UNDERSTATED

UNDERSTATED

"Never marry anyone who doesn't make you laugh," my Grandma said, chuckling.

Grandpa had just picked out a piece of spaghetti from the pot and sucked it in from one end under his mustache.

At that time, of course, I had no intention of marrying anyone. I had just discovered Nancy Drew books and liked to sit on the swing on the back porch and read. Sometimes I would pick dandelions and make necklaces out of them.

I also liked to look for small rocks to make into people. After scrubbing the rocks perfectly clean with a toothbrush, I set them out of the railing of the porch to dry. Then I would use glue that I found in the garage to make two dry rocks into a body. After the body was dry, I attached pieces of yarn to make the arms, legs and hair of each little person.  I cut up little pieces of cloth to make clothes and hats for them.

There was plenty of cloth for me to use. I slept in Grandma's sewing room. She had made her sewing room into a really cozy little place for me. She had Grandpa build a kind of wooden rack over the bed where I slept. Beautiful see-through fabric with tiny flowers on it hung over the rack all the way to the floor.  

I was spending the summer with my Grandma and Grandpa, because my mother and father were at work all day. My mother and father are lawyers.

But anyway, back to my sleeping place. It was my own. The back porch, the yard and the rocks, the garage, all of it, belonged to the world. This was my place only. Sometimes I would just decide to go to bed early, just to be there. I would take a few of my little rock people and act out stories with them, read a book, or sometimes just lay there and think. I didn't miss my mother and father much, and I was okay.

There was one exception to my own private space, Chester. Chester was Grandma and Grandpa's dog. He was a beagle. I am speaking of Chester in the past tense, because he passed away long ago.

Back in those days, Chester would come nosing around my tented bed and whimper. The whimpering and whining would get Chester what he wanted...into the bed with me. I would lift up the lacy tent a little. Chester would but his front paws on the mattress and, with some effort, haul his fat little body up. He snuggled down next to me, went to sleep, and sometimes snored. This, I could handle.

By the time I was in high school, my parents gave me a choice; during the summer, I could stay at home or go over and stay with Grandma and Grandpa. I opted to do both, intermittently.

 At this time, I had my own dog, Emily. Emily was a black labrador retriever that my father got for me for my fourteenth birthday. I can say without a doubt, that up to this time I had never had a better friend than Emily. I named her Emily because she "perched in my soul." I was reading a great deal of poetry then, and I was in love with Emily Dickinson.

Because I had a choice, during those summers, I was back and forth between Grandma and Grandpa and staying home with Emily. Emily, I believe preferred to go over to their house. Grandma and Grandpa live on a lake. Not everyone knows this, but labrador retrievers can swim like fish. I would walk with Emily down to the lake every day that we were there. 

I would just start to wade in, and Emily was right next to me, paddling along and swimming. When I started swimming, she was right by my side. Occasionally she would go around me in circles, watching me with those big brown eyes.

So then I went away to school. I had received a full scholarship to the university. Emily went to stay with Grandma and Grandpa, since she loved it over there. They had always been crazy about Emily, so it worked out very well. Interestingly, Grandma said that Emily never went swimming unless I was back from school visiting.

As with Chester, Emily passed away long ago.

At the university, I had a little basement apartment near campus that my mother and father found for me. They also paid the rent. They felt that due to the fact that I was an only child and of what my mother referred to as a "solitary nature", this living arrangement would be the best for me. It was a perfect arrangement. I walked to my classes and rode my bike to the library and the store.

I spent a lot of time at the university library. It was surprisingly quiet there, at least at the times when I went. My class schedule was crazy. Three days a week I actually had a four-hour interval between classes in the afternoon. So I would take my bike on those days and go to the library during the four hours. There I could find a table near the back and spread out my books and materials. This was not easy to do in my apartment, since I only had a little ledge along one wall that I used as a desk.

As quiet as it was at the library at that time in the afternoon, occasionally someone would come and sit at the same table. I would feel a slight flutter of annoyance at this. There were plenty of empty tables. Why come and sit down where someone was obviously using the table as a work space? I tried just to ignore the situation. It was a public place, and anyone could sit anywhere they wanted. Of course, I was also trying not to be so cynical and critical as seems to be my habit. All my life, my mother has told me that I need to work on these areas.

Well it eventually was time after time at the table in the library. I would sit down, spread out my stuff, and start working. A few minutes later, this guy would come and sit down across from me. All he had with him was a black, fabric-covered book. He seemed to be writing or drawing something in the book.

One day it finally got to me. I was really trying hard to finish a paper I was writing on prosody. Why was this jerk always here? 

I cleared my throat, and said, as politely as I could, "Excuse me sir, but why do you always sit here?"

"Why do you?" 

"Because it's quiet and peaceful."

"That's why I do,too. Wherever you are is quiet and peaceful. And I think you're pretty."

He rolled his eyes, and I had to laugh, even though it occurred to me that I was dealing with some kind of a weirdo.

This sharing of the table came to be almost always. Sometimes he would not be there, since he was also a student, a senior, and had classes to go to too. When he was there, he seemed to be observant of the times I was very busy and just sit across from me with his black book. At times we would chat. Even though he could come across kind of goofy with the eye-rolling thing, he was a very intelligent person. I think the goofy act was just to make me laugh.

Well eventually we fell in love and got married the day after he graduated that spring. We got a bigger, nicer apartment than the one I lived in by myself. I continued with my studies at the university, and he got a job in sales for an small advertising agency in town.

He loved his job and did very, very well at it. He had actually been an art major at the university, but his personality lent itself to sales. He brought in a great deal of additional business to the agency. He has an engaging personality and knows what he is talking about, so this is understandable.

Two years later, during my junior year, he and a co-worker broke off from the agency and started their own business. They took several agency clients with them. Also two copywriters and three sales people came with them. This is considered quite ethical in the advertising world, even though it seemed questionable to me at the time.

The new agency took off; their success was impressive. He and his partner hired more and more people. Some of these people were quite flamboyant. One account executive drove a yellow Corvette, and her hair color exactly mirrored the Corvette's paint color. She also always wore yellow, and she had an adorable little poodle that went everywhere with her, even on business.

I always felt uncomfortable when I had to go to his office for any reason. By the time the business was in it's heyday, I was at home working on my Ph.D. We had a house and a labrador retriever, Barrett.

I mentioned to him, once, about my discomfort whenever I was at his office. I did not go there often, only once in a while to meet him when we were going someplace together. 

"Do you think the people there like me? They must wonder why you married me."

"Everybody, everybody loves you honey," he said as he pulled our new Lexus into the driveway.

"Nobody wonders why I married you."

His partner was a nice enough guy. He would always talk to me when I came to the office. Once while I was waiting, we laughed about the obsession we both have with office supply stores.

My husband told me that his partner told him he thought I was, "very pretty and very...understated." 

Usually I managed to weasel out of any office social event. When I did go to one of them, I felt like some of them, particularly the sales people who worked for my husband, were inspecting me like I was some kind of strange insect or something.

But when his partner and his wife had a barbeque at their house to introduce their new, second baby, I had to go. I was intensely busy with my thesis at the time and would have loved to just stay home.

  My husband said, "Just bring your stuff with you. Barrett can come too if you want. You can just explain and excuse yourself. They have a big garden area by the pool, and you can sit out there and work."

Everyone, including me, took their plates of the wonderful barbeque food into the house and scattered around the dining room table and living room sofas. I signaled to Barrett and we surreptitiously moved out to a lounge chair under a tree by the pool. It was a beautiful day, and it was very pleasant out there. I got to work.

Barrett, after licking my plate clean, settled down next to me and dozed off. I kind of had to struggle not to do the same. The day had an hypnotic quality to it.

So Barrett and I settled down. About twenty minutes later, Barrett started whining. He got up and nudged me with his nose, actually poked hard. This was very unusual behavior for him. He was an extremely well behaved and calm kind of dog.

He suddenly jumped up and ran towards the pool. Of course I got up and followed. Then I heard a loud splash. As soon as I got to the the pool, I saw Barrett paddling furiously towards the other side. He was heading towards what looked like a piece of cloth.

I ran around to the other side. Just as I got there, Barrett came to me with his catch. I took the surprisingly heavy piece of cloth from his jaws.

It was not a piece of cloth. It was our host's two-year old son. The little tyke had apparently woken up from his nap and wandered outside, unobserved, towards the pool.

I did not know anything about CPR, but I had the presence of mind to pick up the kid by his feet and smack his back, hard. He coughed, threw up a bunch of water, and starting crying.

So I went back into the house with the soggy, screaming little child and the dripping Barrett. You can imagine the explanations and the drama. The ambulance was there in minutes. The child was taken to the emergency room and, thank heavens, was fine.

Barrett was lauded as a hero, and actually had a feature article about him in the local newspaper.

I have since taken a course in CPR. With a dog like Barrett, you never know when it might come in handy.