Bonnie and Clyde and the Getaway Car

My neighbor had an intruder the other night. It's got us all scared out of our wits. The guy is now in jail, so why are we worried about the locks now? Just kidding, of course we need to lock up. It's the year 2018 and it's better to be safe than sorry. But it reminds me of something that happened to me one day in Villa Rica, just a few years back...

I was out walking the dog on a balmy, spring day. A lady sashayed by the house and we said hello to each other. She  asked if I could do her a favor. "If I can, I will," I said. She told me that her car had been impounded and she needed to go to the bank to get some money, in order to get her car back. We are only a half mile away from the bank, but she wondered if I could drive her over there. I didn't know her from Adam's housecat, but I said yes. I said I had to run inside and get my purse. Before I could say Jack Sprat, she ran right on in behind me. She virtually sprinted all over my house in a flash. My trusty dog didn't take kindly to it and began to growl lightly at her. She asked if the dog would bite her. I said I wasn't sure, but not to be trying to come around without us here. That was probably a good thing to say.

I whipped up my things and we headed to town. I pulled into the bank parking lot and she hopped out of the car, leaving her purse laying beside me. She stated that they knew her there and she didn't need her ID. I thought that was odd, because my bank knows me too but I still have to show them my driver's license, even after twenty years of banking there. She was gone a few minutes and came out with a roll of money. It rather looked like a fat sandwich, it was so thick. She said to drive to Main Street and just drop me in front of the police station. I never did see her go in. The whole business took maybe ten minutes, but I learned many things about this lady in that time. Things that might make your hair curl or your Mama blush. I told her I'd pray for her and that I hoped she'd get her car back.

When Ken got home that night, he scolded me for picking up strangers. I guess it did seem sketchy, but I thought it went okay (well, except for the hair curling. Oh yeah, and the casing of the house and all). And I did still wonder about that bank scenario. A few days went by and as I was looking at the newspaper, I saw that this same girl was wanted in connection with a robbery. There had been a man involved as well, but they had caught him and he was in custody. I called the police station and told them my story. He said to quit picking up strangers and did I know where she was now? I most certainly did not. But as I hung up the phone, I had a slight suspicion that has nagged me ever since. Is it just possible that I was the getaway car?

A Long Winter's Night

I had become the Tile Queen of Douglasville. We were living in a camper with four kids. It was 1997 and we were knee-deep into the second year of a house-building project. Some people said, "Oh yeah, we built our house." No. We really built our house. Ourselves. With our own hands. 

I really hate carpet. It might be warm and pretty and it only takes a minute to vacuum it, but it gets nasty and full of germs and dust. When we built that house, there was to be no carpet. Only tile and pine floors. I went to Home Depot, where they have little classes on how to tile. Someone gave us acres of beautiful green Italian tile out of a dumpster, so we added an equal amount of cream-colored partners to it and borrowed a friend's giant masonry saw. It was January, cold as mess, and we had deadlines to keep. One of our sons was my cutter and I was the layer. Yes, I was the laying fool, wearing out my joints, knees, fingers and toes. We wound up putting in 1800 square feet of tile, all told. I had been working on it for a month solid. Ken had tons of vacation time back then, so he was home for the whole month, but working on other things. He apparently never learned how to lay tile.

I had one more room to finish -- the (really big) master bathroom. Don't ask me why (except that it was 1997), but I chose tile that looked like pink marble. The jacuzzi tub deck was done in a sandy pink. I'm sure the current owners of that home would like to shoot somebody over that. I woke up that January day, the temperature dipping down into the 20s. We only had space heaters in the house, but I was determined to finish that bathroom. I made up a big container of mud for the floor and got to work. Over this long project, my pretty piano hands now looked like meathooks. Thick, crabby, calloused and kind-of in a permanently curled position. It was cold, I was bone weary, and sick of the whole thing. I got about 3/4s of the way through my bucket when I simply shut down. I couldn't get warm and I was so tired, I couldn't see straight. I threw my tool in the bucket and started crying. Then I started wailing. Ken came running, "What's the matter?!" "I'm cold. I'm tired. I can't feel my fingers." Ken, his normal, practical self, looked into the container and said, "Well, how 'bout you finish up that bit of mud. Go into the camper and get a really hot shower and get in your sleeping bag and go to sleep." I squawled: "But ya'll need lunch and I don't want to think about lunch." He said not to worry about it, he'd take care of it. So I did just that. Got in the blissfully hot shower, went ahead and put on my pajamas so I'd be comfortable, climbed in my sleeping bag and zipped it clean on up. Mind you, our bed was in the "living room" of the camper. 

Ken and our four children came in a couple of hours later, ate lunch, cleaned up, went back out to work, ate supper, cleaned up, had showers, went to bed, got up, ate breakfast, went to work, ate lunch again. Ken said he checked on my breathing several times to make sure I wasn't dead. I woke up promptly at 1:00 the next afternoon, after approximately 26 hours of sleep, never hearing a thing or waking up once.

Ken wisely waited a few days before he broached the subject of finishing the tile. He might have even contemplated doing it himself but I was a little diva-ish about anything I started. The day I announced I was going to finish, he said, "Whoa, give me a few minutes." He went up to the bathroom, turned the space heater on full force, laid out all my tools, gave me a vigorous back massage, and said okay now go. He kept bringing me drinks and refreshments all day, he and the children speaking in hushed, reverent tones. I believe we ate out that night. 

My hands never did really recover from that winter. I now have man hands that curve in strange directions and I twitch slightly when I walk. But there came a day when we moved in and had a lot to be proud of. Just don't ask me to lay a piece of tile again. Ever.

Butterflies are Free

They say that our ten-year-old self defines us. We are either trying to get back to that authentic person or trying to run away from the circumstances we found ourselves in at that time. I think this might be true. 

At ten, the world was my oyster. My fifth grade teacher was the best. At ten, you are living large. It's before all the hormones kick in and self-doubt overtakes your courage. It's before most of the bullies have found their marks. Puppy love is sweet and the event of the year is the hayride at the Harvest Festival. The playground is still cool. For me, the sky was very blue and clear that year. The rogue boys were still kept under control with paddles and clearly delineated authority figures. The girls kind-of ruled at that point, taller and seemingly smarter, the synapses of their brains maturing earlier than their male counterparts. I distinctly remember being amazed by eighth grade, when a group of boys started playing serious chess games, for fun. I saw their emergence and also (bless their hearts) their fascination with everything grungy. Our ten-year-old girl selves didn't understand that much. At least not back then. 

The ten year old is like a chrysalis. Growing inside their cocoon, unassuming about the future, free to wiggle and grow. Soon the walls will harden around them. Pain of all sorts will either impede or compel. When time ripens and then opens the doors, they will succeed or fail according to the nature of the nest they were in or maybe better, how they react to it.

I love butterflies. I love to paint pictures of them. The fine details, the veining, the colors. We all enjoy watching them flutter by, fragile jewels. Hard to imagine that such a beautiful thing was once a worm. A hardy, fat worm, not caring that it's ugly. Carefree days spent eating, grubbing about, just living. Then comes the fortress, built all around it, the death of everything it knows. One day, as the walls give way, the creature falls out, wet and crumpled, vulnerable and cold. She dries out slowly, wings unfurling. The worm doesn't know it's wonderful. It will take time and zephyrs for her to know that she can fly, unaware that her wings are both useful and gorgeous. Hopefully, she will figure that out before her day is done. 

Backwards Wisdom

Trials seem to come in bunches. There's a saying that if you're not in a storm, there's one on its way. I don't have to enumerate our recent monsoons here...suffice it to say, I have felt like our boat has been swamped and there's another wave a-comin'. We all go through these things. Life is fraught with the ebb and flow of all that is good and bad. I believe that the worst thing we can do is to compare ourselves with others and their fortunes. God didn't ask me to go down their path and they don't have to go down mine, though we can hold each other steady and help bear each others' burdens. 

That is what my dear friends have done for me: A midnight text that turns into a 2-hour call; a flurry of thoughtful cards, arriving just at the right time; a morning breakfast date where I get to vent and cry; a container of wildflowers to cheer my heart; hugs that melt the frost off; shared stories and tears. Our technology threatens to undo us, but sometimes it reaches right across the static to be used for blessing. 

Thanksgiving weekend was a virtual whirlwind. My side of the family gathered at my sister's house, where there had to be close to a hundred folks and some of the best food I've ever eaten. We all sat with our plates mounded, savoring every bite then returning for more. There was a lot of love put into that food. You could taste it. Then on Friday my children and their spouses and children came here, ate, pulled 'round our table like so many sardines. We each shared what we were thankful for, then our youth-pastor-son pulled out thought-provoking questions. We laughed and cried and kidded each other, drawn together like warm puppies on a cold night. There were the ballgames on Saturday and then church on Sunday. I might still need another nap. 

Giving thanks started for me a few days before the holiday. I was about to come apart, physically and emotionally, and (truthfully) spiritually. Doubts, depression, crankiness ensued. I remembered what God says about being grateful. His recipe isn't like ours. He's kind-of backwards about it. He says things like "the last shall be first, and the first, last." He says where we are weak, He is strong. He also says that we are to give thanks in all things. All means everything, not just the goody in the middle. I sat quietly in my warm chair, musing on the many wonderful things I am blessed with. I thanked Him for those. I also percolated over all the bad things that have made this year hellish. My faith is so weak, but I'm asking Him for more. I stepped on out there and started thanking Him for all the icky parts, the things that hurt, that don't make sense. That have no cure. A funny thing happened. My heart began to lighten, my eyes broadened as I had a tiny glimpse of His love, that sovereign love that is weaving the most intricate of tapestries where all we can see is tangled threads and mischief. That's an old illustration, but it still says it all. Thanksgiving. Not for the faint of heart.

Silvery, Mellow Songs

My lovely flute is a very old lady, older by a decade than me, which means she could draw Social Security if she could just acquire a card. I don't know her story before I found her some twenty-eight years ago, but she was pretty beat up.

My parents were simply the best. They were frugal and hard-working, with one small income between them. They carefully assessed our gifts and leanings to make the most of our opportunities. We were not allowed to quit "mid-season" in any of our sports or lessons, so we were very deliberate about what we committed to. I had a musical soul, so they paid for piano lessons for me, starting in sixth grade. I loved the piano (though I wish I could go back and tether myself to those years of lessons and really learn it). Either way, the summer before ninth grade, I begged them to let me play the flute. They prudently rented one from Ken Stanton Music for $5 a month, bought me a beginner band book and cut me loose. I taught myself how to play that summer. The first time I got to play with the band the next year, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. There is nothing like the magic of playing along with other instruments. 

The piano eventually took a back seat, but I never really put my flute down. After we married and had children, I taught beginner students in our home, and played in various church groups and community bands. But when I let a family borrow my flute for a season, to see if their daughter took to it, it came back to me dented and sad. I sold it cheaply to another student and began looking for a new one. My extended family gave me money for my birthday and Christmas, to help with the purchase. I looked in earnest, at used and new ones, but struggled to find what I could both love and afford. An instrument broker (yes, there are those), a very gentle and kind man (I believe his name was Bill Smith)...let me take several of them home, to see if I really liked them. I didn't know that different flutes spoke with distinct voices. So I played and played the various ones, taking them all back. He called me one afternoon and told me that he had three more for me to try, and that one was special. 

It was a quirky flute, shorter than normal, made of real silver, with a giant embouchere hole (the part that you blow in)... it made it harder to play, breathier than other flutes, and difficult to get high or low notes with. It also took more lung power. She also needed a serious overhaul, which would take time and money. But when I played this flute, there was a warmth that no other had, a mellow, rich undertone that won me over. I took her straight to the repair shop. The gentleman carefully fixed her, then told me to never get rid of it, that it was a rare and precious find. He also told me to not let anyone talk me into changing out the headjoint, even though it was more difficult to play. Ken thoughtfully surprised me that year with a new flute case for my birthday and we've been stuck together ever since. She's had two overhauls and I take her once a year to get a bath and a tune-up. 

Silly, how a thing can become like a friend. I appreciate her most at Christmas, for some reason. We play all the lovely seasonal hymns and the haunting "What Child Is This?-- surely the prettiest thing a flute can play. I took this semester off from the Carroll Community Wind Ensemble to catch up and lick my wounds, but I'm already missing my artistic-soul-compatriots and our togetherness. Meanwhile, there's church and the occasional afternoon interlude. I thank God for sweet blessings like these.

King Arthur's Got Nothing On Us

The table sat idle, tumbled in a pile of dusty antiques in the attic of an old Marietta brick warehouse. It had a fatal flaw -- bubbled veneer on its face that could not be scrubbed out in any delicate way. My brother-in-law worked in the building and acquired it for me, for free. It was a giant, ungainly, round hunk of wood that required lumberjacks to move. My behemoth folk hauled it to Douglasville and I'm not remembering how in the world they got it into my kitchen. Seems like it involved taking a door off its hinges.

I hand-sanded the fool out of it, not making a dent in the bubbled veneer. I got a glimmer of an idea, to faux paint it to look like a variety of mahogany. This started with a base of pink paint, which would then be striated with varying shades of ebony and brown to achieve said woodgrain. I painted the whole thing pink and then got distracted. For many years, our large family took our meals at a Pepto-Bismol-pink table. I lost the instructions for the recipe for fake mahogany and finally broke down and painted the whole thing fire engine red, since it was the lightning rod of our house anyway. We would sit around it, pulling up extra chairs as needed. You can get about 15 seats around it, if you just keep scooting. Maybe it's the democracy of a round table, where no one person has the preeminent spot, but there is something special about it. It seemed to me, from the many nights of howling laughter that emanated from it, that the table exuded some kind of magic.

It got bumped up, scraped, covered with paint projects, hot pans and construction tools. Then I'd remember that we had company coming, so I'd whip out the paint can and put a fresh coat on it, drying just in time for the first guest (latex paint dries in four hours, you know). This same scenario ensued for years. When we moved to Villa Rica, I told my husband to roll it out behind the house to the driveway, where I put on a dust mask and brought out power tools. I was done with all the hand sanding I had tried. I bought three different grits of sandpaper, put plugs in my ears and dug in. It took most of the afternoon, but I sanded off years and layers of strange paint colors. When I finally got down to the wood and that troublesome veneer, I just kept on going until things got (mostly) horizontal. I painted it classic satin black (oil-based this time) and we rolled it back into our dining room. Many folks who have enjoyed that table at both locations have remarked that it seems like it was made for this old house. It fits perfectly in the room, the Grand Dame of the castle. Very occasionally, I put out my good china and the crystal and it's plumb enchanting.

Now that my children have flown the coop, it often sits, waiting for the next party. Coats, projects, piles of paper and receipts migrate there until I take time to clear it off. There's bits of hot glue sticking here and there and it's starting to look like it needs some love. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and I might need to pull out the old paint can. By the time everything gets fixed, the family arrives and I actually sit down there, I'm always exhausted but content. I've seen all these trendy, hand-lettered signs that say "Gather." When the goose is cooked and we finally actually do that, there's nothing better in the whole wide world.

The Road Less Traveled

It was 1982 and we had been married for less than a year. I was a secretary at a plastics company and Ken was working at a big telephone cable plant in Norcross, when we decided to do the unthinkable. I quit my job. Ken had been changed over to evening shift (3:30 pm to 11:30 pm). We were going to be two ships literally passing in the night. We wanted to start a family soon and I wanted to stay at home with our babies, so it was prudent to either learn to live on what we made or work and save money until then. We had already seen that we liked spending everything, rather than save, so why not do the former? 

I had no idea how strongly the opinions would fly in my direction. The ladies I worked with told me I would be bored out of my mind, that I would be back, that being a homemaker was for the birds. There were mean comments about how I was doing Ken a disservice. A former teacher ran into me at the gym and told me she was disappointed in me, that she saw me doing greater things. There were family members who thought we were going to just go off the deep end. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

They underestimated us. After I served my notice, I went through a week of detox. I had a massive headache every day, until I realized I was coming down off a coffee addiction. Then I got to work. Before we had our first baby, I learned: how to paint walls and trim; how to stencil (the current artsy craze of the time); how to cook; how to garden; I painted and drew pictures for gifts and our walls; learned calligraphy; went to Bible study and garnered lots of wisdom from older women; learned how to manage my home (well, haphazardly); how to strip and refinish furniture; read books on decorating, home construction, crafting, as well as all the classic novels I overlooked in school; I began to hone my artistic soul and learn (and experience) the many possibilities where God had gifted me. I didn't watch TV and eat bon-bons, except on Thursday night when Night Court came on at 10:00. There was too much to do to waste time on watching someone else live. Ken trusted and gave me the gift of supporting me while I learned how to support him in what are considered unconventional ways now. We went on to have four children, homeschooled them for nineteen years, and ran down roads less traveled. I continued to learn and add to my skill set. I have had numerous careers within our irregular life together, many lucrative and some of them not, but done in a crazy melding of our Norton world, not a separate boxed-in cage where I might lose my sanity. I have worked in an "official" office for approximately three of our 36 years together and I never felt closer to the loony bin than then. Meanwhile, the incredible value of learning how to do things ourselves has cut all manner of corners and saved us tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds. I am eternally grateful for all the folks we have learned from, both in example and actual hands-on training.  

People underestimate the power of this kind of education. I always thought I'd go back to college after my last child finished...go and get an art degree or maybe an interior design degree. I still might. But I've got about 50 canvases to fill up, there's a couple of books I simply have to finish writing, and oh yeah, there's eight grandkids now and we like to hang out and paint in my studio. Too bad I didn't do greater things...