Adjusting To New Family Dynamics... A Journey

Unlike in the old fairy tales I read as a child where princes and princesses got married and lived happily ever after, life in the Lusk/Ballentine family after the Wedding did not exactly go smoothly all the time. It was, in fact, full of adjustments, to say the least.

Suddenly, in addition to Jim, I had two little brothers and a big sister. And, lo, unlike my paper dolls that I could direct in any way I could imagine whenever I wanted to play, or put away any time I wanted to do something else, my new step-siblings were real people with their own ideas about what they should do. I was not their boss. Unlike Jim, these new little brothers had no qualms about messing with my toys and misplacing them. With so many people in the house, and only one bathroom, I could no longer take long fun baths by myself, or sing to myself in the bathroom mirror when I should have been brushing my teeth.

On the upside, I was never again anywhere near lonely. The big old house in Pine Bluff had been divided into two sides, a duplex. Our side was what had originally been the sun room, the living room, the formal dining room, the kitchen, bathroom, and the back porch. (The other side of the duplex had the original bedrooms with a kitchen and bath built into the back bedroom. That side was rented out to other people.) On our side, the kitchen was large enough to eat in, even for six people, so the sun room became the kids’ bedroom and four-year-old Richard slept in a little bed in Mama's and Daddy’s bedroom which had been the formal dining room in the original house before it was converted into a duplex.

So it was a bit crowded, but both parents had grown up in huge families on farms and this was nothing new to them. Mama was next to youngest in a family of 12, Daddy the baby of 10. I really liked bedtime in those days. Bonnie who slept with me would always make up a bed time story for us. Jim and Ray slept in the other bed. The two beds were cramped into the little sun room and it was hard to make them up in the morning.

Mama continued to work in the cotton mill as a weaver. Daddy drove the old Ford 50 miles each way to work in a little mattress factory in Little Rock. Bonnie had quit school in the tenth grade because cancer claimed her mother’s life in September 1954, and she was needed to take care of baby Richard at home. So she continued to do that in Pine Bluff while Jim, Ray and I went to school.

I loved singing. I knew all the songs at church, hand-clapping, foot-stomping country gospel. Mama played the piano, but we didn’t have a piano at our house. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Simmons who lived just down the street from us, heard me sing at school and drew me aside to offer piano lessons at her house. Her daughter was gone to college, and all the Schaum books were stored in the bench of her magnificent black grand piano in the old Victorian house down the street… So I walked down there every week day and practiced for an hour after school. Once a week she gave me a lesson but on practice days she would not hover, but just let me practice. I loved it!

One of the last little pieces I learned was by Stephen Foster, “Swanee River”. I particularly remember it because it was written in “C” and the left hand was all the major chords in C (G and F).

So I had me a Daddy, a sister (along with a couple of extra brothers), and a chance to play the piano every day. What more could I ask? Old saying: All good things come to an end. When Daddy and Mama decided to take their blended family to California, that was the end of my piano lessons and getting to practice every day.

All good things come to an end. On the other hand, there are always new beginnings. Moving to California in the summer of 1955 was definitely a new beginning for us.