Page 28 of Good Days Bad Days

D. I. D.

A Recipe for Success

As a child, I decided to prepare a fancy dinner for my family to celebrate my father’s promotion.

I saved my babysitting dimes for weeks leading up to the big event and went to the store to buy all the necessary ingredients from the recipe I had copied from a fancy French cookbook I found at the library.

At the store, I carefully selected the ingredients and then brought them home to create the much-anticipated meal.

I placed every item into a bowl and swirled them together and then poured them into a large pan.

The meal cooked into a thick, mushy paste that looked nothing like the image I remembered from the cookbook.

My father pushed away his plate and my younger sister spit out her first bite, and I found myself crying on the back porch after dumping my hard-earned dinner into the pig’s trough.

I had the recipe, I had the ingredients, I had the pure desire to make a meal for my family. What went wrong?

I’ll tell you. When I wrote down the recipe, I only wrote down the ingredients I needed and their amounts, I didn’t think to read the instructions explaining how to use them.

So, instead of dipping the chicken into the egg whites and then coating them in flour to be fried in the oil, I mixed everything together at the same time with no thought to order or timing.

We’ve discussed having a desire to be a joyful homemaker and the reasons for taking your responsibilities as a wife and mother as seriously as your husband takes his role in the boardroom.

But now it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty.

It’s time for the “how” of housewifery. And it starts with three simple letters: D I D.

Disposition, Image, and Drive.

This chapter will cover the first step in our recipe—Disposition.

A man comes home from work to a tidy house, a beautiful dinner, and clean and respectful children, but his wife is angry, perhaps bitter about the time and effort she’s put into the home while he’s off at work. Does this make a happy husband? No.

Having a joyful attitude is your first step toward success in your role in the home.

Do you have a headache? Take an aspirin and then move on with your day.

Have you received bad news? Wipe away those tears and find a new project to put your energy into.

Never, ever allow your children or your husband to know you are having a hard time of things.

This is your business and your business alone.

Your husband doesn’t come home and tell you all the details of his workday, does he? No. And neither should you.

My God, I think, head in hand as I let my mother’s written words sink in.

Perfection, that’s what she’s talking about.

An image of happy perfection. What a load of bullshit.

Is this who she used to be, my Classy Homemaker mother?

Her headshot certainly looks that way. But is TV homemaker Betty really who she was, or was that an act, an act supported by a show and a station that hired her to look, act, and speak a certain way?

My God, I hope this isn’t how I’m perceived by viewers.

I’ve started reading again when I hear my own voice coming from the TV.

I look up and recognize the outfit I wore during a promo shoot before Christmas.

It’d been a cold day in Southern Indiana and so I’d rushed to get my jacket back on between takes.

My cheeks are pink and my breath puffs out with each extended vowel.

“Will the Wilsons choose to relocate to this newly constructed two-story Craftsman?”

Then, the camera cuts to Ian, standing a foot to my left with his neatly trimmed (secretly dyed) black beard, warm brown eyes, and salt-and-pepper hair, parted on the side and trimmed close in a crew cut.

His broad chest pushes against his buttoned red-and-blue flannel shirt, and my heart flip-flops at his deep baritone voice.

“Or will they choose to let us help give their home a . . . second chance on . . .”

“Second Chance Renovation,” our voices mingle together as the title card expands into the screen with details on dates and times. I reach for the remote and click the TV off.

I stare at the dark, blank screen.

I don’t know how to watch the two of us now that I know what he did, that in December he was flirting with a stranger while filming with me, while kissing me, while holding me in his arms as we made love, while I snuggled into him and let his breathing lull me into a deep, blissfully ignorant sleep.

My phone buzzes. Was he watching at home right now, remembering that cold fall day when our marriage still felt like a fairy tale? I can hardly stand to look at the screen.

Cameron: Dinner? Next week?

Cameron—again. I curse Lacey every time he makes this request, not because I don’t like the guy or find him creepy, but because I do like him, and I don’t know how to feel about that.

But why should I keep dodging him? Why shouldn’t I give Cam a chance when I can’t seem to get myself to put my wedding ring back on?

I find every reason to leave my finger bare—because of the gloves we have to wear during cleanup or the number of times I wash my hands.

But really, it’s because it’s safer this way.

Without the ring on, I have plenty of options instead of only one where I give in and forgive Ian.

The phone is cool and heavy after the tactile experience of holding my mom’s book and turning its pages. I touch the screen and type a message and hit send before I can talk myself out of it.

Charlie: How about tomorrow?

I’ve never been to Janesville, Wisconsin, but the more I learn about my parents, the more significant this area seems to be to their history.

Cam offered to make the hour drive to Lake Geneva, but I’m happy to have a reason to visit.

I suggested meeting at Ike’s Diner, the one Betty brought up during my last visit, after discovering it’s still open, but Cam said it closes at three on weekends.

So instead, we’re meeting at an upscale spot near the Rock River for an early dinner.

It’s a quarter of a mile from the address on my mom’s ID for WQRX, where my parents met and fell in love.

As strange as it is to think of my parents falling in love—it must be true.

They’ve stayed together all these years despite my mother’s complex personality and my dad’s ghostlike nature.

I mean, I couldn’t make it past six years with Ricky and he’s a totally stable, nice guy.

Although a nice guy who didn’t really want a wife with a career in the public eye.

“I want a quiet life with you and Olivia, a nice little house somewhere with a little land and possibly some animals . . .”

“A farm?” I shouted, slamming my hand against the table. “Like a Green Acres kind of a thing?”

Ricky shushed me. I’d just finished the nighttime routine with three-year-old Olivia—bath, singing songs, and one book to get her droopy eyed enough that I could sneak out of her toddler bed and meet my husband in the dining room for “a talk.” That’s what he called it—a talk—but I actually knew it was The talk, the one that would change it all.

I’d been offered a segment on The Today Show. We’d have to move to New York, and Ricky would have to change jobs or stay home with Olivia so I could make the 5:30 a.m. call time.

He’d put up with my dreams and my ambition when they were still aspirational in nature, but when it came to red-eye flights, days or weeks away on business trips, and half the bed bare—his tune changed. He wanted no part of it all.

What should’ve been the best event of my life turned into the worst since I’d left my parents’ house fifteen years earlier, and my hope of giving my daughter the family I never had died on the vine.

I wasn’t willing to give up my career, and Ricky wasn’t willing to give up his kinda-out-of-nowhere farm dream either.

So, Olivia learned how to move between houses, how to pack a bag, how to be independent and flexible—how to form her life around her parents’ dreams.

Maybe all parents do the same thing to their children in their own way. That’s why it’s comforting to think of my parents as being deeply in love because people who are in love often have tunnel vision.

It’s like the time I found my dad watching a news segment about the Gulf War, helicopters crossing the screen and tears in my dad’s eyes.

His brother died in Vietnam, my mom explained, pulling me away from the sight of my father crying on the couch.

She gave me a glass of milk and one of the cookies she’d baked back when we still had a functional kitchen, and then left me there with a coloring book while she delivered the same treat to my dad.

When she didn’t come back, I snuck into the den and found the television off, a record playing softly, and my mom’s head lying sweetly in his lap as he ran his fingers through her hair.

My dad peeked at me through half-opened lids and placed a finger over his lips.

I dashed back into the kitchen, running away from witnessing my parents’ humanness living just beneath the surface of their parental varnish.

They seem to love each other, deeply. And maybe if they didn’t love me passionately I could blame it on them loving each other passionately, or at least that’s the narrative I prefer.

I only wish there wasn’t still a little child inside of me longing to be loved in the same protective way.

Another turn and I’m crossing over a wide latte-colored river on a long bridge with arched cutouts on the cement barrier rails trailing down each side.

The next right takes me into the town of Janesville.

The Ace Hardware sign looks original. Driving under an arch reading “Festival Street,” I spot three more bridges to my right, two for cars and one for pedestrians.