Chapter 14 of Melissa Comes Home
The “BIG MOVE’ was fast approaching. With three babies to care firm our middle-aged strength was ebbing fast. We knew we needed extra arms and legs to help us.
We remembered that particular quality of loving care given to Melissa at the home where she had resided for the first fifteen months of her life. There were many dedicated workers on their staff from the Mennonite Service Corps. A call to their central office in Indiana brought quick promise of help in our new venture. After several visits from their director, a Mennonite couple was on their way to help us.
We really didn’t know what to expect. We had been informed that they were young and just married. He was a skilled carpenter. She would be able to help us with the child-care routines.
It was a late afternoon in May when Marilyn and Butch were expected. All was in readiness. We spotted them hesitating at our precipitous driveway for a split second. They roared up the steep hill and came to a screeching halt underneath the bedroom window through which we----Diane, Scubie and “nosy me” were observing them.
Theirs was not a horse-drawn black carriage, mind you, but a sleek Oldsmobile Cutlass with spoke wheels and racing stripes. And even while we “ohed” and “ahed,” a slim blue-eyed youth in tight jeans and Western boots eased himself out of the front seat. He stood there on the driveway right beneath us and ran his finger through his blond wavy hair and Scubie uttered one awful groan and swooned to the floor.
“This is worse that medieval torture. Did you see him, Mom? And he’s married.” Another groan. “I just can’t hack it.”
While she swooned on the floor, Diane and I were satisfying our curiosity about his wife. She seemed to be the perfect lady, neat, well groomed, and not one pale-brown hair out of place. As they gathered some of their belongings in their arms and started toward the side door I thought I would faint myself. Just to buy a little time, mind you.
For suddenly the gigantic adventure we were to embark on swept over me. Here were two more strangers joining our ranks, sharing our meals, and tying up the bathroom. I began to wonder if we were really in our right minds.
I ran down to let them in. Awkward greetings were exchanged. Butch was indeed a “Butch,” and Marilyn was just what she first appeared to be. She gave gracious assent to most everything he said or did and smiled shyly in all the right places whenever he waxed humorous.
We were quite a motley crew at the dinner table. Marilyn was painfully quiet, and Scubie was painfully talkative. Butch just sat there and laughed heartily to fill up any conversational gaps he could find. After the first week or so, we grew a bit more relaxed together. We were not quite so anxious to establish our identities.
Privacy was beginning to come at premium prices. At nights I would wistfully dream of an uninterrupted portion of time alone with Paul, but it was not to be. Everywhere we went, there was somebody--except in our big double bed. We began to retire a little bit earlier, but even there we could hear the TV blaring, doors slamming, and the shower running at midnight!
Before we knew it, it was May! But who had time to find the robin? The “big move” was upon us! And our humble assets had swollen to $87,000, enough to provide working capital and buy cribs and beds for our new family.
“How will we possibly manage to move all these things?”
There were ten rooms of furniture that had been donated to Melmark stored in a nearby garage. There were all of our own possessions. Which room in our “chateau” would receive which piece of furniture? Where would we place our circular couch that we had just finished paying for? Where would our piano go? Which bedroom would we sleep in ? Who would do the cooking? And the laundry?
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The night before the big move, Bob and I used a black magic marker to letter thirty-five eight-inch-high numbers on white cardboard squares to place over the doorways leading into each room. And we gaily volunteered to “run over to the chateau and tack them up so they would be ready for tomorrow.”
We parked the car in front of the empty mansion. Etched against the moonlit sky in dark foreboding lines, the chateau stood waiting. We walked over the macadam driveway toward the side door. It was full of potholes.
My fingers shook trying to fit the key in the lock. Paul was back home packing the dishes in barrels and taking down drapes and pictures. I wished I had thought twice before I had so bravely offered my services for this particular project.
The side door swung open. We inched along the back hall groping for the light switch. Past the walk-in safe-the heavy black iron door ajar--we crept past the butler’s pantry and, at long last, a lone naked bulb responded to the switch. It glared at us hostilely from the high ceiling.
“Whew!” Some better!”
“The other switch is on that far dinning room wall, Mom.” I refused to leave my little light spot.
“Oh, come on. What are going to do when we get to the third floor?”
“Scream? Faint?” I began to toy with both ideas.
We pussyfooted through the dining room to the center hall and switched on the crystal chandelier. Gone were the splendid Oriental rugs which had padded the stairs. Only the dark-brown mural of Cupid and Psyched smiled at us bemusedly from the walls.
I was getting braver. Poking my head around the door of a small sewing room, I discovered another gigantic wall mirror.
“Will you look at this beauty? What a fantastic mirror and what a perfectly magnificent gilt frame.”
A ten-by-fourteen-foot mirror in a little sewing room struck me as a bit ostentatious, but I was duly impressed. We managed to finish our work on the second floor without incident.
I stopped short at the carpeted stairs leading to no-man’s land on the third floor.
“Bob, I have a great idea!”
“What?”
“Let’s wait till tomorrow. I’ll be here way before the van arrives and I’ll tack the rest of the numbers up, OK?”
Bob was instantly cooperative. We departed with no small dispatch, leaving some house lights brightly burning.
“Oh , well, looks kind of lived-in now.”
And we both heaved a sigh of relief as we let ourselves in the car and promptly locked both doors after us.
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May there never be another moving day!
That it dawned at all was its first mistake. That Bob and Steve managed to wedge the roof of the rented moving van under a railroad bridge on the way to our home was the second mistake. And to be quite candid, my assignment in the center hall as director of traffic was the third.
“Take that to room No. 18, No, wait a minute, better put that on the third floor in No. 31---I think we could use that for Steve’s bedroom. Oh dear, could you stay here for a sec-----I’ll go and find Paul.”
But then, moving into a French chateau costing $155,000 on one’s forty-fifth birthday was a heady experience. I was a bit rattled. Here we were, our own private worlds totally upended and blithely hanging the clammy reality of a $75,000 mortgage around our necks. We must be a little mad!
Just about collapsing time, women arrived from various nearby churches looking like angels of mercy with hot coffee, sandwiches, and all kinds of calorie-laden cakes. That they did this every Saturday all through the summer will be forever to their credit.
Finally, the long hard day was over. We gathered around the solid oak table in the servant’s dining room and wearily snacked and nibbled at the leftover goodies.
The next day, Sunday, there would be no more moving, but the next Saturday promised a repeat performance. The garage filled with ten rooms of donated furniture was still bulging at the seams.
Those who had the strength and good sense, climbed the stairs and went to bed. Diane and Scubie slept on the second floor to watch over our three babies. Paul and I wandered aimlessly from room to room in a state of shock.
“We’re here! We’re really here at last!”
“Well, it isn’t what it’s going to be someday, but it surely is a start.” For the odds and end of our furniture looked lost in those spacious high-ceilinged rooms. And the dark painted walls and heavy gold drapes added dismal overtones. The contemporary circular couch was obviously ill at ease in its new surroundings.
Up on the third floor, we surveyed the length of what someday would be our combination living-dining room. It was almost forty-six feet long and boasted arched ceilings twelve feet high and dormer windows looking out on every side.
Tonight we simply dragged some pieces of furniture together, grouped them around a portable TV and a nine-by-twelve-foot rug, and that was “home” for the next several months.
When we finally slipped our weary bodies between the clean sheets, we sighed a huge inaudible prayer of thanksgiving. Long before the “Amen” part was reached, we had fallen off to a dreamless sleep.
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The publicity from the Good Housekeeping article gave us unprecedented national exposure. It was almost as though Melmark had received the giant Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
Letters flooded in from parents seeking admission for their children, from teenagers looking for a job that would give “soul satisfaction as well as monetary reward,” and from those who just wanted to give us a boost, a prayer and a dollar or two from their food money. Eighteen hundred letters in all!
Long ago we had dreamed of perhaps “twenty” children the first year, but we were literally swamped by phone calls and personal inquiries.; What had innocently started as strictly a family affair now grew like Topsy, unpredictably and in all directions.
We all cooked and ate and worked together: family, staff and babies, all summer long. It was small wonder that our own family relationships were a bit strained.
Paul was great! He was a compulsive worker, and probably always will be. Melmark was tackled as if there never would be another tomorrow. This undertaking, in addition to his regular job, placed exhausting demands upon him.
“But everything is going to be strictly first-cabin for our new family,” he said. “They will not live like second-class citizen here!” Administratively he ran a “tight ship’ and knew at all times where Melmark was heading.
“If we are ever to succeed in this venture, we will have found the best home for handicapped children anywhere.”
And so , we started to redecorate. We decided to carpet the floors for our babies to creep on. So rolls of Ozite in all kinds of happy colors were ordered. Paul watched the carpet-layer, carefully asked questions, and listened to their suggestions; and that was the last Ozite carpet professionally laid. He did the rest himself on his knees, taping and cutting and pounding until I thought his back and legs would give out. He was stiff and aching every night for weeks. But the job got done.
Fifteen-year-old Steve’s six-foot-three frame jounced all summer long on the hard seat of a tractor mower as he cut grass and tamed the wilderness of undergrowth that was making its way toward the chateau.
Trees were trimmed, hedges cut back, and Melmark gradually assumed a well-care-for appearance.
Our daughter-in-law Kathy, newly graduated from Columbia arrived with David in the middle of June looking like a modernized reincarnation of Florence Nightingale with her long dark hair, sky-blue eyes, and freshly starched uniform. She had a head full of ideas waiting to be tried out. Melmark received the full impact of her postgrad fervor. It wasn’t only the nursing duties; it was scheduling, menus, training, medications, ordering of cribs, picking out uniforms for our child-care workers. And before long, her new husband and our first son, David, began to feel that perhaps he was taking second place.
One hot midnight Paul and I quietly left the big house otto take a dip in the pool by ourselves. It was stifling. The air hung heavy and damp and our babies were peppered with prickly heat, Melissa worst of any. She perspired just like a regular Krentel!
Down the steps through the formal gardens we ducked under the flowering hawthornes, hesitating just a minute to hear the frogs “kerplunk” into the goldfish pond as they heard our steps in the grass.
Kerplunk! Kerplunk! Just two out gadding tonight!
We swung back the iron gate and went down another set of granite steps leading to the cool pool. In the dim light at the shallow end we made out a lone figure sitting on the green wooden bench.
“Well, Dave! Great! Are you going in swimming? Where’s Kath?” Dad called.
“No, I’m not going in now! And my sweet wife Kathy is doing tonight what she does most every night, either making out schedules or new menus.”
“Oh, I’m sorry---I didn’t know,” I murmured. “I would have helped if I had seen her.”
“She’s upstairs sprawled on our bedroom floor with Diane and Scubie----cookbooks all over the joint. It’s menu night tonight!”
“Dave, I’m sorry.” What was there to say?
“Oh, don’t be. Kathy loves it. It’s just me, and I guess I’ll get over it. You know how it is when you feel sorry for yourself.”
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There simply was no time for warm, personal family relationships. We were like ships passing each other in the night. Diane would often stop me in the halls long enough to push a wisp of hair out of my eyes and touch my shoulder. Her face was filled with emotion too deep for me to hear.
I was beyond listening range anyway that first summer. All that remained was ceases, never ending activity. For no sooner had we more cribs than they were filled with more babies. Then we needed more staff, and so it went. More diapers meant someone to be the laundress. More meals called for a person to cook; more letters---a need for a full time typist; more phone calls--someone to answer the phone.
The price we paid was exhausted patience and frazzled nerves. There were no doors that were solid enough , no rooms where the sound of voices did not penetrate, no little spot where just two people could be alone, no hiding place anywhere those long hot summer months.
