The Taylor family lived in a nice home. Both Jill and Tim had their own cars, they were what would be considered an average American family. But who decides what an average family is? Certainly not strangers, who have no conception of what each family has for strengths and weaknesses. As Jill sat down to write her life's story she reflected on her life.
Tim had his own home improvement show on television for over twenty years when he had decided to retire. She and her husband had spent the next few years just going from town to town and had ended back in their home town once again some five years later. But Tim's health had started to decline and they were not able to do what they had once been able to do.
When Jill and Tim had moved back they got to be close to the grandchildren, but that is all in the present. Jill looked at the picture of Tim and reflected on their life together.
As she wrote her autobiography she thought of her life before Tim. She had been raised with her sisters in a very strict home. They had been what was called army brats and her father Colonel Fred Patterson could be very demanding of them. But, she had managed to come out of her childhood with a solid education and a head on her shoulders.
Tim and she had met on a blind date. It had been set up by one of her sisters and from the first time that they had met they became a couple. Jill had fallen in love with this funny man who was always getting into some kind of minor mishap. As she met each of his seven brothers she became even a little more intrigued.
Her father had wanted for Jill to meet and marry perhaps an army officer. Tim was the most uncoordinated man that he had seen almost and he worried that Tim would not be able to support his wife properly. But, Jill had always been able to talk her father into anything and at the age of twenty-two Jill and Tim got married.
Tim was two years her senior and had been working on producing and staring in a Home Improvement show for years. When they married he worked as a construction worker. Jill had a job at a local store and they made out all right . The only apartment that they could afford was a tiny little studio where everything was all in one small room. The kitchen stove was old and the refrigerator was even older. They were on the third floor in the back of the building. In the summer the apartment was very hot and in the winter it was very cold. In the whole apartment there was only one heater.
Jill laughed as she thought of the three outlets that the apartment had. If you wanted to watch television you had to unplug something. Tim and she were always blowing a fuse. This would mean going downstairs to ask the landlord for the key to the cellar. Sometimes he would be at a bar and they would have no lights for hours. The sink leaked and the bathtub was always clogging up. But it was their home and both Jill and Tim were determined to make the home a happy one.
Downstairs from the Taylor's was a family with six children living in a three bedroom apartment. The children were very loud sometimes and would keep them up until very late at night. But they would make up for it in the morning, sometimes starting to make a lot of noise around six am. Each and everyday was a new experience and Jill never knew what would happen.
Tim was a man's man and just never understood women. Jill knew that he loved her, but sometimes he had a strange way of showing it. Through the years she had learned to take the good with the bad. Now that she was reflecting on her life she saw that the good times far out weighed the bad and she was glad that they had married.
The first few years for the Taylor family were much like many other young couple's lives. There was little money and lots of bills. Jill had not ever learned to cook a decent meal. She bought a Betty Crocker cookbook and was always trying different recipes out on Tim.
She remembered the time that she thought she would try out something new. They did not have much money and so it seemed as though every night all they had was pasta and maybe a small amount of hamburger. They could not yet afford much. But on this day she had decided that she was going to try out something that they had never had. She decided to make frog legs.
As Jill prepared the recipe and tried to follow the directions exactly, she waited anxiously for Tim to come home from work. The recipe seemed to be easy but it called for her to cook them in oil. She was not proficient with the stove and when Tim came in he discovered that the stove was on fire. It was a small fire, but it was a fire just the same.
Tim was the one that usually caused the accidents and there was a fire extinguisher right next to the stove. As he put out the fire he looked into the pan and saw that whatever was in there was not edible. Jill looked at the mess and the black smoke marks that were now on the ceiling and started to cry. "Tim I was trying to make you something different tonight. I wanted to surprise you and now look at the mess." She had cried on his shoulder that night.
In his customary way Tim said "It's all right that dinner was burned. I just feel sorry for the frogs that can't jump anymore." With that he had taken her hand and the two of them had gone out to dinner together that night.
Then one day while Jill was at work she did not feel very good. As the days went by she realized that she wasn't getting any better. She was sitting at the kitchen table of that little apartment and thought to herself. 'Could I be pregnant?' She thought of what was going on in her life and thought that perhaps she was. That was when she called the doctor and made the appointment.
The next day she went to the doctors and found out that yes she was pregnant. The first Taylor boy was on the way.