Mother-in-law shared talents, I learned

Mary S. Roder

Date Modified: 10/13/2009 3:27 PM

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We rented a farm shortly after our marriage and moved into a huge house. It needed sprucing up.

Our landlady gave us $10 to spend on wallpaper and paint. Even in 1957, $10 bought very little of either. I dug into a sale barrel at the paint store and found a roll of wallpaper with multi-color seashells scattered across it.

It was cheap and bright, perfect for our small bathroom. My new husband offered to help put it up if I would tell him what to do. He knew nothing about the task and I didn't know much more. He said his mother would be happy to help, but I was shy about asking for her help.

Instead I convinced him it would be fun to do it by ourselves, learning as we worked.

We did fine with the preparation work. He tore off the old paper and sealed the cracks in the walls. I made a pot of paste using cold water and cornstarch stirred until smooth and then cooked to transparency. He set up a pasting table while I measured.

The lower part of the wall was tiled, which made it necessary to paper the upper half only. I cut the first strip. Knowing the design had to be matched at each seam, I laid the roll of paper on top of the strip I had just cut making sure each colored seashell was precisely over its match. I cut all of the strips that way before we began to hang them.

With the first strip pasted and hung we congratulated ourselves on how smart we were. I was already looking ahead to other ways we could make our new home into the prettiest one around, working together in harmony, enjoying every minute.

Then reality set in. We tried the second strip only to discover we must slide the paper down about 8 inches to find the match.

Too late we saw that I should have placed the second strip alongside the first one rather than directly on top of it when I did the cutting. We now had a strip with too much at the bottom and about 8 inches less than we needed at the top. Every other strip would be OK but the in-between ones were too short.

It had been the only roll of seashell paper in that bargain barrel. I cried in frustration and disappointment. Hubby didn't know what to do with a crying lady. Ignoring my protests, he called his mother.

"Don't worry. We'll figure something out," was her immediate response.

In a short while she was there (her son had taken off for parts unknown) showing me how to feather the incorrect strips. We tore across the strip gently where it was too long. Then we moved the larger part of the strip up and found the match.

She explained that cutting it would leave a ridge in the middle of the strip, but tearing eliminated that as long as we were very careful when placing the tear over the strip below it.

It wasn't easy and I had misgivings, but when we finished it looked just fine. Only those of us who knew every other strip had been hung in two pieces, could fully appreciate our pretty walls.

Because my mother-in-law made me feel she was genuinely pleased to be able to help us out, I decided being shy about asking for help wasn't very smart. It denied me her knowledge and denied her the opportunity to show off some of her talents. We became a team and papered together many times after that.

My husband no longer offered to help using the excuse his father used which was, "I don't speak Wallpapering." They didn't help but they liked to watch and listen as we worked.

"Cut the next strip with that little doohickey a snitch closer to the top," I would be told, or in response to my question, "How long does this strip have to be?" my mother-in-law would answer, "Two sticks and a little bit."

We heard the men snicker and ask, "What kind of measurement is that?" They could laugh. We didn't care. It worked for us.