Newmarket, Ontario, CANADA
Congratulations, Julie!
Julie’s Bio:
Julie grew up in rural Ohio where she graduated from the University of Toledo and married shortly thereafter. The stay-at-home mother's writing career started nearly two decades later when, faced with divorce and life as a single parent in 1996, she chose a job with a political action committee as a speech writer. This stint lead to becoming a lobbyist for parental rights at the Ohio state capital, which occasionally took her to Washington DC. Her political networking skills helped to hone her freelance writing career. While researching information about chat rooms for a Christian publication, Julie met her present husband in a chat room for Canadian widows and widowers. After marrying, Julie moved with her two children to Ontario, Canada. At age 40, Julie and her husband welcomed a new baby to their family, and "The Brady Bunch Bonus Family" became a happily blended group of five.
Julie's experience with marrying a widower was the catalyst to penning her first book, a self-help guide, entitled PAST Perfect! PRESENT: Tense! Insights From One Woman's Journey as the Wife of a Widower. Her personal website hosts a helpful message board for women dating or married to widowers. The following year after her first book was launched, Julie switched genres and wrote again from life experience, this time with humour. Her comically illustrated book Parentally Insane: Insights From The Edge...of Midlife! has been compared, much to Julie's delight, to the writing style of the late Erma Bombeck, her idol.
At present, Julie's works can be read on over 200 websites internationally. She has continued her freelance writing career enthusiastically, with published articles and stories appearing in print publications such as Metro Seven (Australia), Family Digest, and Golden Living magazines. Julie is currently working on her next humour book, entitled Lance Romance In His Underpants: A Girls' Guide to 'Guy Things' as well as a tear-jerker book of letters from a mother to her daughter spanning 30 years, entitled I'll Always Be With You: Memoirs Of A Mother's Love. This is her second writing contest win.
Visit Julie’s websites:
Lady of the House?
My husband had been married for eight years and widowed for three prior to meeting me, a divorced woman with two small, rambunctious sons. His home was once “their” home—his and his late wife’s. Because of their jobs, they were never home for long stretches of time. When they were, entertaining other adults was their main focus. Thus, comfort was sacrificed for attractiveness to impress rather than to welcome guests at dinner parties.
His late wife was a modern career woman without children, so the contemporary décor suited her lifestyle. The stark white walls and furniture bore no chocolate milks stains or crayon marks as mine did. Waterford crystal frames and chandeliers were displayed without fear of breakage caused by kids who naughtily bounced basketballs indoors.
My house was built to withstand wear and tear. With two rowdy boys, destruction of property was always a possibility. Couches may have looked brand new beneath slipcovers, but out of necessity (i.e., fear of Army men bayonet stab tears), no one ever saw my furniture in all its pristine glory. Instead of the silk Damask tablecloth that graced my husband’s dining room table, mine was covered with one of my mother’s time-worn handmade quilts, which served to protect my table from kids who coloured outside the lines, spilled grape juice, and accidentally “lost” used bubblegum. Since darker colors tend to hide an assortment of faults, my walls were painted deep burgundy, which added warmth to the “frazzled single mom chic” style I had come to love.
Just prior to our wedding, my husband and I discussed which of our houses would be sold, and which would serve as our new homestead. Since his house was bigger, I sold my modest house and its contents, and moved into his palatial palace of white linen and black leather.
It took a long time for me to feel comfortable with being the lady of the house when it once belonged to another woman. If only I could free myself of feeling like an intruder!
I spent the first year in the castle tiptoeing around like a nervous cat. Wanting to respect his late wife’s possessions yet resenting their presence was a constant battle I waged in my insecure mind. After all, she’s not here to enjoy them, I thought, so why should her things remain in this house like monuments to her memory? I reasoned it was because my husband never gave me permission to sell, donate, or otherwise dispose of the pretty yet useless and unsuitable things, so I assumed he wanted them here and liked the house the way it was.
Finally, I had an epiphany that came in the form of my husband’s dirty socks. He had been puttering in the garage one day, happily building a go-cart with the boys. After completion and a trial run in the muddy backyard acreage, all three of them dragged their tired bodies into the house and flopped side-by-side together on the Louis XIV chaise that graced the elegant foyer. Covered in sawdust and axle grease, they leaned over to untie dusty shoes when my shriek startled them upright.
“Are you kidding me? Get out of here and go clean up in the pool house bathroom!” I loudly insisted with bulging, angry eyes. At that moment, my husband took off his socks and flipped them into the air. They landed mud-side-down on the other end of the chaise with a plop, sprinkling mud stains on the delicate beige upholstery. The boys giggled with delight. I thought I might faint until I heard my husband laugh and say, “Man, that felt good! I never liked this uptight piece of snobbery anyway!”
Then it dawned on me: he was as unhappy about our home’s interior as I was!
In the discussions that followed, I discovered that we had both assumed too much about each other’s thoughts regarding the house. I kept his late wife’s items intact out of respect for her and for his memories of her, assuming he’d want it that way. He felt that a new wife, instant kids, and a new way of living meant we should furnish and decorate the house according to our new blended lifestyle, and grew increasingly uncomfortable with our discomfort.
Soon it was “out with the old, in with the new” as we replaced “her” things with “our” things, turning our house into a home that now reflects our unity: family-friendly and ghost-free.
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