I remember the first night. As we visited, a feeble-looking old man kept walking back and forth in front of Steve’s open door. The oldster wore a knee-length, gaping-in-the-back hospital gown—he towed a bag of gurgling liquid on rollers.
“There’s no way I’ll ever be hooked to one of those things!” my young, strong husband bragged.
The next night, and thirteen more after that, I walked up and down the hall with Steve as he towed a similar appendage. However, at the suggestion of one of the nurses who Steve had known at Gonzaga, I’d brought his bathrobe so his backside was covered.
In retrospect, I believe that summer was good for us. And for our marriage.
We learned we could go to the depths—Steve had been at the edge of death. Yet he’d not just come back, he’d fought his way forward.
I’d planted some Shasta daisy seeds beside our house that spring. The soil was sandy. I’d not fertilized. But they popped out of the ground as happy as if I’d given them a daily drink of Miracle Grow.
“Flower,” I said to our fourteen-month daughter, pointing to the blooming plant.
Her eyes lit up. With perfect diction, Michele said, “Flow—er. Flow—er. Flow—er.” She pursed her lips on the second syllable as if she were puckering up for a kiss. And she giggled.
Steve and I never looked back.
Within a week, he was back at his summer job working for the Spokane Park Department.
Immediately, we got hospital insurance. We might not be able to afford it, but we realized we couldn’t afford to be without.
I continued working, moved from sorting checks to computer entry, to being a teller. It wasn’t my dream job, but my parents now lived in Spokane. For $100 a month they babysat. I paid off Steve’s hospital bill. We started saving money.
On August 18 we celebrated our second anniversary with dinner at the Ridpath Hotel (main floor King Cole Room, not the view Top.). We felt blessed.
We began planning our dream home. On Sunday afternoons we toured open houses.
Within walking distance of our church and a new elementary school, we found a neighborhood we loved. We made friends with a contractor who built beautiful houses. We drooled.
And then—by a fluke (the builder had an “open house” that didn’t sell)—he offered to take our little three bedroom project house as most of the down payment. The catch? Steve had to work as an assistant carpenter that summer on the builder’s jobs-in-process.
We jumped at the opportunity.
Chapter 3
“It’s a dream come true,” I gushed as I walked through our new, custom, three bedroom, two bath, brick home. I could open both leaves of our original table in the kitchen. Besides, we had a separate dining room where a brand new dining room table and six chairs sat waiting for our first guests. Our one car looked lonely in the attached two-car garage. But—it gave us lots of room for stuff.
After our sweat labor, we had a 2,400 square-foot home with a full basement that featured a huge family room, large laundry, fourth bedroom/study, and ample storage space where Steve constructed custom shelves for our pantry items. Plus a covered patio in our fenced back yard.
Before I continue my memoir, I have to explain how my parents became a daily part of the Matule story.
When Michele was ten months old, they sold their motel in Glasgow and bought a house in Spokane—two doors from us. A few months after Steve and I moved into our Cascade Way home, they followed us—got a place one house east of ours.
Conflict ensued.
If we had a neighborhood girl babysit—my mother complained. If we asked her to take care of Michele and Stephanie while Steve and I went out, my mother fussed. I couldn’t win.
My mother had a habit of coming to visit—uninvited—five minutes after a car full of company parked in front of our house. She drove me crazy.
My daddy was a saint.
We lived with our unique problem. Sometimes it worked better than others.
Steve’s sister Dodo came for the first summer—she’d jumped at the chance to be our babysitter and avoid the tension of troubles at home in Butte.
We’d just finished paying the bill for Steve’s kidney surgery, but had decided that I should keep working at the Old National Bank so we could buy some extras for our new house.
Steve planted our front lawn on the Fourth of July. We bought a swing set that took up the left corner of our backyard. The rest we kept natural (which meant he mowed the weeds). That left an area in front of the kitchen and dining room empty.
“We need a few bushes,” Steve said. “Some white rocks to set them off.”
“Bushes are not in the budget!” I said. (I watched our money down to the penny.)
A heated discussion followed. A very heated discussion!
The next Saturday, while Dodo, Michele, and I were getting ready for an outing with Steve, he disappeared.
When he came home with five evergreen bushes and four bags of white rock, I yelled, “What did you use for money?” I knew he had no cash and didn’t carry checks.
“No problem. The nursery took that new credit card we just got.”
“The one we were going to use only for emergencies?” I gasped.
I have no idea what else I said. But after all these years, Steve still remembers how our fighting got so bad it upset his sister. So, even though our family was in chaos, he loaded all of us in the car—he needed a file from his office. By the time we were in downtown Spokane, Dodo was gagging in the back seat—about to throw up.
“Steve, Dodo needs a bathroom,” I said. “Fast!”
As Steve drove by The Crescent, he saw a loading zone. Desperate, he parked—even though he could have gotten a big ticket.
The minute the car stopped, I got Dodo out of the back seat and rushed her to the nearest bathroom. We barely made it.
Neither Dodo nor Michele remember the event. But it was pivotal in our marriage.
We learned a big lesson that day—you never buy a big item (in those days the plants and rocks were big—they cost as much as groceries for two months) until you’ve discussed it together (and agreed on the purchase). Unless you have the cash—money not needed for anything else.
•
By the time we celebrated our third anniversary, we felt like we’d arrived. We splurged with dinner on the Top of the Ridpath. Danced to their three piece orchestra. Gazed through
