style="font-size:15px;"> I dropped everything I was carrying. But being a woman with a purpose, I clicked on the dining room light. Hurried to the TV, and turned it on in time to hear the last bars of the theme song.
It’s amazing but true. You can laugh and hold an ice pack on your nose at the same time. I kept the ice on my broken nose for a couple of hours. Took two aspirin. Went to bed.
The next morning I found my scissors on the floor and a gash in the mint-green kitchen paint.
Wow! I thought as I realized how lucky it was that I’d been carrying my scissors pointed away from me. Not at my heart.
When Steve got home I told him how I’d almost killed myself over Dick Van Dyke.
We laughed then. Continued laughing over the years.
Finally, we were able to go out dancing at the Elks. We joined Couples 40, a group that sponsored quarterly dances with a local band. I’d been asked to be a member of Tri Gamma Junior Women’s Club, a philanthropic organization that sponsored a ball yearly at the Davenport Hotel and had other socials. Two of our neighboring families were teaching us how to play bridge—alternating weeks. Steve and I were having fun.
Our neighborhood was a great place to have a young family. When it snowed, the city blocked off Washington Street, just a couple of houses west of us, for a sledding hill.
At first we only had one sled. We took turns—Steve with Michele—me with Stephanie. Afterwards we all looked forward to having hot chocolate in our cozy kitchen.
Then, the second year, when both our girls were big enough to sleigh alone, someone left a long Flexible Flyer in our front yard and never came back. After a week, we borrowed it. A couple of years later, with no one claiming ownership, we took permanent possession.
Years later when our daughters dropped sleds for grown-up skies, I sanded The Flyer, stained the wood, and painted the runners bright red. Then I tole-painted a little girl in a red outfit skating on the top.
We started using the new sled for a Christmas decoration in the early seventies. Today, it graces our front entrance, right next to our five-foot St. Francis who, during the holidays, wears a bright red hat topped by a big bell.
The next summer we had a concrete contractor double the size of our patio, and Steve built a cover over the whole thing. We bought two trees. Steve planted them in the middle of the backyard—dreaming of the shade they’d provide in a few years.
Mid-summer, Steve and I decided something was missing. Our new neighbors on the east had filled the dirt borders on three sides of their backyard with plants and perennials. By July they had a plethora of color. We wanted some blooming flowers too.
But how? Our lawn grew right to the wood fence on three sides.
“We need to dig out the grass,” I suggested. “Probably three feet. All around.”
“Do you realize how much work that’d be?” Steve retaliated. “That stuff is thick.”
Our neighbor Dick heard of our dilemma. He said, “If you can wait until next summer, I’ve got an idea for you. My neighbor in Seattle had the same problem. This is what he did—just mark the area you want to turn into a flower bed, take a sharp shovel, and cut all the grass in two-foot squares. Then turn and plop it—root side up. By next spring, the grass will have died and turned into compost—instant fertilizer.”
That fall, we designed our flower garden. Steve dug generous scallops on both sides and the back. Followed directions. Turned. Plopped.
By spring, when it was time to work in the yard, Steve was working out of town. Week after week.
So—determined to have my flower garden—I approached our backyard holding a trowel in my right hand and enthusiasm for the project in my heart.
Long story short—my right hand begin aching by noon, and my heart had relocated itself somewhere south—probably to my toes.
While I know the basis of the theory to be correct—matter does decay—I think it would have taken a good twenty years to reach the goal of rich loam from upside-down-grass.
Undeterred, I dug. Got a one-foot square free. Attacked it with the trowel—no progress. Moved to a pointed shovel—about the same. In disgust, I shook off what soil I could—not more than a thimble full.
Impossible! I thought. There’s got to be a way. I could see those flowers in my mind’s eye.
Determined, for the next two weeks, five days a week, I spent at least four hours each day working on our flower garden. I dug—shook as much loose dirt from of each individual piece of sod as possible—threw the rest in our wheelbarrow—pushed it a half block to the open area at the end of our street available to such excess—and dumped.
I must say, I had a few choice words for our neighbor—but I kept quiet. I don’t know which was harder—keeping my frustration to myself—or the actual physical work.
Whatever—come mid-May we bought several flats of petunias—half purple—half white. The finished product was worth it!
In July I hosted a luncheon for twenty-four members of my women’s club in our new backyard garden. I provided ice cream cake for dessert and basked in the compliments I received.
On that long-ago day, on Cascade Way, I discovered two of my favorite things—entertaining and flowers.
As our seventh anniversary arrived, Steve made reservations for Friday and Saturday in the brand new Desert Inn in downtown Spokane. He’d planned a celebration for just the two of us—a Friday night at the Elk’s Country Club dining room at Liberty Lake, a day of shopping, and dinner at the Ridpath Roof on Saturday. Dancing both evenings.
“It’ll be a second honeymoon,” he promised.
All I had to do was get a babysitter. My parents lived one house away. They would have been happy to have our daughters move in with them permanently.
But, when I explained what Steve and I wanted to do for our big day and asked for forty-eight hours room and board for my girls, my mother looked as if I’d told her I was going to hire myself out as a call-girl for the weekend.
“Well I never!” she huffed. “Never in a million years would I have thought my daughter would do anything like that!”
I felt like saying, “I’ve been married for seven years for heaven’s sake! I have two children. What do you think? That I got pregnant sitting on a toilet seat? Twice?”
But I kept my cool.
My mother finally condescended to be my babysitter for a long weekend date with my husband.
When I dropped the kids off on Friday afternoon, I was greeted with an ice-cube-stare.
I forgot my mother the minute we backed out of our driveway.
Steve and I had a delightful, romantic anniversary weekend. Dined and danced, lunched
