always careful to just let things ride as it was her life, not mine plus one did not argue with Mother.  It was strange how giddy she had become lately and when she arrived on a Tuesday afternoon she was noticeably different.  She actually talked to the boys and seemed happy to see Dennis when he came home. I had not even had to revert to my usual stage of becoming twelve years all and taking directives from her.  Something was up for sure.

Before she arrived I found out that most of the mini blinds for Jim and Lisa's house were done so when she asked what I needed to do for the rest of the week I told her that there was a luncheon on Thursday that might be fun.  Also told her there were some blinds I really needed to install at a house I thought she would like to see if we could fit it in. She was agreeable to both so I called Lisa and set a time for us to install the blinds on Thursday after the luncheon.  That way Karen could pick up Wally from Mother's Day Out and take care of Wes when he got home from school.

In phone conversations with Mother I had told her about Jim and Lisa and their house.  The luncheon was fun and she enjoyed meeting everyone and promised Karen she would send recipes for the cookbook the New Neighbor's League, actually Karen, was putting together for a fundraiser. Then it was off to put up some blinds. Mother had been rather dubious about my little decorating business almost to the point of not believing I could really do something like that. Pulling up at Jim and Lisa's house was really a surprise.

Lisa was preparing for a dinner party the next night so the timing was perfect.  Remember me saying that when I first went to the house the only furniture was a dining room table that sat sixteen people?  She was busy setting the table for sixteen guests and I learned a neat trick in that she set the table ahead of time and turned all the plates and crystal upside down so that was all done in advance. I took off my heels and put on my tennis shoes to install the blinds while Lisa took Mother on a tour of the house. Just when I finished Jim arrived home, turned on the jukebox and told me it was time to dance. He tried to get Mother to dance with him but she begged off.  Needless to say she could not stop talking about the house or how nice the people were for the rest of the visit.  

She decided she needed to go home on Saturday morning and thought maybe we should all go out for pizza and then go bowling on Friday night.  Okay...I knew something was different as she had banned me from the bowling alley as a teenager because according to hear bad people with tattoos hung out at the bowling alley. To my knowledge she had never been bowling in her life and also was not fond about going out to dinner with little boys. Sounded like fun to me but what brought this on?

Finally got up the courage and the right words to ask her what was new since she had acted different ever since she arrived.  Her first comment was nothing but I pressed on and she finally told me she had started running at the Baptist Pacer Fitness Center in Oklahoma City every morning. All sorts of reasons why running indoors was better that out on the street. Finally she got around to the fact that she had met a man who was very nice and also ran everyday as part of his therapy after open heart surgery. So she was now in her flirty happy mode.  I told her I was happy for her while I was really thinking thank heavens.  This had been the first time since George passed away that she didn't get in a fight with Dennis, actually talked to her grandchildren and didn't make me feel like I was an idiot twelve year old.  This I can deal with with.

That evening of pizza and bowling may have been the nicest time we ever had together as a family. No one bowled very well but there was lots of laughter.  I was actually sad to see her leave the next morning and amazed that she didn't need help in finding her way out of town and onto the highway. It was going to be interesting to meet this man.
Guess the old saying when Mother's happy everyone is happy is true.

Life got back to it's busy normal but busy was good.  Wes had joined Cub Scouts and Wally was good enough at roller skating to go with me to Wes's school's skating parties.  I was busy working on both Lisa and Jim's house and Barney's upstairs plus I had a wallpaper job coming up 
which consisted hanging  hundred rolls of wallpaper in a house under construction pretty far out in the country.  Found a neat lady in the New Neighbors who thought it might be fun to be a helper.

Then I got a call from my brother that I had sort of been expecting but one you are never really prepared for.  Dad had passed away.

How Lucky In So Many Ways

I started writing this blog, as they call them, a couple of years ago when a friend suggested I write one about a road trip my husband, Marshell, and I took to the east coast in our Tesla.  It was challenging to write and I look back at them now and cringe at how bad they were and how much trouble I had each night writing them.  After the trip I realized that writing was fun for me so I did some on our building renovations and I have done a few political ones which now I try to stay away from as each of us has their right to their own opinions. But.....some things aren't really political.

Originally I titled the blog I Should Have Known.  That came from the thought that if I had been a little smarter, a little wiser I might not have made the boo-boos through the years that I did.  As I wrote about being born in 1946, the first year of the baby boomer generation, the thoughts and the title sometime changed to How Lucky I Was To Be Born A Baby Boomer.  I still feel that growing up when I did was a blessing.

Even though I happen to think that growing up in Muskogee, Oklahoma was the best place to live others will think their hometown was. I have written in previous blogs about my slightly dysfunctional family that I thought was completely normal.  Having two brothers, Paul, two years older and Kenny, two years younger gave me a wide circle of friends to the point where I knew pretty well everyone a few years older and younger than myself.  

Perhaps the memories of how much fun I had growing up come from the amount of innocence that surrounded us. In a town of about 35,000
kids rode their bikes or walked quite a distance to school, it was not important to always lock your doors and we played outside until it got dark with all the other kids in the neighborhood.  Most families sat down to a home cooked dinner together even if the Mother worked outside the home.  As we reached our teenage years there was a lot of things in town to do like movie and drive-in theaters, a skating rink, Friday night stock car races or high school football games. I can remember dances at the high school with the school jazz band playing after basketball games and of course, there was the cavernous building
at Meadowbrook Country Club where the local rock and roll band played on a pretty regular basis.

Growing up with two brothers both of whom were into cars/hot rods our house always seemed to be a gathering place for the local boys. I had quite a few girl friends who liked to come to my house perhaps not for my company but for the chance to see some of the boys hanging out in the garage.  My older brother, Paul, only thought of me and most of them as little pests.  It was quite devastating to me to have to hide in the backseat of the car if he had to take me to school or if in the hallway some good looking friend of his would say "Hey, Hansen, isn't that your sister?" as they passed me.  Paul's answer was always "No, I don't have a sister".  Here I thought I was a blossoming Gidget from the movie and he treated me like a silly kid who had braces on her teeth.

When I was fifteen, a sophomore in high school, I had never been on a date with a boy except if some parent drove us to a dance or to the movies. It must have been in the fall since that is the normal time of the year for hayrides that the speech classes had a hayride out to the sandbar on the Arkansas River. For some reason a very good looking boy in Paul's class asked me to go on the hayride with him. He was not really one of Paul's friends but I was more than a little excited.  A real date.

Paul was less than excited and gave me a long lecture against going out with him. He told me how stupid I was and that I had no business going out with this boy but I just thought Paul was being mean because someone in his class liked me. Naturally I was going to show Paul how grown up I was or maybe just defy him.  It turned into one of those I should have known times and also one of those I should have listened.

Mother was only agreeable with my going on a date to the hayride as it was a school function.  It did seem to surprise the speech coach when I showed up with this boy but I took it as he was just surprised that anyone would ask me for a date. But the moment the hayride started and all the way to the sandbar it became a fight to keep him off of me.
I was totally confused as to what was happening or what to do.  There were no movies with scenes in them like this.  No one treated Gidget like this. The speech coach pulled him aside once we got to the sandbar for the wiener roast and talked to him. I don't know what was said but the boy left me alone from then on.

He barely talked to me the rest of the evening and when we got back to where the hayride started I got in the car with him so he could take me home trying to make polite conversation. When he drove past the street where we should have turned to get to my house I mumbled something but he kept driving until he pulled the car off into a field and stopped.
I was trying to think of what was going on and what to do next while sitting as close to the passenger door as I could get. He lunged across the seat at me and at the same time the passenger door opened and I almost fell out.

Paul told me to get out of the car and into his. Paul said something to the boy before he came back to his car.  When Paul got into his car he asked if I was proud of myself and didn't he tell me not to go out with him. Actually he was yelling at me but I did ask how he found us in that field.  He told me he had been waiting for over an hour for us to get back and knew if I got in the car with that boy I was going to be in trouble so he followed us. Did I now understand why he was so mad when I accepted the date?  Did I know what was about to happen to me?  I said yes but I was not really sure just what all the consequences would be.

When we got home he told me to get out of the car and go in and tell Mother how much fun I had.  I asked if he was going to tell her what happened and his reply was that if he told her she would never let me out of the house again. He also said I better get a little smarter as he was never going to follow me around again. I don't remember if I thanked him and we never spoke about that night again. I was too embarrassed to ever tell anyone about that night until I told Marshell a few years ago.

The interesting thing is that when the current sexual harassment things started popping up I did stop blaming myself for what happened that night. Actually it was a good lesson for me in that I did learn to be a bit more discerning in who I accepted a date with.  I did learn how to get myself out of a bad situation like bailing out of a bathroom window when a party got out of hand or leaving a date in the woods when I did not realize what a Fraternity blanket beer party was.

This is where my How Lucky To Be A Baby Boomer part comes into play. I never drank until I was in college, clothing was never provocative, and there was that little unspoken rule that nice girls "didn't". If asked do I know the date of when this happened or the field he parked the car in? No, I don't. Did it traumatize me for the rest of my life?  Yes in that it took away some innocence and established a lack of trust.  Would I believe anyone else who shared a similar or a worse story? Yes, by all means. Would I want this to haunt the boy for the rest of his life? Another profound yes because if he did it to me he did it to many other girls who did not get rescued.  Could I prove this happened if asked? Not if Paul wasn't around as almost all things like this happen with only two people involved. Most important is that this jerk ruined my very first date and it was very difficult for years to go on a date without a great amount of fear as to what would happen.

How Lucky I Was To Be A Baby Boomer because I was taught as a teenager that you didn't drink, go out and do things against the moral values you were taught at home and that just because your friends do something it doesn't mean you can or should.  Echoing in my head is my Mother telling me that just because everyone else did things or went places I was not allowed to was because I was not "everyone else".

Thank you, Paul.  Hope you never felt bad because I never needed you to rescue me again but you did a great job of teaching me a lesson that was never forgotten.  Thank you Mother for setting strict rules for me as a teenager even though we hardly ever agreed on anything. Thank you to all the nice boys and men I have known through the years who were decent and respectful of women.  Finally, thank heavens I learned a lesson at fifteen that stayed with me all these years.

The statics are that 1 in 3 women have been sexually assaulted in some form or the other.  Most go unreported because of embarrassment or from no one believing their story or being ridiculed.  It would be nice if the time has come to where it is okay to speak out.

A Very Interesting Day

Kansas City did not get as much snow that year like the year before when it was piled up eight feet high on either side of the drive.  My philosophy was that there not such a thing as too much snow sort of tempered that year.  I had a lot more places to go and things to do than the previous year so less snow was a good thing.

It is an understatement to say Dennis was not very happy with my making an appointment with a decorating client on a Saturday morning.  All the years he had traveled five days a week for Ford Motor Company had set us in a pattern of never leaving the house on the weekend.  Since he was gone all week he did not want to go anywhere after he arrived home on Friday.  Races and Company parties were the exception so there was not much of a social life. He also avoided being the sole person in charge of the boys from the day they were born. He was also concerned that we were supposed to go out that night with friends from Ford like I would not be home in time.  Gads!

Needless to say driving to Jim and Lisa's it was good that they lived some distance away and I had time to reboot into a smiling normal person.  I had to get over being yelled at plus try to get rid of the apprehension of meeting Jim and acting like I knew what I was doing. All the negative and scared feelings disappeared when Jim answered the door with a big smile and told me how happy he was that I was there since they needed a lot of help.

The house looked a lot different from the one I had toured with Lisa two weeks before.  Instead of being completely empty except for the dining room table there were boxes, new furniture and things everywhere. The "things" were the fascinating part.  Jim, a plastic surgeon in his forties, was a collector of many different things. When Lisa had taken me through the house on my first visit it was hard to understand that one bedroom was to be the camera room, one the music room and the basement was to be the theater. Looking at all the stuff suddenly made sense.

Jim had over two hundred vintage cameras from all over the world.  They were to be displayed in legal shelving, the oak boxes with glass fronts that stacked on top of each other.  There was a room with every musical instrument you could imagine and in the basement were hundreds of reel to reel movies, a projector and a screen that would cover a whole wall.  There was the library/office that needed wall to wall bookshelves so did I know anyone who could build them?  There were about a hundred framed photographs taken around the turn of 
the century of the old west and Indians leaning up against many walls. 

As if my mind was not completely boggled by all this the two story foyer as big as a basketball court now had an eight foot in diameter custom made copper planter with two huge Ficus trees growing in it.  The coolest thing about the foyer was the Wurlitzer Bubble Jukebox filled with 45 rpm records in the corner. Of course it worked and to prove it Jim turned it on, grabbed my hand and we danced to some 50's rock and roll song. There were in addition two quest rooms, the master bedroom and the huge den/living room thay were Lisa's job to decorate in a more traditional manner.

I left there that day with some measurements for a few mini blinds and lots of suggestions for draperies and bedding. The thought crossed my mind that a "real" Interior Designer would kill for a job like this one but I don't think anyone would have as much fun decorating this house or enjoy being in the company of these two people as I was going to have.

Dennis did not ask anything about the people or the house I had spent most of the day at.  He probably would not have been speaking to me except that we had plans to go out for the evening.  By the time we got ready to go it had begun snowing some which made him a little more disagreeable. We took my station wagon since we were picking up two other couples for the forty mile trip to North Kansas City.

For some reason they thought it would be fun to go to a rather dilapidated bowling alley that had a bar with a stage to see, of all people, Johnny Paycheck. Now I was never in my life a country music fan except for Willie Nelson but I did know who Johnny Paycheck was and the thought of going to one of his concerts was less than exciting - especially on what turned out to be a very snowy night.

What can I say about the concert?  I did drink a few beers just to endure the thing while everyone else was having a great time.  I do have to admit to being slightly mesmerized by the way he could hold a cigarette in between his last two fingers and still play the guitar. He was the only guitar player I ever saw who could smoke, play and sing at the same time.  Sometimes he would sing with the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  Maybe he had learned that during his stint in prison. Needless to say the music was very forgettable.

The fun started on the way home.  A lot of snow had fallen while we were in the bowling alley.  Dennis not being a winter person did not do a very good job of cleaning off all the windows before backing the car out of the parking space.  He had to roll down the electric window in order to see.  Naturally snow fell into the window opening and of course the window would not then go up. Have you ever had the opportunity to ride forty miles in the backseat of a car with a blizzard blowing in the window?  It is quite an interesting experience and one you don't soon forget.  The most interesting aspect was that all three guys, all three guys who were technical service advisers for Ford Motor Company, were riding in the front seat.  It was a good thing I was too covered in snow, too frozen to speak or to choke the driver.

Oh well, at least the day was only 50% bad.  Going to Jim and Lisa's that morning was really very special.  They had no idea that I had never done a house like theirs before and gave me the idea that they had full confidence in me. It was going to be a challenge but a lot of fun.

Mother called the next day to say she would be there for a visit on Tuesday.  Oh Boy!

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.

Christmas Presents Come In Different Ways

I had my doubts about the phone call from a homeowner who insisted I come and look at her house on Christmas Eve.   First of all there was something wrong with me that agreed to meet her in the first place.  Who in their right mind goes out on Christmas Eve to meet a new client?  Do I want to work for someone that demanding?  After I thought about it it had begun to sound like maybe someone was paying me back for a joke I had played on them. 

Driving to the house in the Leawood addition I was trying to remember what the address of the "Gorda" house was.  Could this be the same house and the foreign accent the homeowner had did seem a little fishy. At least I was going to be prepared if it turned out to be a payback.

Arriving at the address I discovered it was not the "Gorda" house but one much larger and rather stunning.  There was a lady standing by her car in the driveway in a beautiful fur coat.  Her name was Lisa, she was in her early thirties and she had come to America from the Philippines.
I began to have the feeling as we toured the house that this was not a joke and also began to realize that Lisa's original question as to how much it would cost to put something on a window was not dumb but the only way she knew how to ask.  

Terror began to sink in as we moved from room to room.  I can honestly say I had never been in a house as huge as that one much less decorated one.  The foyer was as big as a basketball court with a two story ceiling with sky lights. A gently curving stairway and cat walk led to three bedrooms one on side of the upstairs and the Master bedroom on the other.  The dining room was the only room that had any furniture and sitting in it was a mahogany table and chairs that sat sixteen guests. Who has sixteen guests for dinner? The living room and kitchen were as impressive plus there were two other rooms large enough for bedrooms downstairs.

By the time I had measured twenty-two windows the only thing I could think of was that I wanted to run out the door and never answer the phone again. Two things kept rolling through my mind.  One being that I had the impression when Lisa had called and asked how much it would cost to do one window what would her reaction be when hit with the cost of twenty-two.  The second panic-attack realization was that the was that she stated they were purchasing all new furniture.  Walking through the house that day I could not get any feeling for what I thought they would like, colors, patterns or anything.

Most of the little decorating jobs I had done were in houses that clients lived in.  I had gotten pretty good at listening to what they liked or what they had seen plus the decor they already had. It was funny but I had learned to listen very carefully as most clients told me they did not know exactly what they wanted.  Nine times out if ten, if I listened they gave me enough clues that the decisions were easy. Listening to Lisa and making little notes that made no sense as we went from room to room was terribly confusing.  One bedroom was the camera room, one the music room and the basement was the theater.  

The interesting part of the tour of the house was Lisa's tidbits about her and her husband, Jim.  She, a dietitian, and Jim, a plastic surgeon in his forties who had never been married, had only been married a short time. They were currently living in his little two bedroom house with all of his "collections".  Evidently there was so much stuff in the house that there was not very much furniture so they were purchasing a larger home.  That did help explain some of the strange room designations but there were still a lot of unanswered questions.  They were moving in the next week and she wanted me to come back after the New Year and we would talk some more. My hope was that when I could see all their belongings in the home I could get some feel as to what they would like.  That thought was perhaps a little far fetched. Then there was that nagging little thought that Barney was behind all this and I was not real sure I would hear from Lisa again.

Christmas Day came and went, Dennis was off for the week between Christmas and New Year's Day and his parents showed up the day after Christmas for a visit. That week could not have been very memorable since there are no family pictures except that there was more cooking and cleaning than usual.

New Year's Eve usually found me asleep by ten o'clock.  Perhaps there were thoughts about how good or bad the past year was but never any resolutions for the up coming one.  Never in my widest dreams would I have thought that 1980 would be the most exciting, educational and rewarding time while also being the saddest and most devastating.

After Dad's visit and my retirement from the Health Department I thought I would have a less busy life. I had mailed off my application to two area medical schools, was enjoying the fall weather and thought the approaching holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas would pass quietly.  So much for my thinking.

There had been a pretty steady stream of little decorating jobs ever since school started. Most amounted to a pair of drapes here or wallpaper a bathroom there and one or two new construction wallpaper jobs for our builder.  The extra money was nice, Dennis had started travelling some and most of the time five-year old Wally could travel with me. Two things I had not paid attention to was how many people decided the first part of November they wanted to totally redo the house for the holidays or how without advertising how quickly the word of my little business spread. 

Every time the phone rang with a new person wanting drapes or bedding or wallpaper I would ask my self how did this happen?  How come a person who only learned how to do all this stuff because doing  it myself was the only way I could afford it suddenly get over whelmed with requests from other people?  In my widest dreams I never thought of being an interior designer as a career. Real designers have some sort of a degree that includes art and physics believe it or not both of which I was not good at.  Then there is some sort of certification test that I did not care to know anything about.  This was not my career choice.

One beautiful fall day Barney decided it was time for a picnic before the snow started piling up.  Sitting under a tree in the park I was lamenting about the decorating stuff while he was laughing at me.  I told him to stop laughing, that this was serious because I really did not know anything about what I was doing.  He told me to stop and think about it.
Maybe I should look a gift horse in the mouth and welcome it.

First of all he knew I liked having the time to be with Wes and Wally when they were home or had school activities.  He also had noticed that I was not very good at a regular job where I had to show up at a specific time and stay there until the end of the day.  Then he had to point out that the job at the health department had created an emotional wreck of me for three months as I could not leave everyone else's problems at the office. 

He went on to say that if I enjoyed doing it and working for myself maybe I should just stick with it until I heard about medical school.
He said he was laughing at me because I was sitting there acting like I really did not know what I was doing when actually I was one of the best he had ever seen by the looks of his house.  The analysis of my personality kept going and finally ended with him telling me I was the most talented, creative and caring person he had ever met.


Of course I didn't agree with him on all of his points and told him so.  The part I really did not agree with was the talented and creative stuff. When he asked why it was hard to explain but the best I could come up with was a very brief confession that maybe everyone but my Dad had always thought I was pretty stupid or at least made me feel that way.
He wondered if the "everyone" included my husband and I just reminded him that we agreed that subject was off limits.  

Barney also told me about always wanting to work on Wall Street, which he did for three years, only to find out that he didn't really like the regular hours and the pressure.  He quit and came back to Kansas City to start his own business that he did well at besides enjoying everyday of it.  Maybe that day in the park made a big difference in how I looked at a lot of things through the years and it was certainly one I never forgot.

The holidays were a total blur that year.  I do know we did not go anywhere and there is not a picture of Christmas or Thanksgiving.  Perhaps the reason is that my little decorating business was very busy getting everyone else ready for the holidays.  But then maybe I don't remember much about that year as I hated holidays from the time I was really small.  It seemed like I always put on the happy face and trudged my way through all holidays.

Two days before Christmas when I did not want to think or hear about drapes or anything else connected to decorating I got a phone call.  It was a lady with a foreign accent who wanted to know how much it would cost to do one window.  That was a really stupid question and it was difficult not to be really rude and hang up the phone.  I asked what she wanted on the window like drapes or blinds and she didn't know.  She just wanted a price which I told her I couldn't give her without looking at the window. As the conversation went on she wanted me to come and see the house now.  Loosing my patience I told her I was taking the next couple of weeks off but that didn't please her.  So I finally asked where this house was and when she said it was in the newest, most expensive neighborhood in Kansas City I couldn't resist.
I agreed to meet her the next morning even though it was Christmas Eve.

After the excitement wore off about the possibility of decorating a house in the Leawood Addition I had the thought that someone was paying me back for a joke I had played on them. After all wasn't the house my little Gorda was interested in the same neighborhood? Didn't the whole scenario sound as stupid as Gorda wanting to know how many windows a house had?

My appointment that Christmas Eve morning was very interesting.