5. the joke's on me

(just a reminder that the numbered entries are chapters in how we got here)

Marc quit his job at the factory early in 1977 and by the time the year was over, we were both committed to our endeavor.  Somewhere in my head I have a memory swirling around of my talking him into it.  Come be an artist with me, I told him.  We can do it, I told him.  (Many years later it dawned on me that most all the working artists I knew had a working spouse that was not an artist to help with the cash flow.  Doh!)

It seemed like a good idea at the time and fun too, but there were many soul searching discussions in the next five years or so.  Our daughter was born in 1977, our son in 1979.  We struggled, counted our pennies, counted on our friends.  Marc would take part time jobs when necessary but we found that when he worked outside the studio, the studio didn’t make much progress when I was left with two preschoolers.  Each discussion ended up with deciding to hold on a little longer, hang in there, have faith that we were doing the right thing and always it seemed, just at the last moment, something would come in and buoy us up again and we were good for the next six months.