A Miracle Under the Christmas Tree. Jennifer Sander Basye

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      FINDING JOY IN THE WORLD

      ELAINE AMBROSE

      December 1980 arrived in a gray cloud of disappointment as I became the involuntary star in my own soap opera, a hapless heroine who faced the camera at the end of each day and asked, “Why?” as the scene faded to black. Short of being tied to a rail-road track in the path of an oncoming train, I found myself in an equally dire situation, wondering how my life turned into such a calamity of sorry events. I was unemployed and had a two-year-old daughter, a six-week-old son, an unemployed husband who left the state looking for work and a broken furnace with no money to fix it. To compound the issues, I lived in the same small Idaho town as my wealthy parents, and they refused to help. This scenario was more like The Grapes of Wrath than The Sound of Music.

      After getting the children to bed, I would sit alone in my rocking chair and wonder what went wrong. I thought I had followed the correct path by getting a college degree before marriage and then working four years before having children. My plan was to stay home with two children for five years and then return to a satisfying, lucrative career. But, no, suddenly I was poor and didn’t have money to feed the kids or buy them Christmas presents. I didn’t even have enough money for a cheap bottle of wine. At least I was breast-feeding the baby, so that cut down on grocery bills. And my daughter thought macaroni and cheese was what everyone had every night for dinner. Sometimes I would add a wiggly gelatin concoction, and she would squeal with delight. Toddlers don’t know or care if Mommy earned Phi Beta Kappa scholastic honors in college. They just want to squish Jell-O through their teeth.

      The course of events that led to that December unfolded like a fateful temptation. I was twenty-six years old in 1978 and energetically working as an assistant director for the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. My husband had a professional job in an advertising agency, and we owned a modest but new home. After our daughter was born, we decided to move to my hometown of Wendell, Idaho, population 1,200, to help my father with his businesses. He owned about thirty thousand acres of land, one thousand head of cattle and more than fifty 18-wheel diesel trucks. He had earned his vast fortune on his own, and his philosophy of life was to work hard and die, a goal he achieved at the young age of sixty.

      In hindsight, by moving back home, I was probably trying to establish the warm relationship with my father that I had always wanted. I should have known better. My father was not into relationships, and even though he was incredibly successful in business, life at home was painfully cold. His home, inspired by the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, was his castle. The semi-circular structure was built of rock and cement and perched on a hill overlooking rolling acres of crops. My father controlled the furnishings and artwork. Just inside the front door hung a huge metal shield adorned with sharp swords. An Indian buckskin shield and arrows were on another wall. In the corner, a fierce wooden warrior held a long spear, ever ready to strike. A metal breastplate hung over the fireplace, and four wooden, naked aborigine busts perched on the stereo cabinet. The floors were polished cement, and the bathrooms had purple toilets. I grew up thinking this decor was normal.

      I remember the first time I entered my friend’s home and gasped out loud at the sight of matching furniture, floral wallpaper, delicate vases full of fresh flowers and walls plastered with family photographs, pastoral scenes and framed Norman Rockwell prints. On the rare occasions that I was allowed to sleep over at a friend’s house, I couldn’t believe that the family woke up calmly and gathered together to have a pleasant breakfast. At my childhood home, my father would put on John Philip Sousa march records at 6:00 a.m., turn up the volume and go up and down the hallway knocking on our bedroom doors calling, “Hustle. Hustle. Get up! Time is money!” Then my brothers and I would hurry out of bed, pull on work clothes and get outside to do our assigned farm chores. As I moved sprinkler pipe or hoed beets or pulled weeds in the potato fields, I often reflected on my friends who were gathered at their breakfast tables, smiling over plates of pancakes and bacon. I knew at a young age that my home life was not normal.

      After moving back to the village of Wendell, life went from an adventure to tolerable and then tumbled into a scene out of On the Waterfront. As I watched my career hopes fade away under the stressful burden of survival, I often thought of my single, childless friends who were blazing trails and breaking glass ceilings as women earned better СКАЧАТЬ