Dawn Byrne: humor

Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts

Typically a man of quiet spirit, my husband morphs into Mr. Christmas after we take down our Thanksgiving decorations. It's like he's saved up all his playful fervor behind a mask of reserve all year. And then, bam! Passing neighborhood children stop to gawk at his obsession—oversized hollow figures that light up, including a complete nativity scene. The baby Jesus is his most challenging piece, requiring not only a stake of wood like the larger pieces, but also wire to strap him in.

I've seen dormant competitive streaks awaken during this time of year, and it peaks with my husband Joe. “Kathleen's got her manger scene out already,” he said coming home from a drive by his sister's lawn.

I played along, taking my husband's side of course. “Yours is always bigger and brighter.”

“She didn't strap down the baby Jesus. It might blow away.”

“You've told her before and she didn't listen. When she has to pay $50 for a new one like you did, then she'll learn.” I am jealous of his sister. They have a shared childhood history in a tight Philadelphia row home neighborhood cementing their relationship. It sometimes makes me feel like an outsider.

December is always a blur of happy busyness. But come early January, the excitement of retro childhood fantasy dissipates as the decorations come down.

We were leaving Kathleen's home on January 6^th one year, after a 50^th birthday celebration and reminiscing. Joe checked his sister's nativity scene as we passed it on our way down her porch steps. “She's lucky no one stole her baby Jesus. She didn't zip-tie him tight enough to the manger.”

I hated to see my husband's playful side go back into storage for another eleven months. His antics with his sister back inside the house was infectious, inspiring me to become an accomplice.

“Take it,” I goaded as we strolled along Kathleen's driveway to the sidewalk.

Joe laughed. “No.” He stole a glance to see if his sister had gone inside.

“Why not?” I pushed. “I dare you.”

He stopped and said, “She'll need it for next year.”

“Joe, you'll give it back.” I knew he was thinking she'd be as upset as he was when our original one was stolen. “And you can leave a note or call her in a disguised voice saying you're holding him for ransom.” I could tell he was interested. “Come on. She'll know it's you right away. And she'll love the fun you'll have with her.”

St. Joseph said no more and adopted his sister's plastic doll for a year. We hid it in our home and took it out for photo opportunities. The first photo I snapped was of Joe behind the wheel of his pick-up with the doll atop the truck above his head. He's smiling as if about to drive away unaware of it. He left the picture inside Kathleen's mailbox.

Joe works in a rail yard, so he brought the poor baby to work and put him on the tracks. Click. That photo arrived at his sister's with a playfully written suggestion.

We also used the doll to lighten up a serious family situation. Our daughter was admitted to the hospital and needed emergency surgery. We brought the doll to her hospital room. I saw a twinkle in her eye as she mustered a smile while posing with the abducted plastic. Her smile gave way to chuckles when her dad took another picture of the thing on the windowsill as a helicopter landed on its pad just outside. The note attached to this picture was most fun because our recovering daughter and her visitors helped write it.

There's a picture of the baby Jesus presented to the camera by Kathleen's own teenagers, taken at Easter time when they stopped by to visit our teens.

Kathleen responded to the fun by taping a poster of her missing decoration to a milk carton and passing it around to family who knew all about the prank.

The year of the missing nativity piece extended family playfulness in such a uniting way that surrendering the hostage was almost sad. But as preparations for the next Christmas began, Joe returned the decoration with gratitude for the love—and mischievous streak—of his family.

"Merry Christmas!" by Mr. Ducke is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Our grandson yelled “Pop’s here,” and ran toward us as we entered our oldest daughter’s home. Zack halted in front of me. I was in his way to get to Pop, who was coming through the door behind me. I slyly blocked Pop, who was in cahoots with me, hiding behind my back. I had gotten used to playing second-fiddle to my husband around the grandchildren and found ways to have fun with it.

Priscilla came up behind her son as I snorted. Familiar with the scene, she said, “Zack, say hi to Grandma.”

Zack's excitement to greet Pop had made me invisible. Only after Pop had lifted, flipped and put Zack back down, did our grandson focus on me. I materialized into a person in the space where he had only seen a barrier to Pop. Keeping an eye on Pop, Zack gave me a hug and allowed me to kiss his towhead. I love the unabashed sincerity of a three-year-old.

When Zack’s sister was three, she preferred visiting Pop at home. Priscilla dropped Mia off, and she bee-lined straight to Pop. I grinned as she whooshed past me and tipped back her head to his face towering over her yo-yoing curls, her miniature body wiggling with anticipation in front of Pop.

Pop and Mia began their play with a favorite drama. Mia magically put Pop to sleep. He stretched out on the couch, pulled his baseball cap over his eyes, and started snoring. Mia snuck up to sleeping Pop and cried, “Wake up, wake up,” shaking his arm.

Surprised Pop called, “Who woke me up?” Mia bounced, giggling. Pop squinted at her. “Did YOU wake me up?” That was her que to begin casting her sleep spell again.

When the game lost its novelty, Pop’s hat drew Mia’s attention. Instead of waking him, she grabbed the brim and whipped it off Pop’s bald head.

He sat up. “Give me back my hat, you monkey.” Pop shook his finger at Mia, like the salesman in the children’s book Caps for Sale did to monkeys who stole his caps. I had read the classic to Mia during another visit when Pop needed a rest.

Mia tossed Pop’s hat back onto his head. It landed with the brim to the side instead of facing forward. Pop didn’t fix it. I snickered at the new style along with Mia.

Wobbling his head, he announced, “I’m G-Pop.” He caught an imaginary microphone from the air and started raping. “G-Pop’s in the house. Yeah, yeah. It’s G-Pop.”

Mia got her invisible microphone and rapped along to the song, putting her name into the lyrics. Pop added a turntable to their air performance and scratched a pretend beat to their original composition. “It’s Mia and G-Pop comin’ at ya. Yeah, yeah.” As their audience, I laughed so hard I had to run to the bathroom.

Priscilla arrived to take Mia home. Still wound up, Mia said, “Mommy, I don’t wanna go home. I wanna play music with Pop.” She continued her pogo dance rap.

Pop pulled his baseball cap’s brim forward. “You have to get ready to go home now.”

Mia turned the brim to the side again and picked up where her performance had left off.

Pop swiveled the brim to its original position. “It’s time to go, Mia.” He stood up when she reached for the cap. Mia climbed onto the couch next to where Pop stood. Again, she tried to slide the brim and bring back G-Pop.

Priscilla lifted Mia from the couch onto the floor. She got down to Mia’s level and explained in a calm voice, “Mia, it’s time to go home. We’ll visit Grandma and Pop again soon.”

Mia stepped away from Priscilla and said, “But I don’t wanna go home. Me and Pop are playin’.”

“It’s getting late and you’re tired. Pop’s tired too.” Priscilla shouldered Mia’s bag of playthings that we hadn’t opened. She went to take Mia’s hand, but Mia pulled away.

“I don’t wanna go home.” Mia cried angry, tired little girl tears.

Priscilla wrangled her and said a quick good-bye to me and Pop. She carried Mia through the house as I followed with Pop hiding behind me. At the front door, we plopped quick kisses onto Priscilla and Mia’s perspiring foreheads.

Mia let out an insistent wail. “I wanna stay with G-Pop.”

All three of us adults tried masking our laughter. But we couldn’t do it. Our mirth made Mia’s volume rise. “I want G-Pop” echoed through our house and blew out the front door from our daughter’s arms.

Pop and I have another grandchild who’s a big fan of G-P.

Arriving at my pregnant daughter’s house to babysit, I anticipated Malcom’s usual greeting. As I came through the back door, he ran into the kitchen and stopped in front of me with rosy cheeks. “Hi, Malcom,” I said.

He scanned the kitchen, let out a breath and asked, “Where’s Pop?” Was he accusing me of purposefully leaving Pop at home? Malcom stepped closer and looked up at me suspiciously, “Pop’s working?”

“No, he’s busy today, honey.” I expected him to accept this and settle for playing a board game. Pop didn’t enjoy games that came in a box as much as Grandma. And Malcom loved them.

He looked me up and down, avoiding my face. Like he was frisking me with his eyes. Didn’t he believe that Pop wasn’t in the house? Or in Grandma’s pocket? Maybe he couldn’t understand Pop and I weren’t physically connected when Pop wasn’t at work.

His disappointment made me feel bad for the little guy. He really enjoyed being with his pop. “Mommy told me you got a new game. Topple,” I said. Malcom had a knack for balancing things. He astounded us standing a credit card on the slim, shallow lip of their fireplace guard, and stacking blocks higher than children his age usually had the ability to do.

Malcom turned away and walked into the living room explaining how to play the new game. That was my invitation to follow him. Our outbursts, when the pieces fell, weren’t as raucous as over Pop’s antics. But Pop’s fan seemed to enjoy our focused play as much as I did.

None of my grandchildren ever threw a tantrum when they had to leave me. But they come to Grandma to do home experiments, when they need juice, or want to go on an adventure walk. I must admit, I also fan over G-Pop. As his sidekick, I settle for basking in the glow of his popularity. After all, I get to play with him every day.

Last Valentine’s Day, hubby and I bought bedroom carpeting for our love nest. The installation ended with a restoration company repairing a main beam that was cracking underneath our bed. You can read those stories here and here.

This Valentine’s Day, we gave each other a new kitchen floor. Not as romantic as bedroom carpeting. Or as scary as the floor almost collapsing under us while we slept. But, since our elderly house is feeling its age, frustration stymied us again. A sales representative quote $2,140.00 for Luxury Vinyl Plank flooring. This surprised me because our kitchen and pantry are small rooms.

Days later, an installer pointed to the bottom of our crumbling wall at the back door. He said he could put the floor in, but not molding. He needed a solid wall to tack the molding onto. And, no guarantee the strip molding wouldn’t pull away from drywall; strip molding on drywall needs a wood backing. My sales rep. had boasted she was a 16-year veteran of the large flooring company. Why didn’t she mention the crumbling wall when she sized and surveyed our kitchen and pantry? I cancelled.

Hubby repaired the walls. Then, dug out the name of our sales rep. from last year’s carpet installation. This new kitchen floor quote, for the same materials, from the same company, was $1,875.00.

Days after that, the second installer couldn’t put down the LVP because the floor was too unlevel. A supervisor from the large flooring company explained I needed to hire a contractor to install sub-flooring before rescheduling with them to lay the LVP. Once that phone conversation ended, the second installer told me someone from his home improvement company could lay a sub-floor the next day. Hmm.

The large flooring company sub-contracts their installation work to small contractors. I thought the installer was taking a risk; offering me his contracting services. But, after more than a week without my kitchen, I was desperate to get the floor installed so hubby could hook the stove back up.

Next day, all day, one carpenter worked putting down ¼ inch plywood that was supported on the lower areas of the floors with shims. He didn’t cover a small area near the doorway into our dining room. When I asked about it, he said it was okay because the LVP floor installers would cover it. As I walked on the sub-floor, the shims popped. I bounced where the plywood was hollow underneath. Again, the carpenter said it was okay, the new floor would take care of that too. I paid him $684.00. Tire tracks from his truck run along our side yard, and on our front lawn where he did a K-turn.

More days later, a third installer from the large flooring company bounced on the sub-floor. “That’s not a shot you’re hearing, it’s a shim,” he said into his phone to his boss at the large flooring company. The sub-floor had to be taken up and replaced with 7/16 inch material. The third installer took pictures of the business cards of the second installer and the carpenter who worked all day in our kitchen. I also asked him to take a picture of the receipt that I insisted the second installer give me before the ¼ inch sub-floor was laid.

Days after that, the third installer worked with an apprentice for 5 ½ hours. They pulled up the sub-floor, replaced it with 7/16 inch material, laid the LVP, installed wood backing around the bottom of the walls, and tacked strip molding. Thresholds to the basement, back door and dining room are clean. Transition from kitchen to pantry is capped beautifully. Gaps are sealed flawlessly.

The upside is that we got the proper sub-floor for more than $300.00 less than if the large flooring company had originally put it on our bill. Because of their employee’s mistake in selling us the wrong sub-flooring, we weren’t charged the extra money the large flooring company typically requires for sub-flooring. Add this to the money we saved going with the second sales rep., and we saved more than $565.00. However, since we weren’t told we needed a sub-floor to begin with, we put out $684.00 we hadn’t intended.

Initially, going with the large flooring company was disappointing. However, they made good on giving us the floor we wanted and sucked up their loss with the sub-flooring. The saddest take away is the back of the carpenter’s business card. It says ‘Thank You’ above biblical scripture on love.

We started this process in January. It ended after Valentine’s Day. Hubby and I shouldn’t have put pressure, again, on our poor old house to make Valentine’s Day memorable. This day of love, lays enough pressure on relationships, let alone houses.

“Don’t do that again,” said the kind woman at Berman Jewelers in Cherry Hill, NJ after the male behind their counter cut off my wedding and engagement rings. She added a story about someone who was hospitalized and needed his ring removed right away. The hospital had to cut it off. She ended the story with, “And your insurance won’t pay for that.”

Initially I had called two other jewelers about removing my rings. They said they didn’t do that, and suggested the ER or a fire/rescue company. Even though Berman didn’t promise they could remove my rings, they cautioned me that a non-jeweler removing rings could ruin them. Maybe the first two jewelers thought I had an emergency, but I really wish they also mentioned Berman, or another local business that did removals.

I hadn’t taken off my rings since hubby slid them on 35 years ago. That was possible because they’re petite enough where they never got in my way, needed cleaning or repair. But I felt foolish allowing the rings to get stuck. Until Berman told me they remove about 2 to 3 rings from people a week. At least I’m not the only too-sentimental ring wearer. Typically, school rings are the most difficult to remove because of their size and the material some are made from. While on the phone with them, Berman asked me if there was room between my finger and the rings. Their tool needs to fit in there to cut the metal. They suggested I come at 10am when they opened, before my finger had time to swell.

My rings never bothered me. But, the flesh under them hadn’t thickened while the rest of me gradually did. That’s why my left ring finger looks deformed. The woman at Berman said my finger would heal, and to just give it time. That’s a happy surprise. I was wondering how my re-sized rings would fit, look and feel once hubby slipped them back on.

Mom had warned me to get them removed when I first realized they wouldn’t come off. My plan was to lose weight. Yeah, right. The only result was allowing more time for arthritis to set in.

In a week I’ll get back my rings. At first, I habitually reached for them. The experience was something like a ‘ghost limb,’ where I felt myself wearing the rings, but not when I squeezed where they used to be.

Two of my children are getting married. My beloved engagement ring doesn’t compare in size to those gorgeous rings. Hubby asked if I want a new one. I can’t bring myself to say, “I do.” I’m almost in tears thinking of replacing a symbol that shows so clearly who we are and where we came from. The woman jeweler knew almost exactly when hubby bought the rings, and even quoted prices. She also knew they were sold as a trio, the second band being the groom’s. I enjoyed talking with her and the male jeweler. They treated my rings like they were as valuable as the others in their locked showcases.

Insurance isn’t paying for my rings or their removal, but I’m glad I didn’t get in an extreme health situation in which my sentimental rings added to an urgent situation.

My blogging platform supports relationships, self-help, and everyday incidents we chuckle over afterwards. Combining these with my writing process enlightened me.

Anyone in the writing communities I’m connected with describe me as a critique guru. I preach how valuable my experiences have been with allowing (and at times begging) peers to give me honest feedback on written work. I’ve even submitted short blog posts to a writing partner before airing it to the blogosphere.

Yes. I’m insecure about my writing. Afraid to offend, but mostly of making myself look stupid. No one wants to slip on a faux pas, especially when your sister might add it to her list of nay-nah, nay-nah taunts.

I’ve stopped blaming difficulty with grammar, punctuation and sentence structure on my inept education and possible learning disability. I can read: Empowerment enough to gain what’s lacking.

As an introvert, I gather strength from solitude. But I'm dependent on family and friends to keep me focused when I travel too deep into Dawndom. Likewise with writing.

Middle-age hit me in the face with a life clarification mirror, cracking my pride. I could never have raised my children, live healthy or write a book, without help.

Dependency is freedom to write confidently. I don’t have to get it right the first, or second, time. With assistance from reading and writer friends, I can get darn close. Enough to get globally published before really understanding what I was doing.

The acknowledgement section in books affirms this dependence. The more popular a book, the longer its list runs. BAM. Not only the publisher, editor and agent are noted, but also family, writing and critique partners, beta readers, and those who aided in research and inspiration. My name on acknowledgement lists circles back to me in sweet co-dependency.

It takes a village? It took multiple communities to raise this writer. And I still refuse to play the Blame Game. No matter how much assistance I receive, hard work and rejection is shared by all artists, including those manipulating words, white space and punctuation on a paper-thin canvas.

Being flawed, like a good novel character, I reach beyond aloneness. To be happy and productive, I incorporate others in improving myself, as well as my writing.

Uncle John (not my uncle) was a finer grandfather than my biological ones. A close friend to Grandma, Uncle John sat quietly in a corner at family celebrations and get-togethers, always clean shaven, dressed as an informal businessman.

He collected junk throughout the streets of Philadelphia at 4am, pushing a hand-rigged cart in which he piled discarded scraps. Afterwards, at his home, he stripped metals to separate them from other materials before recycling was a household word. Uncle John easily identified any type of metal my siblings and I waved in front of him. So resourceful and hardworking, he hid from most people that he never learned to read.

All five of us kids loved his visits. He always deposited Philly soft pretzels and donuts onto our dining room table. Sometimes, he’d bring small toys for us, and household goods for Mom. But the best things were treasures he found while junking: costume jewelry; broken tools, which he restored; a bolt of material; statuary.

His most valuable trash pick, was a wilted paperback of Erma Bombeck’s book “Motherhood: The World’s Second Oldest Profession.” He couldn’t have known the title or about the author, but Uncle John knew I loved reading. And his timing was perfect. I was a new mother, and never heard of Aunt Erma’s amazing humor writing. From that book, I gained emotional sustenance as a poor mother, by allowing myself to view through humor, situations I was powerless to change. My child-less, non-grandfather, who couldn’t read, introduced me to a writing legend who still inspires today. Reading that first Bombeckian book triggered me to read others. I’m still a fan.

Uncle John’s life is historic. He came to America as a baby, and was adopted by a Jewish family from Germany named Simon. Uncle John never knew his original last name because he couldn’t read his birth certificate. I’m happy Uncle John owned a portrait of himself as a child. Surely, his adoptive parents had it done. I cherish it, and his “hut” he wore to visit us. It sits above my head, on a bookcase, as I type this. Thank you, dear Uncle John, for your interesting life and legacy of love beyond genetics.

Rapidly keying for eight hours alongside rough-looking city mommas, who also worked the mole shift, I didn’t envy our supervisor. She presided over rows of tired women who processed data to earn medical benefits and enough money to pay taxes to the IRS, for whom we typed. The no-nonsense supervisor kept a serious face; our emotional connection to authority might lessen productivity. But the photos on her desk, next to a radio trailing earphones, made me suspected she was a momma like the rest of us. We worked at night to be available to our children during the day.

Amongst the monotonous hours, an occasional chuckle peaked into the air of the vast room. Or, a co-worker’s random hum fell flat on a note from her headset that only she heard. Even though our supervisor didn’t walk the dark city streets alone from a bus stop to get home each night, she proved her grit by maintained our large, potentially noisy department.

After years at IRS, I moved to New Jersey’s suburbs. That meant no longer riding public transportation; buses to Jersey stopped running before the late shift ended. My first driving experience came with a dramatic Chevy Nova that refused to run when the mood struck it. Up and down the lines of IRS keyboards tipped my complains about the testy car.

Empathy showed on the faces of those enduring women as I clunked out of the gated IRS parking lot alongside their group crossing the boulevard to wait for the bus I once rode with them. The probability of the Tycony/Palmyra Bridge opening before I had a chance to cross it was high at that time of the night. My co-workers threw me a backwards nod as I sputtered onto the dangerous six lane Roosevelt Boulevard. But the next incident happened traveling from home the following afternoon.

My Nova stalled before reaching the middle of the bridge in rush hour traffic. The delicate vehicle didn't do well in the early September heat. My car's theatrics made me yell: "If I'm late, I’ll get a late slip." The thing was now a Jersey snob and refused to enter the Philadelphia side of the bridge.

Affronted when a police cruiser pushed it from behind over the bridge, the fussy car still agreed to take me the rest of the way to IRS, knowing I'd return to Jersey after my shift.

Late, I moved fast past the rows of whispering mommas. And approached our supervisor's separate, lone desk. Before I could explain, she grinned and said, "We knew you'd be late. We heard on the news that there was a disabled vehicle on the northbound side of the bridge."

Rushing from the parking lot caused me to swallow a breath before replying, "Oh, yeah, that was me."

My supervisor slapped the side of her metal desk and I jumped. Her raucous laughter caused the rows of woman to swivel their heads in our direction, still clicking their keys. Our superior cut off in mid-laugh and resumed typing, leaving me standing there. So I slunk to my monitor, realizing she hadn’t asked me to sign a late slip.

Yep, she was a momma.

Walking through our vestibule you‘d swear the Wicked Witch of the West met her dismembering doom via a fallen couch. Grandma's artificial leg leaned against the living room wall wearing its black shoe, stocking, and rubber garter. Grandma's “good” leg lay flat on the floor, sticking out from behind the couch. Her cigarette-singed: "Who came in?" was a relief.

“It's me, Grandma.” The Easter palm I held waved as I swiveled on my heel towards a painting on the wall behind me.

“Sunday school over already?”

“Yep. I got your palm. Can I put it behind Great-Aunt Eliza‘s picture?” Great-Aunt Eliza died as a child. She sat for eternity in a rocker wearing a fancy dress behind the oval frame’s bubbled glass.

“Put it on my chair. I have to burn the old one in the ashtray first.” I obeyed. Grandma cursed, behind my back, behind the upholstery. “Hand me those studs.”

I scanned the debris on the floor: pieces of material, a ballpeen hammer, scissors, carpet tacks, Grandma's pocketbook, cigarettes, nails and a clear-topped box of heavy duty gold studs. The man at the hardware store said they‘d work if Grandma tacked the material on first.

“Here they are Grandma.” I handed them in the direction of the live leg. Her hand popped out from behind the Early American furniture she resurrected, took the plastic box, and was gone.

Holidays called for sprucing up the house, but those puny studs didn't stand a chance against my brother's furniture abuse. Masked explicatives behind the couch made it clear the studs gave Grandma trouble.

“Why are you doing that today Grandma?”

Her leg shifted. "You can't expect me to sew on the Sabbath." The unfinished Easter dresses for my sister and me must’ve been on her mind. "We don‘t use needles on Sunday in respect for Christ being pierced." Grandma's point confused me when she added, "Hand me that ball peen hammer.”

The left corner of the old couch's headrest didn't flap when I leaned on it to hand her the tool. “How'dya fix the wing tip?” I inspected her handiwork.

“I reinforced it with nails and pulled the material taut over it.” She pretended not to be proud. She didn’t even curse.

“The couch looks nice, Grandma.” Uncle John, no relation, had found the material in the trash outside a warehouse. Its color clashed even worse than the original fabric. Scraps of it on the floor tripped my mind back to the dresses. “Where's Mommy?”

“In the kitchen.”

I moved fast, hoping Grandma wouldn't need something else before I was far enough away to "not" hear her.

“Mommy, where'd Grandma get the stuff for our Easter dresses?” Sweet onions scented Mom‘s long hands, even when she wasn’t mixing ground meat.

She tilted her head to fix her glasses with the back of her wrist. Sunlight from the kitchen window made her ring glimmer. I tried to remember if, lying in his coffin, Dad had worn his wedding band.

Fatigue filtered through Mom’s answer. “Grandma took apart those curtains we had upstairs.”

“They're itchy.” I couldn’t complain to Grandma. “Liz and me tried them on when Grandma pinned them up yesterday. My legs are all red.” The torturous material never fazed the tough skin on Grandma's hands and forearms as she created those deceiving delights.

Mom didn't understand how bad it was. “You only have to wear them for a little while. Grandma worked hard on them.” As a kid, I didn’t know how to plead my case further.

I dreaded the humiliation. The dresses not only itched and burned. Those sheer pink recycled curtains barely veiled our slips. Mrs. Watson would whisper the word 'fiberglass' as we sat on either side of her waiting to say our Bible verses on the church basement’s stage. Grandma pounded another stud into the furniture. I cringed.

A week later I sat on the revamped couch as Uncle John snapped a picture, finalizing my anguish. My sister was the first to bolt upstairs and strip the abusive pink night terror from her body. We flung the things into the bottom of our closet in exchange for the salvation of sweat pants and t-shirts. Back downstairs, we indulged in candy eggs and animals, renewed. The holiday endured for chocolate, love of others and maybe real dresses next year.

As a young wife and new mother, I relished owning a home. Of course, it would take time for my husband to fix up the disabled house. So I cared for it and my daughter with patience. But, peering down through a basketball-size hole in our bathroom, through to the kitchen below and into our cellar, I wondered how long the repairs would take. When our baby began toddling, looking through floors lost its novelty.

After years of leading children tip toeing around and over projects in our second handyman's special, I stopped asking God to allow me to live in a home with no construction dust, and floors you didn't have to investigate before walking on. That's when the novelty returned, and with it grew humor.

***

My daughter drove me home after an autumn trip to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair. My son and his girlfriend were in the back seats. They all decided to come inside to say hello to Joe.

Joe was the fun parent, continuing to make all kinds of messes in the house that rivaled theirs when they were children. His projects didn't bother them as they grew up amongst the powdery layer of spackle dust and drywall residue. Sometimes it still unsettles their fastidious mother, though. To cope, I pretend I'm one of the Israelites on their forty year trek through dessert wilderness. After thirty-three years of marriage to Moses Joe, I only have seven more years to the promised dream home.

The four of us climbed the front steps to the house. We crowded in the doorway not going inside because of the familiar, heavy odor of fresh floor stain. A darker area of the floor where the welcome mat use to be was our second caution. We froze with the storm door half closed at our backs and the heavy wooden door swung open in front.

My daughter, the first in line, made a quick scan of the sun porch. Her attention stopped at a small area carpet on one side of the enclosed room. The rest of us followed her as she lunged into the dry section of porch. She steadied me as we all stood, huddled together, not knowing where else to step.

Joe yelled through the inside window, as he hugged a wall. "Would you mind going back outside and coming through the basement door?"

Our grown kids nodded with smiles of remembrance, along with my son's laughing girlfriend. As we vaulted back out the front door, I picked up on my children's nostalgia. They still didn't mind adjusting to inconveniences in their childhood home that changed with each new project. We trotted around to the side entrance of the house to greet Joe. He was taking a breather in the kitchen and asked about our day at the fair.

Access to the bathroom was cut off by drying stain, so our need for a restroom after the long ride encouraged us to perform another feat. We had become very good at balancing while taking care of functional necessities on the basement commode. It perched on a narrow, elevated slab like a true throne, three feet below the rafters. Joe installed this when he had worked on the floor in our upstairs, and only, bathroom.

At the fair, tightrope walkers and trapeze artists caused me to bite my nails as I had watched in horror, worried for their safety. Coming home to our private antics proved more entertaining because we weren't spectators.

As Joe prepares to ceramic tile the kitchen floor, I'm bracing myself to wash dishes in our bathtub. Rotation of rooms will include the kitchen moved into the dining room. The dining room will shift to the living room, among the few pieces of furniture we can own with the lengthy and constant changes to our living areas.

I'm trying to figure out how I'll cook in the dining room on a gas range that needs a hook up from the kitchen. Our last house had the gas stove in an attached shed that I accessed from outside. This is where I had cooked while the rest of the room aged into a finished space, just in time for us to pack up and move our growing family here.

That first house was where I experienced dish washing in a second floor bathtub. I was thinner then. Maybe Joe's present project plan will shed pounds from this middle-aged frame. With extra trips up and down stairs to wash dirty dishes and bring them back down clean, I should burn oodles of calories.

These discomforts have tripped fun creativity in my traditional thinking. The daily circus Joe involved our children and myself in united us as a family. We have become the Synchronized Flying Von Byrne Family that swings with difficulties and remain flexible when life throws us for a loop.

***

Our three-year-old granddaughter is quick to point to and comment on work "Pop" has done when she visits. She typically walks in, scouting rooms for changes. This is the child of my child whom I had feared falling through a multi-floor opening into the cellar of our first home. Hovering over my granddaughter as she travels from room to room, I try to prevent splinter, falls through flimsy window screens and fingers from exploring exposed outlets.

Then it hit me: not one of us were ever hurt living in our work-in-progress homes. I've heard that one eats a pound of dirt in a lifetime. With our family, it's probably powdered spackle mixed with saw dust. My daughter told me she doesn't remember much sickness in our large family while growing up. It's bizarre, but she's right. And we never had to made a trip to the emergency room.

Another generation traipses our dusty house of humor, learning to walk and where not to wander without falling through holes in our imperfect life.

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