Angie’s Memoir Project – Page 3

Betty Burns

Betty Burns, 2003-05

While we were living in Texas, we adopted local aunts, uncles, and grandparents for our children. One of our favorite adopted grandmothers was Betty Burns. Our friendship began when she was assigned to visit me every month as a visiting teacher. She will always be one of my favorites. She came every month and taught me the gospel and loved our children.

Betty lived in a small apartment and had limited means, but she lived with generosity. She joined our family activities naturally, coming to dinners, lunches, and a road trip. If the kids were a little grumpy, she was there to diffuse the situation with a grandmotherly laugh which taught me not to react in a negative way.

Paige invited Betty to her 8th birthday dinner. We have a video of Betty as Paige opened her handmade gift, an apron with ballerinas printed on the fabric. Baby Timothy pelted her with a balloon and she just laughed at the little boy’s painless attacks.

Baptisms and baby blessings can be lonely when you live far from family and they can’t make the trip to attend. Along with my parents and Rob’s family, Betty and a few other friends came to Paige’s baptism. I felt overwhelmed by support. Betty’s attendance at the baptism sealed her adoption in my heart, along with the other friends who were there.

One January day she invited the kids and me to her apartment to see her decorations. She had been sick during December and hadn’t been able to decorate her house for Christmas, so she decided to do it in January instead. We walked in to a cozy scene with nativities of many kinds everywhere. The festive decorations trailed all the way through her apartment, not just in her living room. She told us stories of where her nativities were purchased and let the kids touch them. I realized that this wasn’t just a casual visit: we were her special guests, invited to celebrate Christmas with her. She presented me with a large box and we opened it to find a beautiful porcelain and gold Nativity from Dillard’s inside. This nativity has a place in our home each year.

Betty was my ally. She cheered me on in my efforts at church and with our children. I have kept all of her notes to me during those years. They are full of encouragement, clothed in thanks. I was in my late twenties and she was in her seventies, and she could move among the roles of mentor and elder to friend and confidant. I needed this nurturing at this time in my life, especially because I was serving as the Relief Society president and had a responsibility to nurture many people in our church congregation. I think she needed our children, and our children needed her. One of their favorite memories of Betty was when Richard took the kids to her apartment to fix her computer. She fed them ice cream at dinnertime, as any good grandmother does.

What did I learn from Betty? I learned generosity in friendship and faithfulness in visiting teaching. I learned that generosity needn’t spring from a healthy bank account. She showed me in endless ways that she cared. I learned that generations need each other. With her laugh and attention to our kids, she influenced me to view them in a more precious way, not being so hasty to correct them. I learned that the important relationship with grandparents can be filled by someone who isn’t related to us.

Thank you, dear Betty.

They Looked to their Mothers

Our children perform piano pieces in front of judges once or twice a year. I think it makes the piano teachers happy to have some validation for their efforts. I also think that these events push the kids to work harder and achieve a higher level of mastery. I’ve seen my children blossom under pressure and falter under pressure. I experience it with them, whatever the result.

One year at a judging event, I sat in a different place in the audience than I ever had before. Normally the audience faces a profile of the student and if you’re lucky, you can be on the side of the audience where you can watch their fingers fly over the keys. At this school where the judging was taking place, the audience surrounded the piano in a half circle in a choir room. I watched the pianists play through a window created by the raised grand piano lid. Framed by a wooden support and lid, I had a full view of their faces.

I watched many children perform through this new window and I noticed something I hadn’t seen from a profile view. Almost without exception, when a child ended his piece, he looked immediately to his mother.

They looked to their mothers, not the judges, not their peers. I met my two boys’ looks with silent, fervent approval and encouragement to carry them through the long pause while the judges made their notes between pieces. My inaudible support included a pantomime to remind them to breathe. I watched the other parents in their silent motions and expressions do the same.

I’ll always believe that the best honors go to mothers, and it’s not in the usual form of great accolades or certificates. It’s in the form of hastily-crayoned words on a lopsided, handmade heart; it’s being the person the child runs to when in danger, during sickness, or in times of worry; it’s being the person they want to talk to when something goes really well; it’s in their looks of vulnerable hope, framed under the piano lid, hoping to find encouragement. It’s enough for me to see my children look to me in times of trouble or excitement to know how important my job is.

Our First Teen Party

Our first teen party involving boys and girls took us by surprise one night in early 2015. Daniel asked if he could invite some friends over to play games in an hour. I assumed that Daniel was having another game night with the guys, which happens often enough. Daniel went to parties all the time with boys and girls, but never at our house. I had decided that our house was never going to be a magnet for teens. Among Daniel’s friends, you will find homes with a media room, pool, trampolines, ping pong, and pool tables. We have lots of books and a piano. I thought that ours could be the “bakery house” and I began preparing chocolate chip bar cookies to serve in an hour.

Soon the doorbell rang and in walked a girl with long blonde hair with some pink or purple streaks through it. I was so surprised that I just nodded to her from the sink, speechless until I finally spurted out a little hello as she disappeared down the stairs. Mark and Timothy hurried to me in tandem, eyes wide, and nostrils a little flared. “Who is THAT?” one whispered, clearly amused and looking a little mischievous.

Collecting myself, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal, I said, “That’s just Gamuhmuh (mumbled)… or somebody.” The truth was, I didn’t know this girl that just walked down to our basement with our 15-year-old son. I was unprepared to see girls coming in the house. No way was I ready to go downstairs to introduce myself, but I tried to listen for hints of what was going on. Now and then I heard the girl laugh. Everyone but this girl was a half an hour late to the party. I wondered if anyone else would show up. I was grateful that I had some cookies baking in the oven. This, at least, would be a way that I could naturally enter the conversation as I served cookies later. How could this girl have such an unsettling influence on me? Who was the adult here?

More kids showed up at the door, some familiar, but others strangers to me. My confidence wavered a little as each rang the bell, but I put on a confident face and smiled and waved from the kitchen as their heads disappeared behind the banister as they walked downstairs. When the sounds of male and female laughter continued to drift upstairs, I felt relieved that they were having fun. I began to think that it could be nice having Daniel’s friends over at our house for a change. I prepared the cookies on a plate and invited them to come upstairs.

I tried to remember all the things that make teenagers cringe about their parents. I decided to be the present, but silent type and try not to be one of them. It took me five minutes to fail with that plan in an uncomfortable attempt to joke around with one of the boys. Yes, I reminded myself, I would need to be the present, silent type of parent for sure. As they ate their snacks in the kitchen, I sat in the next room trying to be invisible. We were watching a movie, but all I could focus on was the flirting going on in the kitchen. The memories of my teenage attempts at interaction at game parties came back to me with clarity: I had been just like these kids. My hair had been bigger, but I was the same. And the empathy of the moment caused me some pain and a little amusement. It is hard to be a teenager.

There have been many parties, movie nights, and kids hanging out at our house since then. In the early days, I did bake, but I don’t always do that now. That first night, I learned from Daniel that they loved the baked goods; the girls liked my decorations; the house smelled good. It was a pleasant surprise to see that having a few girls over to the house made Daniel more aware of my efforts in homemaking and entertaining. I basked in the praise and the satisfaction that we can host a fun night for teens at the Ross home.

Louie Stories, 2008

Over several months when Timothy was 5 years old, I told him stories from my own imagination, shared in small installments each night in the dark. Sometimes he would ask me to repeat a story, and this would be a challenge because I didn’t write them down. My stories were about the adventures of a young mouse named Louie. When you are a third child and second son, few things come to you that aren’t hand-me-downs. Louie stories were my original, individualized gift to Timothy each night.

We lay on his pillow together at bedtime and Timothy would say, “Mom, can I have a Louie?” and remind me where we left off in the story the night before. While I spun my stories, Mark nestled in his blankets in the crib at the foot of Timothy’s bed. For those few months, Mark didn’t need me at bedtime and I could give Timothy some one-on-one attention. I avoided cutting my hair at this time because twirling it seemed to be linked to Timothy’s feelings of security at night.

I wrote a synopsis of Louie’s world that year to help me to remember it.

Louie is a young brown mouse living in the middle of a neighborhood in an empty lot. His neighborhood is friendly, with houses all around. Although there are people living around Louie, most of them do not know he is there. He has a few people friends but most things Louie does happen when people aren’t looking. It’s just safer that way. Louie’s best friend is a cat named Jack who lives up the street. Jack is an old orange cat who is too tired to chase mice anymore and often lets Louie ride on his back as Louie looks for adventures around the neighborhood.

In Louie’s world, a Cheerio is a full meal; trash left behind by humans is treasure; friends are those he can trust with the secret whereabouts of his house and family. His mom loves to see that Louie is well fed with interesting meals such as half a grape and a goldfish cracker or a Cheerio with a half an M&M for dessert. Louie’s mom also sees that Louie is tucked in at night and gets his rest.

Louie’s dad goes to the dump each day to forage for the family. Louie often goes along with his dad to the dump to find interesting and useful items to use around the mouse house. They dig into trash bags to find food to eat or lumber for the latest project. Popsicle sticks are an especially helpful find. Transportation to the dump is important, since Louie can’t scurry that far without getting exhausted. It’s a hilly road leading to the dump, and the well-worn roller skate makes for a great ride downhill.

The park is another place that Louie enjoys visiting. He has a possum friend who lives in the park trash can and there is a whole network of tunnels under the park where the park mice have dug nests and dens. Who knows if this is what real mice do? But in our stories, mice like tunneling. Louie visits mice friends named Sam and Rosie in the tunnels and an old, eccentric scientist mouse who keeps a helpful stash of batteries in his den.

Childhood bedtime rituals are as powerful as they are temporary. We both loved the Louie stories, but one night we stopped sharing them. Months went by and when I pondered what to give Timothy for Christmas, I decided to type up the stories and print them out in a book for him. Putting them in writing narrowly reflects the impromptu details and tenderness that accompanied their creation. They are merely echoes of one of the details of mothering, but for the memory of his childhood that that they represent, I am grateful.

The Engagement Ring, 1995

When Richard proposed, he gave me a diamond solitaire. He said that we would reset the diamond in a setting that I chose. I had never thought about wedding rings and the diamond was more than I would have chosen for myself. It was beautiful. One day someone came up to my counter where I was working at the mall and caught me admiring it. I didn’t see them there because I had hypnotized myself with the patterns of light reflecting from the facets of the diamond. When I looked up, startled, the customer just smiled and said something like, “My, what a pretty ring you have.” My face probably became ashen and then crimson within seconds.

Richard and I shopped around at several jewelry stores to see what we wanted. I decided that I wanted a simple wedding band with small diamonds to go with the solitaire. The jeweler that Richard had used was in Salt Lake City, so after we decided what we liked, we needed to travel there to have the setting made.

We left campus on a dreary January day as soon as our classes were over, around noon, to drive to Salt Lake City to make the final arrangements for our wedding rings. We were in Richard’s small red Toyota hatchback. As we drove north, the weather grew worse. Wet, slushy snow was falling and we hit a patch of ice on the freeway. We slid, spinning, from the far right lanes, across the freeway, to land on the far left side, our car facing oncoming traffic. I don’t know how we were so isolated that we didn’t hit anyone and Richard was able to right the car before we were hit. This happened one more time on that trip, with nearly the same spin and the same miraculous result of no harm.

I was young and that feeling of invincibility hadn’t worn off. I knew that we had been in a scary situation, but I didn’t marvel enough at the time how we had been protected.

The day’s adventure continued when we stepped into the jeweler’s shop and selected the setting, a wedding band, and Richard’s ring. The jeweler quickly set my diamond in the new setting while we waited. I had gathered almost all of my savings from the bank and carried it in cash to buy Richard’s ring. When I handed the man the cash, he seemed uncomfortable to handle it and excused himself to try to find some change at the restaurant next door. I didn’t have a credit card and his behavior made me feel foolish and immature, like a little girl who had broken her piggy bank full of pennies and nickels and dumped them on his counter. That wasn’t far from the truth. It was my savings from my childhood. I learned that day that when you’re buying fine jewelry, it’s best to use a credit card.

Richard reassured me that it was okay. He was good at that. As we drove back to Provo, we didn’t have any more trouble with ice. We were one step closer to being married and after my mortification over the cash was over, I could enjoy the new ring on my finger.

Bags for Every Occasion

Bags for every occasion

Let me confess to you my naïveté about women’s handbags of any kind. I didn’t know that there was a world of high fashion bags until I was in my late twenties. Petunia Pickle Bottom bags weren’t invented when I bought my first diaper bag. When I became a mother, I went down to Kmart and bought a mint green diaper bag with pastel animals printed all over it. I had no opinions about diaper bags until I got home from that shopping trip.

Someone looked at my new bag and said, “I’ve always felt that the bag should reflect the taste of the mother, not her baby.”

“Ouch,” I thought, and never felt good about that bag after that.

There was a Louis Vuitton purse in my mom’s closet in 1997 that was a hand-me-down from my Great-aunt Susan. My mom didn’t like the purse and gave it to me. I was looking for a bag that could hold diapers without looking like a diaper bag since my mint green bag was juvenile, apparently. After a few months I realized that this cavernous purse without pockets didn’t suit my needs. It wasn’t attractive to me, so I donated it to charity along with some worn out clothes. Later, I learned that the bag was worth hundreds of dollars. (Facepalm.)

One of the most important bags that I have carried as a mother is the church bag. In the mothers’ room at church I learned from other women that plastic bags, multiple changes of clothes, and blankets were necessary for the newborn. When babies became toddlers and didn’t want to sit still, the church bag carried anything that would entertain.

For a typical week at church when the kids were young I would load my long-handled, fabric church bag with our Baby Bible, a bag of dry cereal, sippy cups, extra pacifiers, diapers, wipes, and toys, toys, toys. We had child-sized etch-a-sketches, magnetic paper dolls, fabric swatches to make dresses on princesses, sewing cards with laces, Bible cards, Book of Mormon games, puzzles, and markers that wouldn’t mark anything but their allotted book.

When Mark was born, Richard sat on the stand each Sunday with the bishop during sacrament meeting. I had 4 children to keep quiet on my own, so I got more inventive. Into the church bag went Great-grandma’s heirloom costume jewelry and porcelain dog. I let the children hold these if they were very good. Many children can hold precious things carefully, and this is an exercise in reverence. I filled plastic Easter eggs with small surprises. I purchased handfuls of hand puppets and finger puppets. I cut out felt books of stories from the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

I wouldn’t carry all of my tricks at once. I would rotate them in and out of the bag week by week. If I took the time to load the bag with plenty of quiet activities, not cars and action figures, the kids were more reverent. I learned that cereals with a lot of sugar were not a good idea because the kids would be grumpy after they ate these. I tried to serve snacks in the hallway before sacrament meeting so we weren’t crinkling wrappers and the kids didn’t learn to expect food when we sat in the chapel. These ideas, typed out in front of me now, seem like basic wisdom, but I they were hard-earned.

I have carried many bags over the years, but the diaper bag and church bag have been the most important. When I hear a young child upset at church I still look in my bag to find something to entertain. Unfortunately, my church bag just has pens and paper in it now. And it still doesn’t reflect my incredibly classy taste. Also, to those young mothers who have a Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag, good for you. All of you. A good bag, well-stocked, whether it is pretty or not, can make all the difference.

Books!

Some books we read and what it did for our family

I learned from my mother to make time to read to children. My favorite memories of my mother are when she read to us, and my picture of motherhood wasn’t complete without reading books aloud. I haven’t been good about early bedtimes, perfect nutrition, and many other things, but I have been good about reading aloud.

There are some books on our shelf that I could probably say from memory: The Muppet Babies Book of Shapes; The Pokey Little Puppy; The Cat in the Hat; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. So few Caldecott and Newberry Award winners were among our favorites from early childhood! The Three Little Pigs, The Little Golden Book of Sounds, The Egg Book, and other simple stories were enough to keep our little people happy. Library trips would bring lavishly illustrated and poetically versed books to our home, but these weren’t the favorites of the very young. It was just Hop on Pop and The Three Little Kittens for us.

Reading calmed my children, gave us time to snuggle, and became part of the bedtime routine. One day in Texas I discovered that I could read to the children and think about other things at the same time. This time of mental escape when the kids were quiet and happy was a blessing. Although my mind sometimes wandered during the early years of Dr. Seuss books, I kept reading because my mother had done the same for me and I loved her for it.

Treasure Island, Johnny Tremain, The Hobbit, Tom Sawyer, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy are some of the books that I introduced to the kids at a young age. I noticed that my children have returned to these books on their own to enjoy them again. It doesn’t matter how old the children are, if it’s a good book, they’ll sit around and listen to me read it.

Some of my instinct to gather my children close around me is helped by good literature. I have grown closer to my children by giving 20 or 30 minutes at a time to read aloud. I’ve traveled through the stories with them and watched their wonder and laughter. As they grow older, I see that reading aloud is a good catalyst for conversation with kids who don’t feel like talking.

I hope each child carries a memory of me reading books aloud. I hope that when they think of me, they see me with a book not too far from reach. My personal reading has helped me in my parenting to be more informed, centered, and entertained. I’ve filled the house with books, ready for discovery and rediscovery. Having a house full of well-read books is one way that this quiet mother says, “I love you.”

When I asked the kids in 2015 which books they loved best from early childhood, this is the list they came up with:

A Bargain for Frances

Another Monster at the End of this Book

Are You My Mother?

Black Beauty

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

Chrysanthemum

Corduroy

Dinosaur Days

Fire, Fire!

Firetruck

Goodnight Moon

Guess How Much I Love You

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb

I Can Dress Myself

Jessica

Little Golden Books (any of them)

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

Muppet Babies Be Nice

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

Richard Scarry’s Busy Workers

Royal Diaries Series: Queen Elizabeth

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch

Tell Me Again about the Night I Was Born

The Dot

The Hobbit

The Little Red Hen

The Lord of the Rings series

The Pea

The Quiltmaker’s Gift

The Raft

The Ugly Duckling

The Very Quiet Cricket

Tiki Tiki Tembo

The Austin Backyard

The Austin Backyard, 1998-2005

The jingle of the swings’ chains was a natural accompaniment to outdoor play in our Austin yard. Backs arching, toes reaching above the fence, eyes trained to catch glimpses of the field beyond the fence, Paige and Daniel soared. Days in Austin felt heavy with moist air and heat. Clouds, creating a blank white, arching cover on the skies, were a blessing because they shielded us from the sun.

When Paige began school, the poem, “The Swing” by Robert Lewis Stevenson was her first memorization project. She recited it on the swing with natural soaring expressions as her toes reached for the clouds.

There was a bucket swing for babies, with two holes for chubby legs. Baby Timothy’s feet, socks dangling from his toes as he kicked in his swing, are a detail from memory that I can only associate with him.

Parents of the neighbor children joined us to visit while their children played, our conversations sometimes interrupted by requests for an “underdog” where a parent would run beneath the child, lifting the child on the swing high above the head. For those moments when our children were in the swings, they were happy and their needs were simple.

In summer, the three crape myrtle tress along the back fence erupted into vivid pink blossoms; this vibrant color gleaned from such poor, shallow soil and heat was a miracle of Texas ingenuity.

Late afternoons and early evenings were best for backyard play because our west-facing house created full shade at this time of day. The heat wasn’t the only challenge in Texas. There were also fire ants. The swings kept young feet safe from the fire ants lurking in the dirt. These ants, with their mob-like dynamics of swarm-and-sting were the perpetual enemy. Turning on the hose was the fastest, surest way to remove fire ants when they bit and stung little feet and legs. Daniel’s reactions to ant bites were the most severe, and sometimes he would have pussy blisters between his toes. Sometimes the kids put on their long rubber boots to avoid ant bites as they played.

The large cement patio was always littered with sidewalk chalk, balls, and child-propelled vehicles. There was a plastic play house with a half door and windows with shutters. The patio was like a stage, elevated enough that we could see it from the field behind the house and the street, Bratton Lane beyond the field. Coming home from errands on Bratton Lane I could look to the patio and see our children playing outside.

As the children grew, we decided to add a trampoline to the yard. The swing set was dismantled when we moved to Arizona, in hopes that it would be rebuilt someday, but it wasn’t. There wasn’t enough space in our new yard. I called this one of the casualties of our move.

The trampoline remained a part of our yard in Arizona, but it became a casualty of our move to Utah. During the move, we unpacked the swings and placed them on the garage shelf, like a memorial. The hope that they will be used again dims each year. You will also find our trampoline poles in a pile in the backyard, the once happy trappings of childhood play, now just a haphazard monument to those earlier days.

Our yards in Arizona and Utah were beautiful and unique, but playing in Austin on the swings against the pink canvas of blossoming trees was a wonderful beginning.

To the Rescue with Children

This week I am in charge of a funeral luncheon and there are several sisters in poor health in my congregation. I was trying to think of how to meet so many needs and I remembered this adventure from my memoir project. I’m grateful that our children are old enough to take care of themselves this week!

To the Rescue with Children, 2003

Our phone rang almost all of the time during the years that I served as the president of the Relief Society in my church in Austin. On this day in 2003, the call was from a woman who needed me to pick up her son from school because he was sick. She was a bus ride away from home and had no way to pick him up. Her son lived with many disabilities and I was on the list of people who had permission to pick him up from school.

I looked down at my three young children, ages a few months to age 6. How was I going to pick up this boy with all of these kids in tow? I had many people who helped watch the children during these years, but finding a sitter wasn’t always possible. Today I didn’t have time to call around for help; the boy needed to be picked up right away. I loaded the kids into the van and drove to the high school.

It was a cool, blank-skied Texas spring afternoon with some rain. My mind dashed among the incompatible players in this situation. Should I bring the kids into the school? I couldn’t believe that this was a good idea. I needed both of my hands to help the boy to the car. What if he was angry and unwilling to come with me? I tried to shield my children from a lot of the anger and grief I saw as I did my Relief Society work. The cool rain gently spattered the windshield as I pulled into the school, still with no solution.

I looked at my children in the rear view mirror and spied a blanket in the back seat. As I gathered up baby Timothy I told Paige and Daniel, ages six and three to hide under the blanket while I was gone. I didn’t want anyone to notice the abandoned children in our van. This was not a smart solution. But it was all I could do. Any other solution would have meant leaving them alone for a longer period of time. I didn’t worry about their safety as much as what people might think if they saw them. I became a mother in the early years of the attachment parenting movement which evolved into helicopter parenting. The cultural reflex to judge a parent harshly when children are seen alone, even in a cool car with its doors locked, caused me more angst than was helpful for the kids.

Those ten minutes while I collected the boy from school were filled with guilt and frustration. I was relieved that he didn’t need to be coaxed into coming with me because he was interested in the baby I had tied against me in a sling.

My children probably remember my work with this family because I would abandon them to do it. “Play in this tree while I go inside this house, kids,” and, “Hide under this blanket while I go and fetch this boy from the high school,” and “Have fun with Grandma and Dad while I go for a visit!” I hope that I was able to frame these maneuvers as adventures to them.

Refinishing the Piano

Refinishing the Piano, 1998

A recurring theme in my journal from my years of marriage is my desire to be accepted by my mother-in-law. She has been welcoming and generous to me, but any suggestion she has made has sunk deep into my soul.

“You should refinish that piano,” she said, when she saw the piano in our apartment in Provo, just months after Richard and I were married. She told me about her experiences refinishing pianos and other pieces of furniture. My mother-in-law’s laundry room was full of paints, stains, chemicals, and potions for the application and removal of anything.

The piano was a nearly 100-year-old Kimball, tall and heavy, that my dad acquired when I was a teenager. For many years, my dad loaned it to families in the neighborhood so their children could have an instrument. When I was married, the piano came to me.

It had a deep cherry stain but no piano bench. Years of sitting in homes without a bench left it with some chips in the finish below the fingerboard where chairs had been pushed against it. Richard’s mother gave us the piano bench that Richard made for her in high school and pushed it beneath the keys.

On a later visit, Richard’s mother showed me how to take apart the piano in a further effort to convince me to refinish it. My over-active self-doubt and desire to please her haunted me as we finished college in that apartment. I had no time to refinish a piano, but its chipped surface and the idea that I should fix it really bothered me. We had our baby shortly after I graduated from BYU, and now I really felt I had no time to refinish a piano with an infant to care for and Richard finishing a graduate degree and working in a lab.

We moved to Texas in 1997 and Richard began the first job of his career at National Instruments. I felt the stretch of motherhood at this time pretty fully. I had had my first exposure to the antics of a 15-18-month-old during that first year in Texas, far from family and among uninitiated friends. It’s been true for most of my children: at age 15 months, they begin whining, become more demanding, and make a lot of trouble for the next several months.

In my frustration, I turned to religious music. I took Paige on walks and blew lots of bubbles and built block towers, but she was still whiny and destructive. I decided that having only one focus (my baby) wasn’t working. I decided to refinish that piano.

The hardware store had low-fume chemicals to begin the process of taking off the finish. I decided not to worry about the mess and the fact that I had a toddler to entertain. The winter Olympics were on and I spent days with the television turned to winter sports as I worked during Paige’s naps and beyond. As I focused on scraping the old finish from the wood, she learned to entertain herself. She liked playing on the piano and seeing what it looked like inside. The sliding door of our apartment was always open that winter during the project to vent out the fumes. I grew to love a warm Texas winter.

Next time you see a piano, take some time to study it. There are so many pieces. Some you can remove. Others you can’t. Count the crevices and indentations. This project took me a long time. For months, we had a partially dismantled, partially bare wood piano. I can still hear the sickening slap of the brush applying the noxious chemical stripper to the wood. I can remember the bubbling of the stain as the chemicals seeped in. I wore long rubber gloves as I scraped the red finish off with a putty knife and collected the bacon-like strips of the old stuff in my hands. Bag after bag of soggy, orange-red paint and stain exited our apartment during those months. When Richard left for a week-long Scout camp in Tennessee that summer, I spent the nights pushing myself to finish the project. When he walked in the door a week later, the piano was finished; no longer cherry red, and showing a beautiful wood grain.

The refinished piano moved with us three times, to a house in Texas, a house in Arizona, and another house in Arizona. After we bought a grand piano in 2007, we sent the old Kimball to my sister Susan. I tried to plant a seed as I said to her, “Make some kind of improvement on it before you pass it on. Perhaps you could start by replacing the covers on those chipped keys.” I am not sure if my words haunt her, but I know she will be glad if she makes a couple of improvements to it.

In the end, I didn’t refinish the piano to please my mother-in-law. In fact, I don’t remember what she said when she saw that I had done it! I refinished the piano for myself. I have my mother-in-law to thank for the idea and some guidance. I learned a skill and a life lesson: be creative. Always be building or making something. Don’t give yourself to your family so much that you forget to create. Perhaps she wanted to teach me the satisfaction of such a project. I am a better mother and wife when I have something to work on outside of childcare and house work.