Betty Bailey was an anomaly among my grandmother’s friends.
She was the only one I remember who had a husband, that is, a living, present
husband. In fact, I think it was Joe Bailey who was my grandmother’s
colleague, Betty having not worked at the university library.
Betty was a tiny sparrow of a woman with a round, pretty
face and a neat cap of short, straight white hair. Joe, on the other hand, was
tall with impressive wavy gray hair and mannerisms that were blatantly effeminate.
Even my childish brain was confused about how Joe could be married and have a
family; it certainly didn’t seem to be his style. Betty and Joe lived in a
house on Locust Street north of University Drive, a larger, attractive home,
very tidy, with the best yard ever. The back yard was this wonderful upward-sloping
bowl of soft green grass that was absolutely perfect for rolling down,
preferably when wearing something light-colored that was guaranteed to stain.
My memories of Betty are mostly limited to our adventures to
Hazel’s decoupage shop together. Betty would pick me up in her little brown VW
Golf on Saturdays and drive me to Decatur for a day of craft and camaraderie.
She was such a devotee of decoupage that for Easter she decorated with dozens
of carefully decoupaged eggs, one of her specialties. I still own one such egg,
a small brown-spotted one, unpainted and decorated with berries and flowers,
signed by Betty.
There was one event that really stands out in my memory, when
Betty and Joe hosted a shrimp boil of epic proportions. They covered an
extra-long picnic table with white paper and just poured pots full of boiled
shrimp onto the table. It may have been the first and last time I ever had as
much shrimp as I could eat, and even as a kid I was boggled by the decadence.
Betty’s story is marred by darkness now, for two reasons.
One is that she lost Joe tragically when he had a heart attack at the pool at
the gym. With no lifeguard on duty, he slipped under the water and drowned, she
too tiny to help save him. The other reason is a story my mother recently told
me - that when she was a child, Betty persuaded my grandmother to sell her a
lovely little doll chest that belonged to my mother, one of Mom’s most
treasured possessions. The fact that Betty would consider this to be a good,
idea, and that my grandmother would have agreed to it, saddens me. I try to put
it into context, remembering how much the concept of childhood and parenting
has changed in the past 100 years, but it still confounds me.
Looking up Betty's obituary, I learned that she served as a communications officer in the Navy in WWII, and that she died only a couple of years ago, at the age of 92. Pretty amazing.
