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I set down the fabric swatch I’m looking at for the Simpsons, the new couple I’m working with. They chose light grey, navy blue, and white for their living room — it’s going to look amazing. Classic. A large area rug covers part of the beautiful wide-plank cherrywood floor and the floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace will be the central focus of the room, but we still need to decide on furniture, accent pieces, and window treatments.
I love my job.
When I was in high school, I took a home economics class my freshman year that touched on interior decorating, and it became something I loved. I took every home ec — now family and consumer sciences — class I could, hoping to learn more. My mother was a homemaker when I was growing up, and she loved do-it-yourself stuff. Then Mom got sick. It was the summer before my junior year when she was diagnosed. Breast cancer nearly beat the life out of her, but she fought. She fought hard. And she beat cancer’s ass. But throughout her battle, the only thing that kept her happy was decorating and making the house a home.
She couldn’t get out as much as she liked, so making the house look a little more appealing was a simple thing we could all do. But me, especially. I guess that’s where my passion and love for it came from. I love taking the plain and jazzing it up. I fell in love with the entire process of going through our old stuff and reworking it to make it fresh and new.
When the chemo and drugs sank Mom to her lowest, and she couldn’t get out of bed, she and I sat together and poured through catalogues and magazines. I went to the library and picked up books. This was before the Internet. Before Pinterest. She had stacks and stacks of magazines by her bedside, some dog-eared, some with slips of paper sticking out of them. When she had a good day or two in a row, we put some of those ideas into action and created. Together.
One day Barrett saw them all stacked by her bed and all over the living room when he came to visit her, and he instantly drew up the plans to make her a shelf.
“Mom, what about this one? Isn’t it pretty? Something like that would look great on the dining table.” I say to my mother, pointing to a picture of a centerpiece arrangement.
“It is, baby. I think we could do that one easy.”
“I’ll put it in the pile.”
“The pile is getting a little out of control.”
“It is. We need a new system,” I tell her just as I see Barrett walk into the room carrying two glasses of water.
“She’s right, Mrs. Cole. It is getting a little… cluttered in here.”
“Barrett Ryan. What did I tell you about the Mrs. Cole thing? It’s Debbie, Deb, or Mom, you understand me?”
Barrett smiles and looks down at his shoes. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, his tone teasing and light.
My mom giggles and shakes her head. “What am I going to do with you, kid?”
“I’m fun, right?” he asks before his tone turns a little more serious. “But seriously, Debbie. You need a better system than this. Your magazines and books are just falling over.”
“There’s a method to my madness,” she tells him, smiling, but I can see the wheels in his mind turning as he nods his head and continues to survey the bedroom and books and magazines.
It was the first thing he made on his own. No help from anyone. It had cubbies and slots of all different sizes and one large section on the right that was backed by corkboard so Mom could pin up her favorite pictures and ideas. I didn’t ask him to do it. My parents didn’t ask him to do it. He did it because he’s an incredible man who loved building things for people, even at a young age.
I look back now and wonder if that was part of the appeal to me for Barrett. When we were in high school, I took a shop class, and he was in it. We both loved designing, creating, building things. During the summer before our senior year, Barrett helped a local contractor, and he decided quickly that’s what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, seeing a person’s home being built from the ground up, or a room renovated to what they envisioned for their family.
I love being able to make someone smile just by changing a room to look the way they envisioned it, and most of the time, not even how they envisioned it, but better. He loves building something that is going to make someone’s life easier, better.
Just call us Chip and Joanna.
Barrett:Cole called me.
Me:And?
Barrett:Just telling you.
The little shit. He knows it will be bugging me all day long to not have a clue why Cole needed to call, and now he’s gonna hold out on me?
I don’t think so!
Me:Tell me tell me tell me tell me
Barrett:Oh you wanted to know what he wanted to talk to his dad about?
This conversation will be much quicker than our old-people hands can text out if I just call him. Not to mention the amount of deleting and retyping it takes. And don’t get me started on the autocorrect. When I told Cole to check my love box for a pair of gloves instead of the glovebox, I was certain that he would need therapy for life. And seriously, why does everything turn dirty? I honestly don’t use the words masturbate and penis in my texting endeavors, but my phone seems to think they’re words I use consistently. I need to hear his voice anyway. The last client I had has me in a tizzy, as he calls it, and Barrett’s the only one who can calm me down.
“Hi, babe.” I can hear the smile in his voice when he answers on the first ring. Like he was expecting my call and didn’t even have to look at the caller ID. Dang. Cole is right. We’re so predictable it’s a little ridiculous. I hope predictable doesn’t also mean boring.
