Might as Well Laugh About It Now by Marie Osmond, Marcia Wilkie Read Free Book Online Page A

about their significance, waving them off as if they were pesky cats trying to entangle her feet, limiting her movement. I wasn’t sure why she was being so generous with her belongings, but I wasn’t going to question it, either.
    For the first time in my life, I was going to be able to have a full room for my home office. “Office” was my shortened name for the room that would be used for my doll display, crafting, scrapbooking, computer work, rubber stamping, gift wrapping, photo framing, painting, sculpting, quilting, sewing, journal writing, reading, meditating, archiving, storing memorabilia, making private phone calls, getting away, taking a deep breath, collecting myself, and finding some peace. (Whew!)
    I loved the space, which was by itself at one end of the house, over the two-car garage. I was crazy about it all, from the floor space, large enough to lay out a queen-sized quilt, to my black leather couches, to the vaulted ceilings with what seemed to be mile-high windows. I had enclosed glass shelving holding many of my porcelain dolls, all of them limited editions. Thirty years of my personal journals were stored in cabinets near my desk.
    I saved an area for things my mother had left to me: her favorite scriptures, books, photo albums, an antique sewing machine, embroidered pillowcases and tatted handkerchiefs, business ideas written out in notebooks, a set of her treasured china, and other sweet remembrances of her. I also found a way to store most of the memorabilia of my career: framed photos, platinum records, awards and letters from presidents, along with boxes of gifts from fans.
    I declared it a kid-free zone, which my children seemed to interpret as “free to any kid, any time.” They instantly began to inhabit my sanctuary, turning the couches into trampolines, adjusting their skateboard wheels on top of my sewing table, adding glitz to their jeans pockets and my pretty oak tabletop, and teaming up for pickup games of Nerf basketball. When I opened my knitting bag and found a hamster wheel with a gerbil still using it, I decided the door needed a lock.
    The first week the office door was latched, my youngest son, then two and a half, managed to break in and superglue my heavy crystal elephant (a gift from when I performed The King and I on Broadway) to my brand-new end table. To follow in her brother’s footsteps, Abigail, at around the same age, jimmied the door and decided to personalize my computer screen with some purple passion nail polish and about ten “Whassup???” stickers. I’ll tell you what’s up!!!!!
    This is one of the continuing mysteries of childhood that really should be scientifically studied. How is it that children who find it impossible to close any of their own cabinets, closets, or drawers until they are about nineteen years old can, at twenty-seven months of age, open any and all “kid-proof” locks with complete ease?
    One day in September of 2005, I was in my office thinking about my mother. She would have loved a room to call her own, let alone a room this size. With nine of us kids, her personal space was, at best, a corner of the kitchen counter or a small desk crammed at the very end of a hallway between bedroom doors. She never complained about a lack of private time, though I think she must have craved it. I was reading one of her journals from thirty-five years before and came upon this entry: “It’s eleven p.m. I can’t seem to get these children to go to bed!” It made me laugh, first, and then broke my heart a bit. As much as she loved us, she must have felt she never had time to just be “Olive.” (Olive is my true first name, as well. Thank heavens I’ve always gone by Marie, my middle name. I don’t think the Donny and Olive show would have held much punch.) As I sat on my couch, looking down at her sweet handwriting, I wished my office could have been hers.
    The very next day, I was wishing it could be mine, again. My room and almost