Jodi studied him quizzically. “Will you mind that very much?”
“I never objected to Laurie dating Mike,” he said. “At least not for the reason you’re thinking. I thought it was too soon, that Mike especially had a tough road ahead of him and shouldn’t add a serious relationship to the mix.” He glanced at her. “Sounds like the same mistake you made about me, misjudging what I could handle.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” she said. “I thought we’d settled the fact that I’d been an idiot and you were, too.”
“I don’t recall the word idiot ever crossing my lips,” he commented.
“Implied,” she said. “It was definitely implied.”
“We’re communicating now, though, and that’s what counts,” he told her. “We’ll never make that same mistake again.”
“Never,” she promised.
Trent looked around the dance floor and chuckled as he saw Marvin trying to do a sedate slow dance with Devonia. He looked as if he wanted to break loose and speed up the beat. Ramon and his girl were wrapped tight in each other’s arms. Miguel’s gaze on Mariana was bewildered, almost as if he’d never seen her before and didn’t know quite what to make of this precious, lovely creature. Even Jason, small for his age, his eyes too big behind his thick glasses, was talking intently to a girl wearing braces and whose hair was as uncontrolled as Jodie’s. Even though she was inches taller than Jason, she was gazing at him raptly and seemed to be hanging on the boy’s every word.
Trent looked into Jodie’s eyes. “You and my daughter did a good thing tonight,” he said. “A very good thing.”
“Does that mean you’ll help us again next year, even if Laurie’s away at college?”
“If you need my help, you’ve got it,” he said at once. “On one condition.”
“Oh?”
“Dance with me, Jodie. That was part of our deal for tonight, but every time I’ve asked, you’ve suddenly found something requiring your attention. Even the most dutiful chaperone doesn’t need to check the punch bowl that many times, especially since we’ve been standing right next to it for most of the night.”
She winced. “You noticed that?”
“I notice a lot of things about you,” he said, brushing a wayward curl from her cheek. It was a futile exercise, since more sprang free from the delicate, sparkling combs meant to hold her hair in place.
“Name one.”
He laughed. “You did it again. You tried to divert me. Come on, Jodie, it’s time to pay the piper. I’m claiming this dance.”
She backed up a step. “I can’t.”
He paused, struck by the genuine fear he saw in her eyes. “What do you mean, you can’t? Do you really have two left feet, the way you said the other day?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed.
He was more confused than ever. “How can you not know?”
“The truth is that I never learned to dance.”
Trent didn’t even try to hide his disbelief. “But the way you got involved with this, the fact that it’s so important to you...” He didn’t know what to make of any of it.
“I know it must not make sense to you,” she said.
“Explain,” he pleaded.
Her cheeks turned pink. Carefully avoiding his gaze, she finally blurted, “You remember that when I was just starting my senior year of high school, I was in an accident, a bad one. Broken legs, broken pelvis.”
Trent nodded. “You told me about that and you mentioned it again the other day. What does that have to do with you not dancing?”
“I finished the year in rehab and at home. For a while they thought I would never walk again, but I proved them wrong.” She met his eyes straight on. “Don’t you remember that when we met our junior year I still had a little bit of a limp? I was so self-conscious about it.”
He shook his head. “All I noticed was that you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and that your laugh made me happy. Beyond mentioning the accident, you never made a big deal about it. I had no idea it was so serious.”
“I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me and I was trying to forget what had been a very painful time in my life, not just physically, but emotionally. I was grateful that I could walk. I really was, but I missed so much, things I can never get back.”
He regarded her with sudden understanding. “Like your prom.”
She nodded.
“But you came to this one,” he said. “Did you go to the prom at your old school, too?”
She nodded. “As a chaperone. I’ve done it for years. I kept hoping it would make up for what I’d missed, but it’s not the same. It couldn’t possibly be.” Again, she touched the camellia fleetingly. “At least until tonight.”
Trent’s heart turned over in his chest as he tried to imagine how it must have hurt each year to see young people celebrating the end of their high school days, while she had only memories of pain and heartache from hers.
Not only had her revelation given him a deeper insight into this amazing woman, it also reassured him that even if they spent a lifetime together, there would still be new discoveries to make. The prospect excited him.
“You know,” he said, “dancing’s not that difficult.”
“Maybe not for you,” she said. “You’ve had lots of practice.”
“Come on,” he insisted, tugging her onto the floor and then into his arms. “Just hold on to me, Jodie. Trust me.”
Her body swayed into his and he gave her a moment to relax before he began to move. “Listen to the music—feel it,” he encouraged her, wishing he could feel it himself over the beating of his heart and the sweet sensation of her body pressed against him.
“Don’t even think about dancing,” he said. “Look around you. See what you’ve done for these kids. You gave them magic, Jodie. You gave them memories they’ll treasure for a lifetime, rather than living with the regret of missing this night the way you had to.”
A smile spread across her face as she looked around. He could tell the precise moment when she forgot about her fears, her awkwardness. Satisfied that he’d accomplished one goal, he went for another and spun her around and around till she was laughing, her feet off the ground. The kids around them stood back and applauded.
Seeing Jodie let go, listening to the laughter that had once brought him such joy, Trent knew he’d captured a little magic tonight, too.
And this time, he wouldn’t let it go. He’d do whatever it took to make sure it lasted forever.
* * * * *
Dear Reader,
How many times in your life have you opened your closet door before an evening out and murmured, “I have absolutely nothing to wear,” even though the closet is crammed with clothes? It’s one thing to face such a dilemma as an adult, but in the fashion-conscious world of teenagers, it’s quite another, especially if the lack of appropriate clothes is real. At no time does the absence of something special to wear seem quite as important as it does for all of the activities associated with high school graduation and, most especially, the prom.
Ruth Renwick, a Canadian social worker, encountered that need firsthand when she learned of a girl who was going to miss her high school prom because she simply couldn’t afford a dress to wear. The first dress Ruth took by was too big. With time running out, Ruth searched her own closet, found more options and took them to the girl’s home. It seemed such a little thing to her at the time, but the delight she saw on the girl’s face, the transformation that took place, led Ruth to think about all the other young girls and young men in similar circumstances. With her huge heart, the glimmer of an idea and the help of her family and others such as social workers Tracey Ciccarelli and Janace King-Watson, Ruth began Inside the Dream.
&
nbsp; You can read much more about the organization on the website www.insidethedream.org. If you’re able to help, please do. If there’s a need for a similar organization in your community, start one. It takes only one person with a dream and a vision to make a huge difference in someone’s life.
With all good wishes for your dreams to come true,
Sherryl Woods
SAFELY HOME
by Christina Skye
Inspired by Barbara Huston
Contents
BARBARA HUSTON
CHRISTINA SKYE SAFELY HOME
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
EPILOGUE
DEAR READER
Barbara Huston
Partners In Care Maryland
Imagine waking up one morning so old and frail that a simple run to the corner store to pick up milk, bread and soup takes over three hours. Imagine constantly fretting that your bedroom light bulb will burn out and go unchanged for weeks because there’s no easy way to reach it. Imagine what it’s like to boast a sharp mind, an independent spirit and a true desire to live at home, but not have the funds to periodically pay the fifteen to twenty dollars an hour for services to help make that happen.
But there is another way. It’s called Partners In Care Maryland, a vital, niche resource for older people and their families and friends living in Maryland—and a dream come true for Barbara Huston, the organization’s CEO.
“Most older adults want to stay in the community, but that doesn’t mean having something done for them necessarily. It’s about participating in that community,” she says, explaining the nonprofit’s “service-exchange” philosophy.
Put simply, the service-exchange concept is based on the idea that everyone has something to contribute to their community. People give their time and talents, and that time is logged into the “bank,” so when they need to draw from it, they can. For example, a seventy-five-year-old woman with 20/20 vision could read letters to a sight-impaired member and then ask yet another member for a ride to the doctor’s office or help repairing a leaky faucet. This network of care helps older adults feel as if they’re part of the solution rather than the problem or, worse, a charity case, says Barbara.
No wonder that if anyone uses the word volunteer around Barbara, she quickly changes it to member.
A bunch of nice ladies
In some ways Barbara can’t believe she has been running Partners In Care Maryland since 1993. Back then the kitchen table served as a boardroom, and her sister and friend, both with gerontology degrees, helped run the show. Barbara had just left a career as a navy budget analyst working in the Pentagon after starting her family. That background, she says, certainly helped her learn how to burn the midnight oil to get a job done.
“You really can’t find anything that’s more high-pressure than that. It just cooks all the time,” she says.
Her tenacity paid off. That first year they transported twelve people to medical appointments and convinced the local hospital to donate one room to work out of. She’s the first to admit, almost cheerfully, that nepotism helped her get through the door.
“Our partner’s neighbor was the hospital’s new head, so he couldn’t really say, ‘Don’t come see me.’ When we pitched the idea we were just so sincere he gave us space,” she says.
Others were equally impressed with the “bunch of nice ladies” writing grants and knocking on doors, so eventually a foundation in Baltimore decided to fund them, as long as Partners In Care Maryland found a fiscal agent to handle the money until they landed their nonprofit status.
Today, Barbara still hits the ground running every morning, overseeing a budget of $900,000 per year, eight full-time staff, nine part-time staff and about twenty-four office volunteers as they help to coordinate about 175 rides and hundreds of other matches per week at four sites and the thrift store—not to mention offering a growing number of other services for the whopping 2,600 members now signed up.
For instance, Partners In Care Maryland offers emergency kits containing food, water, a radio (with large buttons so everyone can see them), whistles and glow sticks. The organization also runs Repairs with Care to help with handyman-type chores, and networking programs that assist isolated and lonely seniors in reaching out to find friends. Recently Barbara collaborated with the CEO of the local hospice, which acquired a property to build a community campus of care. In exchange for engaging contractors and member handymen to rehab one of the buildings on site, Partners In Care was able to move their offices to rent-free space and to enlarge the thrift store so that it will be able to offer even more financial support to the program, a very important step in difficult economic times. The first organization on site, PIC will be part of a continuum of care campuses for older adults and those with chronic illnesses. Another PIC program will help in this new arena. The MobilityBus was started in 2012 with a grant from the state to support members who no longer can get into a volunteer driver’s car or who may need a caregiver or family member to travel with them. “This new option makes sure that we can continue to help our members as they age in the homes they love,” says Barbara.
“People have really taken to this idea,” she says. “We are still amazed and giddy that people wanted to belong and that it’s been so effective.”
Good for all
Beyond Barbara’s unyielding energy and kindness, one of the reasons for the nonprofit’s success is its far-reaching benefits. Not only do frail older people win, so do their families, particularly those who live too far away to help with ongoing, day-to-day care.
As families become more mobile, spreading out across the state to be where the jobs are, seniors are often left behind without a support system in place. Meanwhile, even a short drive of forty miles can quickly add up to hours on the road if an elderly mother needs a ride to the doctor’s office in town and there’s no one local to take her.
“It really takes the whole day. And it’s not that you don’t love your mother—it’s if she has to do that two times a week, that’s really going to upset your work-life balance,” says Barbara.
It’s little wonder, then, that many businesses are also seeing the advantage of organizations like Partners In Care Maryland. If it can locate local drivers for errands and medical visits, family members need less personal time off to care for their elderly loved ones. When it comes down to it, people all over the world are learning about Partners In Care. For example, in 2010 Barbara was invited to speak at an international conference in Northern Ireland, as government leaders were interested in showcasing Partners In Care as a model for helping their own aging population.
Running itself
Ask Barbara what she is proud of, however, and she’s quick to answer that she’s amazed and thrilled that Partners In Care Maryland can now run itself. People know their jobs and do them well, she says.
Not that Barbara has been made redundant. She discovered this just recently when Partners In Care Maryland conducted an operations report that revealed staff and volunteers still say they turn to her for ideas and insight. Barbara remains at the helm, inspiring others to do good work.
“They said I’m still the head mother,” she says, laughing.
For instance, when Barbara went away on vacation not long ago, she arrived back to a sign on the desk that simply read “WWBD,” or “What Would Barbara Do?”
Here’s part of that answer: she pitches in. When staff members have a difficult time trying to coordinate a ride for a member and no one else is available, Barbara hops into the car and does the job herself. Or if she’s at the office after five o’clock and everyone else has gone home, she makes it a point to answer the telephone. It’s a rare CEO who
is willing to wear the hat of receptionist in a pinch.
Even when her husband developed multiple sclerosis and cancer five years ago, Barbara did double duty, caring for him and still running Partners In Care Maryland with her usual patience and grace.
With that dedication and hard work behind her, no one can blame Barbara for wanting to kick back and enjoy a little R & R someday. So what will she do when that day comes?
“I don’t know. I never grew up—or at least I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I might not be finished yet,” she says.
After a moment’s pause, though, she answers, her voice taking on a softer, almost dreamy tone. A lover of books and a voracious reader, Barbara talks about opening a bookstore near the small beach house her family owns.
“I could read all day, wear flip-flops to work and I wouldn’t have to make apologies for that!” Barbara says.
Until then, she’ll do everything she can to make her members’ lives easier, more fulfilling and less lonely, working with like-minded people who come to Partners In Care Maryland with good intentions and an open heart.
“Every day is a good day,” she says. “That just gives me joy.”
For more information, visit www.partnersincare.org or write to Partners In Care Maryland, 90-B Ritchie Highway, Pasadena, MD 21122.
Christina Skye
Safely Home
Christina Skye
Christina Skye loves living in Arizona, where she hasn’t met a sunset she didn’t like. The night she finished this story, three owls gathered outside her window, calling back and forth until dawn.
Readers can find excerpts of her books, knitting and crochet patterns (yes, she loves both!) and special reader contests at www.christinaskye.com.
To my mother,
More Than Words, Where Dreams Begin: Black Tie and PromisesSafely HomeDaffodils in Spring Page 10
