red balloons

This week we are back to our story and the place where we made the fairy tale come true and were formally a family. And every family needs a place to call home. I would like to acknowledge the incredible blessing and red balloon that is my house and our family home. 

I bought the house in 2011. At the time I bought the house, I had absolutely zero intention of this being my forever home. My first husband and I had rented a house when we first made the move to Georgia to make sure we landed in the right area for schools for the kids, as Jack was just starting kindergarten at the time. In addition, we were making the move in 2009 and trying to sell our house in Memphis in an upside down market. It took many months, but we finally had a buyer in place and a bank approved sale under contract, and I will never forget the day, one week before that house closing was scheduled, when I received a call from the closing attorney, asking if I was aware that our house had been sold as a foreclosure the week before. While we were blindsided by this news, I did everything that I could to try and still make the deal work. But once a foreclosure deal is done, there is no reversing it. There is no removing it from someone’s credit history- even if it was a completely unwarranted act. (Please know, I am typically a pretty laid back consumer, but the president of Bank of America received quite a few very strongly worded letters from this girl.) 

There was nothing that we could do at the time of the foreclosure but deal with the fallout. And that fallout meant that if we moved forward with purchasing a home in Georgia, the purchase needed to be based on my salary and in my name only, as I was not tied to the previous house. These parameters severely limited our options and I was not a very happy camper. While I had a solid job and made a good working wage, my husband was the main breadwinner and being unable to use three fourths of our income to qualify for a loan seemed incredibly unfair. 

But looking back, I can see what God was doing by providing these limitations. Again, when I bought the house in 2011, I had zero intention of this being my forever home. However, five years later, when my husband left, the house was in my name. The mortgage was an affordable amount based on my salary alone. It is a beautiful home that is filled with love and while it may not have the biggest foot print or the fanciest kitchen, it was the only home that the boys had known before their world was turned upside down. And what seemed like a door slammed shut back in 2011 was really just God making sure I was taken care of in the middle of difficult circumstances years later.

After my first husband left, I made a few changes around the house. While most of the changes were minor decor-related changes that made the house feel more like my home (i.e., filled with all things neutral, sparkly and soft), I also made one major structural change. My house had a small golf cart garage that had been added on to the structure before I bought it. Did I mention I live in a community where you can get anywhere you need to be on a golf cart? 90 miles of cart paths and dedicated golf cart parking at every store make it super efficient and just fun. I did not need the golf cart garage space for anything specific, so as a work-from-home writer (even pre-pandemic) I hired a contractor and turned the space into a beautiful office, complete with a barnwood accent wall, built-in desk, sparkly cabinet handles and mason jar light ceiling fan. It was absolutely lovely. 

There were two other major changes made throughout the three years I spent as a single mom. The first was the result of what was a really bad day. I think we all have our good and our bad days, right? As a single parent, I really had to (and now have to again) pick which battles I wanted to spend my energy on. My children were adjusting to having their lives blown apart after their dad left, and they all adjusted differently. My middle child Alex had a much harder time than his brothers, and most of the battles that I had to choose were with him. I was in the middle of a desperate search to find a therapist that he could connect with to help him, as nothing that I was doing at home was working. I had finally found a psychiatrist who was trying to help us find an appropriate medication to help as well. (This is again a whole separate chapter/book.) 

On this particular evening, I had been holding up boundaries and using ALL of my energy to hold my ground with this stubborn child for four hours. I got to a point where I felt safe enough to put him in a bathtub, thinking it would help to calm him some and would give me a few moments of peace to breathe and also give a few moments of my attention to putting his little brother to bed. As I laid in bed, reading Mason a bedtime story, I could hear the water running for the tub and I could hear the splashing. I didn’t think much of it. I finished up the story (I believe it was Goodnight Moon- we read that one nightly for what felt like YEARS), kissed Mason goodnight, turned out his light and took a deep breath as I closed his bedroom door. 

I took the three steps to the bathroom door and opened it up. Alex was in the bathtub. The bathtub was full. And the bathroom floor also had three inches of water filling the entire room. 

Y’all- I kept my cool. I was just too exhausted to continue to fight with my child. I grabbed towels and mopped up water as much as I could. I got my child out of the bath, dried him, put him in pajamas and tucked him into bed. I told him how much I loved him and that we would try again the next day, as a direct result of what one of his many therapists had recommended (“Every day needs to be a new chance for good behavior.”). I gathered up the wet towels from the bathroom floor into a laundry basket. I walked down the stairs, turned the corner to walk through the kitchen to the laundry room, trying to calculate how late I would need to stay up to get the towels washed and dried that night or if it was better to just wait until the morning. 

As I walked through the kitchen, the sound of running water jolted me out of my thoughts and I stopped dead in my tracks. There was dirty, brown water raining from the kitchen ceiling. As a single mom, I handled a lot of household situations on a daily basis and I was fairly self-sufficient. But seeing that dirty water raining down, huge brown water spots on the ceiling already, at the end of a four-hour standoff with my child, I gave up. I dropped the laundry basket on the floor, sank to my knees and cried, watching the water drip down onto my kitchen table. 

After I had cried myself out, I did what any girl would do- I called my dad. He walked me through the steps I could take in the immediate moments, then walked me through how homeowner’s insurance could potentially help with the cost of fixing the damage. Talking through it with him calmed me down and reminded me that I had a friend’s husband who was in the remediation and construction business and would likely have a contact to share for a trusted company that wouldn’t take advantage of a single mom. He totally did and they totally took care of me.

These were the type of moments that I was looking forward to not having to face alone again in the future after I allowed Todd into my life. And in fact, several months after the full kitchen renovation was complete, I had a similarly difficult day, although in different ways, and it was the first time he tried to comfort me through it. Not that I would ever forget this day, because it was just that bad, but every year the Facebook memory pops up and makes me cringe all over again. It was a stressful day at work. I had gotten homework done with the boys. My beloved black lab, Ripley, was 15 years old and was past the point of incontinence. But she was still so happy every day, I wasn’t ready to let her go. However, it did mean that several times a day, I was cleaning up dog poop in the house. 

On this particular afternoon, as I tried to flush the dog poop down the toilet, it took me multiple tries to get the toilet to work. After I cleaned the area she had the accident in, as well as the dog herself, and then myself, I had ZERO desire to cook dinner. I gathered the boys and talked up going out for pizza, and we left the house. As we walked out, I noticed a strange white slime lining the edge of my landscaping in front of the house and the wet sidewalk, even though it hadn’t rained at all that day. I even made the boys stop and we tried to guess what it could be (“A snake threw up.” “Alien slime!”)- they were less than helpful. 

We went out and had a great dinner. When we got home, I squared my shoulders and decided I was going to figure out the slime, as it was clearly an indication that something was wrong. And oh.my.goodness was it. I had Jack go inside and try to flush the toilet that I had been struggling with earlier. Sure enough, as soon as he did, water came up in the landscaping and I spent the next 30 minutes using a shovel to scoop the overflowed sewage (aka, white slime) into a trash bag to get rid of it. This is the glamorous life I led. 

It was late and since I had three boys who regularly used trees in the backyard to pee on anyways (what is up with that gentlemen??), I wasn’t so worried about them not being able to use the toilets, but this mama was really ready for a glass of wine, and I knew at some point I would need a working restroom. I called a plumber and had to pay an exorbitant “weekend emergency” rate since it was a Friday night, but the issue did get fixed. When I posted this lovely day’s details on Facebook, Todd messaged me immediately (we were not dating at that point; he was still in hot pursuit and I hadn’t yet shared my phone number), and he told me that if I ever needed someone to help me scoop sewage, he would be there in five minutes. It was the sweetest message on one of my lowest days.  

The final major change made to the house was once again due to a plumbing issue, and came six months into our relationship. It was a random Saturday morning. The boys and I were having a quiet morning at home. I had just used the bathroom on the main level, then joined the boys in the sun room to watch a Marvel movie (we were working our way through the Marvel universe). Jack got up to go use the bathroom and came running back in- well-versed at this point in how messed up our plumbing could be and the urgency behind it- to tell me that there was standing water on the bathroom floor. 

I immediately shut off the water valve, found towels to mop up the mess, and called Todd, who rushed over to help. I’m not sure I can express how nice it was to have someone to call, someone who I knew would be there for me as I dealt with the fallout. He called the plumber for me, and stayed at my house with two boys while I ran one of them to a birthday party. By the time I was home from the party, the plumber was there and had identified that the water had seeped into every wall on the main level and required not only the demolition of all the walls but the ripping up all of the beautiful wood floors I had had installed not even a year earlier after the major flooding issue from upstairs. 

The water remediation began and the fans- oh dear Lord- the fans. They were huge, they were loud and they were continuous. There was no peace or quiet to be found- no matter how neutral or sparkly my house was. When the contractors moved in to rebuild and shrink-wrapped my entire kitchen- fridge, sink and all- I wasn’t exactly sure how the boys and I were supposed to continue to live in the house. I tried to use coolers, a crockpot and my bathroom sink upstairs for a few days. 

Todd stopped by for lunch one day, took one look at the disaster, took my hands in his and told me as sweetly as he could that I was being stubborn and there was no need for me to continue to rely on only myself when the boys and I had a place to go. We were more than welcome to stay at his house. He had a five bedroom house. He had a pool. He had a working kitchen and a refrigerator that opened. That was pretty much all the convincing it took and I had the boys and myself packed up for a few nights within the hour. 

And that is how, only six months into our relationship, we got to see exactly what a future together would look like, from all angles. Kids living under the same roof. Schedules being accommodated for sports, school drop offs and pickups, work life, deciding on what to make for dinner, grocery shopping for enough food to feed seven and the food preferences for each person. It was both stressful and, because it was Todd, so incredibly fun. I think that this “minor inconvenience” (aka, MAJOR BIG DEAL) only solidified our relationship and how a future blended family would look. 

As the work progressed in my house and the kitchen got unwrapped, I told Todd that I would be moving the boys back into my house as there was no reason for me to stay at his house any longer. And I told him that even though he pretended like he was glad we were leaving, I knew he would be proposing within a week because he missed me so much. I have no idea if he was pretending or not- the boys and I were an awful lot to take in and we disrupted their lives as much as our lives were disrupted as well- but he did propose within a month of me leaving, so I do think he missed me at least a little bit. 

I have mentioned several times that Todd and the girls moved into the home that I owned when we met and got married. Before the wedding and even the engagement, we spoke at length about housing options if we got married, and I was firm in my resolution that my boys would stay within the schools they were in. While the move would mean that Kylie would be in a different school, we were able to resolve that with a waiver for her final year of middle school and a determination that we would find the best fit for high school for her needs when we got to that point. So- we determined that the best option would be to blend the family in my house. 

However, in order to make a four bedroom house accommodate seven people, including five kids, we had to make a few minor changes. We ended up moving the two youngest boys into a shared bedroom, Jack remained in his bedroom, Kylie moved into Mason’s old bedroom, and Hayley moved into my lovely customized office. 

In early January 2020, shortly after the wedding, Hayley and I started searching online for a new house. We wanted to find one that would have enough bedrooms for everyone in the family to have their own (so no less than six). And the kids were all desperate for a pool. Each time that I mentioned it to Todd, he smiled, looked at the listing, and said “We don’t need anything more than what we have here.” I begged to differ, and even at one point got him as far as driving by a dream home for sale in a dream neighborhood. 

However, it was just that- a dream. We had a serious chat about our family’s needs and the options that we had. We also talked seriously about the stress and financial choices that would need to be made if we decided to move forward with trying to find a bigger home. When faced with the facts that he laid out pretty clearly, including the fact that we were still in the process of selling his house, I agreed to lay off the house hunt for a while and spend some time focusing on blending the family in the space that we had. 

We eventually sold his house and he used some of the funds to add an incredible outdoor living space to our home. It was finished just two weeks before he died, and we spent almost every waking moment of those two weeks curled up on the couch together, fire blazing in the fireplace, drinking coffee and/or wine and watching movies. 

I continue to marvel at the ways that God has used this home as a red balloon and for my own good. Once again, although I wanted to move into something bigger and fancier, God shut the door to that opportunity so that once again, a very short 16 months later, I would continue to be taken care of during a difficult time, when once again, my household income was cut down by three-fourths, and, once again, I did not have an added worry of a huge financial strain through a mortgage. 

So what in the world does the Dewey Decimal classification system have to do with red balloons, my story and our home? I promise it ties together…

I have always been an avid reader. As the daughter of a school media specialist who was in charge of her very own library for the majority of my life, this should not come as a surprise. My favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast only because I can relate so well to the scene where the Beast shows Belle the library in the castle. That would be a dream. 

One of Todd’s passions was camping. He had a large, fancy camper trailer that we used often- especially after the pandemic hit. We spent many of our weekends without kids at campgrounds within an hour or two of the house, and once we were parked and set up, we hit a pretty smooth rhythm. (We won’t talk about parking/set up- there has never been a more true statement than “I’m sorry for what I said while we were parking the camper.” Todd was used to a wife who had more than 20 years of camping experience, especially with him, and who had a decent sense of depth perception. He did learn, pretty quickly, that even 9-year old Mason was better at helping him line up the hitch and giving him directions on where he needed to be. When we didn’t have kids along for the weekend, the whole process could get interesting…I did get a little better with practice but not much.) But following the set-up, Todd really enjoyed going for long bike rides in all the areas where we camped. Since that was not my passion, I was able to use the time that he was out riding to relax, with no demands on my time, and escape into a book. 

I taught that same love of reading to my boys. I never intentionally decided that I was going to pass that passion along, but we always had books and we were always reading and when we went out for meals, instead of three boys with noses on their screens, I typically had three boys with noses in their books.  

Anyone else familiar with Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events? Jack went through a phase where he was obsessed with this series of books. He read every single one and loved the mysteries that unfolded in each. I read each book at the same time, trying to stay involved in his interests (I did good at keeping up y’all- right up until he hit the anime phase- I have tried and I have tried and I just can. not. do. it. Doesn’t mean I don’t love ya buddy, but I just can’t). 

One of the major plot points in the series includes the Hotel Denouement and involves classification of its rooms by the old Dewey Decimal classification library cataloging system. The classification system is used to sort non-fiction books by subject. While I am definitely old enough to remember the lessons in the school library around the Dewey Decimal system, I think I read recently that it is no longer to be used and that makes me a little sad. Within the storyline of Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate Events, the inhabitants of each room in the hotel can be described by the Dewey Decimal classification represented by the room number. As an example, 174 is the classification for economic and professional ethics, and Room 174 was where a banker was staying within the story.

Jack was so into this book that we decided to look up what numbers were represented in our life, based on the real-life Dewey Decimal system. We looked up what the topic was for the address for his school, for our family members, and even for his dad’s address. When we looked up our own house number, I can’t even say that I was all that surprised to find that if our house number was cataloged in the Dewey Decimal numbers, we were living in the Bible. It’s not that I can claim to be a perfect Christian, but I found so much comfort in that- I consider the house and the continued blessing that it has been to be a huge red balloon in my life.