THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 16, 1995 TAG: 9504140055
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Stories by Esther Diskin
LENGTH: Long : 176 lines
The Land:
Ron and Dianne Baron
Dianne and Ron Baron spend their weekends thwacking nails and spreading plaster in a cabin in the woods.
Ron, 59, wears a T-shirt with a confidence-boosting slogan: ``Home Improvement - Real Men Don't Need Instructions.'' He is on a ladder to plaster the ceiling, while Dianne, 58, tackles the walls.
After a life of frenzy, with jobs, a house full of kids and chaos, they settle into the cozy ease of working side by side, with the radio playing light rock. At night, they play Scrabble or hook up the TV before falling asleep in their camper. On Sundays, they hate to leave.
They've never built much of anything before, or dwelt for long in the country. Dianne calls this one-room frame cottage, at the end of a rutted dirt road 20 miles north of Gloucester, ``a really great adventure.''
``We've lived in the city for so many years,'' she said. ``It's our dream to go out in the country, to let our animals run, to do our gardening.''
Their city is Portsmouth, where they raised four kids in a three-bedroom house near Churchland Junior High School. They lived in a tightly packed suburban development, and the view from their back yard was five other back yards. ``I felt on display,'' said Diane.
They dreamed of getting away from it all, and did it in short bursts. They bought a camper and took all four kids with them on trips to parks around the state. It was nature, all right, but with all the frenzy of family life.
Two years ago, they bought these 5 acres of woods and started getting ready. The important thing was to build the cabin themselves.
Ron, a draftsman, drew the plans. They hired a contractor to pour the foundation and put up the shell.
In September, they began driving up on weekends to hammer and plaster.
The magic is how it has brought them closer.
``We weren't sure if - working together on a project like this - we'd get on each other's nerves, argue about things,'' said Dianne. ``But we've gotten into a routine. I've learned to do things I didn't think I could.''
The finished project is some distance down the road. Once they sell their home and move to the cabin, they plan to add rooms.
But they aren't rushing. The work with their own hands is part of the journey. They have ideas for lots of finishing touches, like paneling on the walls, but one thing they won't bother with is curtains.
``You can just look out at trees,'' said Ron. ``Everywhere you look is trees and quiet.''
The Homemaker:
Douglas Nichols
Two-year-old Debbie peels the edge of her bologna and tosses the strip in the trash can beside her high chair. She stuffs the slice in her mouth, slurps on her apple juice and reaches for a pair of neon green plastic glasses that once belonged to Mr. Potato Head.
``My glasses,'' she says, and jams them on. She peers mischievously at her father through her upside-down specs: ``Hi, Grandma!''
She calls him Grandma, ``Mommy-Daddy,'' and sometimes ``Doug.'' He calls himself a homemaker. Douglas Nichols, retired from the Navy after 20 years in July, fell into the role when he couldn't find another job.
Nichols, 39, thought it was a temporary stop. Now, nine months later, he wouldn't trade the joy he's found in his new closeness with his daughters, Debbie and 8-year-old Katherine.
``I really felt let down by society, like a victim,'' he said. ``It was a blessing in disguise.''
It's a sharp change from the way he used to judge success. He and Robin, his wife of 13 years, both had Navy careers. The kids stayed in day care or with a caretaker in their Virginia Beach home. When he and his wife came home at night, all was a blur of activity - dinner, bedtime rituals and whisking the kids off to sleep.
He was geared to the rhythm and style of the military. ``It was nice to have someone say, here's the plan and here's how to do it,'' he said.
No one taught him how to do the homemaker. He wasn't prepared for some of the sudden changes - the solitude and absence of adult conversation and stimulation. Now, he reads a lot more and often takes time to chat with people in the park or at the store.
He can handle a little ribbing from his Navy buddies, but he gets heated talking about stereotypes.
A month ago, he and his wife were chatting at a restaurant. His wife asked, ``Aren't the kids driving you crazy?'' When he protested that he loved it, an older woman at the next table leaned over to wisecrack, ``Yeah, right.''
People like that don't understand the blessing the way he does. He measures it in small moments - when Debbie learns the name of a vegetable in their garden or rushes at his knees to hug him, when he can take the time to wipe Katherine's tears over a dead cat sprawled on the sidewalk.
He celebrates their shared games, like when Debbie throws her blanket on the kitchen floor, lies down and balances a pink plastic purse on her stomach. ``Night, night!'' she tells him.
``I've really gotten to know the children, I've really gotten close to them,'' he said. ``I get the most direct feedback.''
The Mission:
Mark Snyder
This spring, Mark Snyder is making plans to learn how to golf again. He's already mastered bowling and darts from his electric wheelchair. So why not golf?
``I don't know anyone else who has done it,'' he says. A golf pro has already promised to chop down his old clubs and help him practice his swing.
Snyder keeps swinging, day after day. That's been the secret to his new beginning.
Ten years ago, Snyder, 49, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic nervous system disease that results in the loss of muscular coordination. Two years later, as his stamina declined, he was forced to retire from his 19-year career as a high school teacher in Norfolk.
``It was like one life ended and another one started,'' he said. ``I don't know what my life would have been like if I had just been a teacher. I don't think I would have been very happy.''
For a while, he brooded. He was a man who had once enjoyed two-month camping trips across the United States and Canada with his wife, Ilene, and daughter, Michelle. Now he couldn't follow them inside stores and hotels that didn't have wheelchair ramps.
At a father-daughter celebration at his daughter's high school, participants were invited on stage. Officials had made no plans to get his wheelchair up the steps, so his daughter went up alone.
One day, he found someone parked illegally in the handicapped spot in front of the Multiple Sclerosis Society building in Virginia Beach. He called the police to complain, and found out about something he could do: Volunteer for a program which trained disabled people as parking ticket cops.
``That was a turning point, right there,'' he said. ``I got sold on the volunteer business. It was some sort of personal redemption . . . to make sure that the things that happened to me didn't happen to others.''
He has become a whirlwind of volunteering. He visits schools, explaining to kids about living with a disability and getting them excited to read books and raise funds for MS research. He gives talks about the importance of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which sets guidelines for making buildings accessible for people in wheelchairs.
``It's your responsibility, if you don't like the world, to change it,'' he says. ``I have infinite patience. If I had to talk to 20 people a day for the rest of my life, I could do it.''
The Awakening:
Lorraine Wilcher
Lorraine Wilcher, 39, began her journey three years ago, when a crisis in her marriage forced her to confront a past she calls ``a prison.''
She grew up in Ohio, and says she experienced repeated sexual abuse through her teenage years, starting when she was 12. She describes her home life as chaotic and emotionally abusive, an environment that pushed her into isolation.
She was married 10 years, but never felt she could escape the destructive force of old memories.
``I can't remember ever connecting with any people,'' she says. ``It was like I was in this shell of a body, looking out at others, thinking, `If only they knew.' That happened a lot, the shame, loathing and embarrassment.''
Three years ago, on Thanksgiving Day, it all fell apart. She invited her family to her home in Portsmouth, in an attempt to create a harmonious reunion. The gathering erupted in bitterness. Her family started an attack on her husband, Ray, and tried to turn her against him.
She believes many men would have given up and walked away from their marriage. Ray didn't. At his insistence, they started counseling. She soon came to believe that many of their problems communicating had roots in the past she had tried to forget.
``Confronting myself, it's been such a journey, a hard journey,'' she says. ``He's been the force that allowed me to take all the steps I needed.''
She says he has encouraged her, even when he didn't completely understand the paths she wanted to pursue, or her reasons for them. Shortly after they started counseling, she wanted to quit her job and go back to get her college degree.
Ray had always encouraged her to tackle new and more challenging jobs, and he wasn't sure the pressure of academia would help her thrive. But he's been there through her struggles with every class, even staying up for two nights with her to read and discuss Plato's Dialogues for a class paper.
On long walks together, they can talk about her past and her new insights into it. With him, she says, she's created a ``little universe'' which anchors her in a present filled with new possibilities.
``The past is entwined with the present,'' she says. ``It's a journey getting through the past and beyond it, so you can live the present moment and the past isn't robbing you.'' by CNB