The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir by Dee Williams Read Free Book Online

could to put up with the fact that I had no idea how to supervise.
    There was too much paperwork and not enough fieldwork, and I hated being the person that people would call when theywere sick. I didn’t like having to hear about their personal problems—the baby puking; kids with measles, flu, lice, or diarrhea; there was colitis, impacted molars, and the need to stay home and wait for a new hot water heater to be delivered. There seemed to be a steady stream of very specific problems, and I was a lousy supervisor because even while I was saying something like “Oh my, that’s rough,” I didn’t really want to hear about how the toilet had overflowed and then the car wouldn’t start. I didn’t want to know about so-and-so’s aunt dying and how everyone was getting together at her house.
    It wasn’t that I didn’t care; it was just so fatiguing to hear how horrible everyone’s life was, because that’s all you hear when people call in sick. No one calls in sick because they’re in love or because they can’t fathom spending another minute away from their toddler. I was no different; every Sunday night, rain or shine, in love or not, I packed a small bag, loaded my dog and me into the car, and drove north to Olympia.
    Fortunately, there was an end to the madness and a new supervisor was in the works. I just needed to hang in there for another month, and enjoy the fact that the drive up to Olympia brought me closer to my friends a few days a week.
    I had lived in Olympia for six years before moving down to Portland, so it was nice to hang out with Candyce and Paula, whose living room floor ended up being my crash pad for a couple nights each week. We had kept in touch after I moved, but there’s something that shifts when you have time tostumble into one another on the way to the coffeepot early in the morning.
    Along the same line, it was good to see Hugh and Annie more often, and see how big their kids were getting. Over the years while I lived in Olympia, and then even after I moved to Portland, they’d invite me for holiday dinners at Aunt Rita’s house, which was next door and connected to their house by way of a back patio and covered walkway. It seemed like a sweet setup, giving Keeva and Kellen daily access to a surrogate seventy-eight-year-old “grandma” (Rita was Hugh’s aunt—his late mother’s sister).
    Even though she was paralyzed on her left side, as a result of a stroke that she’d had years earlier, Rita still lived independently. She drove herself to the store and puttered around her house with the use of a little tripod cane. There were obvious signs that she’d had a stroke, like the big metal brace that was strapped just below her knee and fit into her clunky industrial-looking left shoe, and then there was “lefty,” her lifeless hand that would sometimes get hung up in her sleeve as she was dressing. But from her attitude, you’d never know she was mobility-challenged; she was vital, read the paper every day, and would pitch Wiffle balls at Kellen for hours as he stood in her living room.
    We’d all pack into Rita’s house for dinner and later pull out the playing cards for a rousing game of Boonswaggler, ahomemade poker game that involved wearing funny hats and speaking in fake British accents. I never understood the game. I still don’t, but it was hilarious, and made me wish my own family was willing to follow up Thanksgiving dinner with a round of stuffy English card-playing, where we’d stick a playing card to our forehead, just below a funny-looking hunting cap, and say, “Tut-tut there, old chap, I don’t want to be a bother, but I believe you are bluffing.”
    Over the past few months, I’d gotten to know Hugh and Annie even better as I traveled up to Olympia for work. We had dinner more often, and they also gently enlisted me to help their friend Mark, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was a challenging time for him, his wife Shelly, and their two