The Duplex

When Jack and I married at age 20, he was still in college and we had hardly any money. We couldn’t both fit into my tiny efficiency apartment, and buying a house wasn’t even the glimmer of a thought in our minds (no zero-down mortgage loans back in 1971!), so we found a little duplex on Westmoreland Road in Oak Cliff and were thrilled to rent it for $65 a month. A living room, bedroom, bathroom, and galley kitchen – that was plenty of space for us since we didn’t have many possessions. The duplex had tiny front and back yards, and we even got half of a garage, new home to our 1969 VW beetle. We were only a few blocks from my parents, not much farther from Jack’s, and a mile from our church, so our support system was nearby. Our furnishings consisted of family hand-me-downs and finds from Goodwill. The look was definitely 70’s, down to the turntable and stereo system atop a bookcase made of boards resting on cinderblock supports. It wasn’t fancy, but we were content. 

I was pretty naïve, and had never been the owner of a Major Appliance before, so I didn’t realize that it wasn’t a good idea to defrost the refrigerator’s freezer by means of an ice pick. One day I was chopping busily away when I heard a hissing sound. After everything in the freezer thawed out, I realized that I had stabbed a hole in the tube carrying the Freon. Shortly afterward, our Volkswagen was joined in the garage by our Dead Major Appliance. 

The unforeseen drawback of our living arrangement was the fact that, by its definition, a duplex provides two dwelling areas. And on the other side of our all-too-thin walls resided a man who liked to watch late-night reruns of “Mr. Ed.” Every night as we tried to sleep, we could hear “A horse is a horse, of course, of course” coming through the bedroom wall. The guy was nice enough, but he enjoyed mowing the lawn wearing Bermuda shorts and no shirt. Since he weighed about 400 pounds, I was motivated to stay indoors whenever he was out. 

One weekend a friend from out of town came to visit. We took a quilt outside late one night and the three of us laid on the front lawn, looking up at the stars and talking. We fell asleep, right there on Westmoreland with the traffic whizzing by. Of course in 1972 there wasn’t quite as much traffic – but it still amazes me to realize that life was so different then that we didn’t feel any concern for our safety. 

After a year or so, we moved up in the world to renting a 2 bedroom house with a big back yard and – egad! – a dishwasher. I thought I was in heaven. Even after our first daughter was born, we had plenty of room. It wasn’t until we’d been married nearly seven years that we bought our first house. 

I look at our daughters, and their friends, most of whom have waited a little longer to marry and who are buying houses within a year or so of being wed. I’m happy for them being able to take such a major step so soon. But I don’t regret for a minute that we began our journey together as newlyweds who had to wait a while for home ownership. It was all part of the adventure of married life. We were poor in possessions, but rich in love. And, now, happy memories. 

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 4-22-06)

Getting in Shape

Some years ago I attended an aerobics class with my neighbor Alice. It was something we could do together while our daughters were in school, and besides we both wanted to get in better shape. Classes were held at the local roller rink, and we went at least twice a week.

I think most of the women who attended were stay-at-home moms. When we all began, most of us wore our tee shirts and baggy shorts. As the weeks went by and we got in better shape, I noticed more and more of us daring to wear leotards – still covered with shorts, of course.

I like the movement and the music of the class. I always thought I was a klutz, but I could manage those moves. We did warm-ups that gradually moved into pretty strenuous stuff, and then did nice easy moves to cool down. Sometimes I even imagined myself to be graceful.

It can’t hurt to dream.

During the height of each routine we were really working hard. I swear our instructor used to be a drill sergeant in the Army. She was always so bright and chipper and unflagging, until some days I thought I could take her little leotard and stuff it down her skinny throat. Even when she grunted during a strenuous routine, she sounded so cute. My grunts sounded like…well, grunts.

I’m sure a lot of folks are self-motivated, but I’m not one of them. If I’m left on my own, I won’t do it. The exercise tapes I own just take up space on a shelf. I needed the encouragement of a schedule and a class to attend. Alice and I encouraged each other, and prodded each other to keep trying when one of us was feeling lazy.

After about eight weeks, I had lost ten pounds. I just wanted to get toned up, I didn’t even think about weight loss. That was really exciting! The hard routines were still hard, but I was really motivated once I started losing weight.

I figured that the exercise might kill me, but at least I’d be in great shape for my funeral.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 11-12-05)

Lucy Redux

Occasionally I worry that I’m channeling the ghost of Lucille Ball from a lost episode of “I Love Lucy.”

One Sunday my husband Jack and I had gone with our daughter and her family down to the Bosque River, to fish and enjoy nature. Jack had to travel to Austin from there, so I rode home with Jill, John and the boys.

Jack had entrusted me with putting his fishing poles away safely. When we got home, I leaned them against the porch bench until I could unlock the door. Jill, John and grandsons drove away.

A saving grace: that meant there were no witnesses.

Apparently I slipped into the “Lucy” dimension on the front porch as I waved goodbye. Because when I turned from the door to pick up the poles and carry them in, the treble hook on one came loose from its eyelet and snagged on the left leg of my jeans, down below my knee. I did a little hop-step into the house, holding both poles, and went on to the kitchen. I laid the poles on the table and put my left foot up on a chair seat and tried to unhook myself.

Now a treble hook is so named because it has THREE hooks. When you try to grab that sucker you’d better be careful. It sure wants to do its job, which is to hook something. My foot being up on the chair made things awkward, and I couldn’t extract the hook from the denim. I decided to take off the jeans to be able to get closer to the hook. Grabbing the pole that had hooked me, I took my foot off the chair to discover that before the hook snagged me, its line had wrapped around the line of the other rod. I couldn’t separate the poles.

Again holding both poles, I hobbled into the bedroom and kicked off my shoes. I couldn’t get the leg of my jeans down over my left foot no matter how hard I pulled. That’s when I discovered that the hook from the second pole had snagged my cotton sock. Its fibers were wrapped tightly around the prongs of the hook, never to let go.

Light bulb moment: I wouldn’t try to work the hook out, I’d just cut it out of the sock! Now I hop-stepped (holding both poles, snared now by hooks in both my jeans leg AND my sock) over to my desk, got my scissors and cut the hook out of the sock. I unwrapped the two lines, laid the poles down, took off my jeans, and was then able to get the other hook out of the jeans without tearing them. Put my jeans back on, threw away my ruined sock, hung both hooks carefully on their eyelets, and put the poles in the garage.

When Jack called me to tell me that he’d arrived in Austin, I said “You’ll never believe what happened to me,” and recounted the story. His first question was “Was there profanity involved?” “No,” I answered, “just a lot of laughing.” His second question was “Why didn’t you just cut the lines?”

Well, shoot. If I opened the dictionary to the word “chagrin,” would I see my picture there?

I had spent fifteen minutes getting myself untangled from two hooks on two poles, and it had never occurred to me to cut the lines. I couldn’t even claim to be trying to save Jack from having to re-tie the hooks. I just didn’t think of it.

As a kid watching those old “I Love Lucy” shows, even as I laughed at her antics I remember thinking “Nobody could be that stupid.”

Just call me Nobody.
(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 12-31-05)

Look for a Rainbow

Some years ago, I made a right turn onto a local street and was confronted with an amazing sight. There, arching across the sky ahead of me were not one, but two huge rainbows, one entire bow clearly visible and the second one a bit fainter above it. It’s not unusual to see a portion of a rainbow – a part of its leg or maybe the top of the arch partly obscured by clouds – but this was the whole enchilada, in duplicate.

I have an extravagant fondness for rainbows. Of course I learned the story of Noah and the Ark when I was very young, and always loved the idea that God’s “bow in the clouds” meant that he would never again destroy the earth by flood. I sang right along with Judy Garland on “Over the Rainbow” when I watched the Wizard of Oz, and with Kermit the Frog of Sesame Street when he sang “The Rainbow Connection.” I don’t collect rainbow magnets or key chains or drawings, but I sure do love the real thing.

Years ago my family was driving toward downtown Dallas when I saw a double rainbow. That was the first double I’d ever seen, and I was ecstatic. “Jack! Jill! Jo!” I cried. “Look, look – it’s a double rainbow! Think how many people are driving along and not even looking up, not appreciating how beautiful it is! Isn’t it incredible? Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Mom,” said my ever-practical daughter Jill, “take it easy.”

Serendipity is the unexpected gift that catches us by surprise and lifts our spirits. It’s the little grace note that enhances the music of life. I find serendipity in lots of places – my grandson’s grin as he teases me, a raccoon scratching at the back door to get our attention, an unexpected letter from a far-away friend. It’s easier than you might think to find those gifts when you’re looking for them, when you’re paying attention, and you should be grateful when they arrive.

I thought it was a plain old Monday until I turned that corner, and then it was a Great Gift day. So keep your eyes open: maybe one of these days you’ll turn a corner and see a rainbow. And if it’s a double rainbow: hey, even at the risk of having your child think you’ve taken leave of your senses, get a little excited. You won’t regret it.

I promise.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 12-03-05)

Thinks a Lot

My husband Jack once told me that I think too much. That accusation wasn’t apropos of nothing; it was a result of one of the myriad questions I’ve asked that just seem pointless to him. But I’m curious about so many things!

It drives him particularly crazy when we go to the movies. While I have no objection to suspending belief for the sake of a story, sometimes a plot element is just so contrived, or a mistake is so obvious, that I can’t stop myself from commenting “Come on, give me a break!” to which he invariably replies “It’s just a movie.” But I always want to know why someone somewhere didn’t catch the numerous stupid mistakes that are so commonplace in the movies nowadays. Am I the only one who thinks about these things?

Jack and I had a conversation about this. He said there are times, such as when he’s fishing, that he tries not to think about anything, to just make his mind a blank. That is such an amazing concept to me, the idea that your mind can be like a big white dry-erase board with nothing on it. We were on the road to Lubbock when we had this conversation, with lots of nothing to look at, so I decided to try for myself to just zone out and not think about anything at all. I looked out the window towards the horizon and tried to go blank. Right away I spied a house on the service road, in between an auto parts place and an appliance repair center, and I thought “Why on earth would anyone want to live right there?” and then “Well, maybe the people who live in the house own the businesses on either side, and they wouldn’t have far to go to work.”

Okay, start again, picture that blank board.

I looked out the other side of the car and saw acres upon acres of plowed fields, and thought “How long would it take to do all that in the old days without a tractor?”

Shoot. This blanking-out business is impossible.

Could it be a gender thing? Is the ability to “not think” the result of an enzyme or a protein or something like that on the Y chromosome? More than once Jack has come home to tell me that a co-worker had her baby, and I asked how much did it weigh, did everything go okay, and he looked at me blankly and said “I don’t know – I didn’t think to ask.”

I am acutely sensitive to cigarette and cigar smoke. At close contact, it causes my throat to close up and makes me miserable. Once Jack and a friend borrowed my car to go somewhere, and smoked big old smelly cigars the whole trip, and came home and parked the closed car in the driveway. The next morning I got in the car and was nearly knocked over from the stench. The smell had permeated every fiber of the upholstery. I couldn’t get away from it. I later said to Jack “You know how sick smoke makes me! That’s MY car! What were you THINKING?” He just looked at me blankly. Because, of course, he and his buddy hadn’t thought, not for one single second, about anything other than the desire to smoke cigars and enjoy themselves. They just hadn’t thought.

I sometimes think too much; he sometimes doesn’t think at all. After thirty-four years together, we balance each other.

I think.

(Dallas Morning News Neighbors 2-04-06)