Mary Kay Years

It was really only meant to be a trip to visit an old friend in Halifax.  But, over a week later, when I returned home to Montreal to Don and our two little boys, I realized my life had been altered forever.

When I arrived at Deirdre’s house in Halifax, I didn’t expect to fall passionately in love with her car. But I did just that. It was a pale pink.  It was shiny. It was a trophy on wheels. Breathlessly, all I could think of, was “I want one!”

I was hardly in the door and I was firing questions at her.  “Where did you get THAT?”  “How long have you had it?” “How did you get it?”  “Where can I get one?”

She had earned it as a Mary Kay Director.  What it entailed was drumming up a herd of salespeople, becoming a Director and attaining a certain level of group sales.

I was smitten.  

When I got off the plane on my arrival home, I couldn’t wait to tell Don about my new love.  I asked him if he was up to it and he gave the green light.

There was nothing that could possibly get in my way.  I had my eye on the target and that’s where I was going.  I became a consultant and three months later I was standing at a podium with my Director,  Deirdre, at my side congratulating me on becoming a Mary Kay Director.  My new born baby Brandon was at my feet in a basket.  I had three more months to qualify for a pink car and I did it!  That led to another car, a pink cadillac, six months later.

In those nine years, I met Mary Kay, went to her house in Dallas for training, attended many motivating seminars and developed five directors which made me a Future National Sales Director.  I learned so much from her and her philosophy.  I believed she brought me up in ways my own childhood failed to do.  I was launched with new confidence and abilities that influenced me for the rest of my life.  This era was energized, successful, fun and satisfying. In the end I had to thank Deirdre for introducing me to the Mary Kay opportunity.  

Deirdre  did come from Halifax to Pointe Claire once to ‘help’ me train my consultants.  In retrospect I saw that she came to take advantage of them.  She had discovered ‘colors’ and was charging to determine what group of colors or ‘season’ they belonged to.  She spent the two days in my bedroom, holding swatches of material up to their faces, collecting their $35.00. 

At the time, Brandon was just a baby, about 4 months old.  Deirdre had a contagious disease that she had passed on to all her children so she thought nothing of cuddling Brandon and kissing him. I had to ask her to stop, which highly offended her.

During these Mary Kay years, we tried to sell our house.  It was a fort.  Five stories from basement to top, five Bedrooms, three bathrooms… it was a great house.  We put it on the market for $150,000.  We had no response.  We lowered it and lowered it, finally to $75,000.  No response.  I resigned; that’s it; we’re here forever.  Since that was the case, I decided to put in a new kitchen, paint the yellow brick exterior, white, put a new grey-pink roof on, pink shutters, new white steel door and brass fixings everywhere.  This would so match the pink cars in the driveway.

I held training classes in the house with my directors.  This was serious business.  Things started to become unravelled when Don was to take care of the kids, but instead they would run around the house in their pyjamas while Don watched TV.  This was very disruptive to my training and I surmised then and there that if he weren’t prepared to contribute to my business, then he couldn’t reap the benefits of that nice monthly pay check. I certainly couldn’t do it by myself.

Once all the repairs were done to the house, we tried again to sell it and got $200,000, reinforcing yet again that everything is illusion.  This allowed us to buy the farm in Glengarry and so, we moved on, leaving behind pink cars and $5,000 monthly cheques.  I left my career, my car and my foster Mary Kay family behind to face new challenges and a new life. It was all good.  I was trained for this.

Although it’s hard to remember all the details of life in Pointe Claire, I’ve tried to share with you some highlights.  Those were the years the kids were growing up. I had Brandon there, when Tyson was four and Damon, five. It was in Pointe Claire that I had my nine year career with Mary Kay Cosmetics. It allowed me to be with the kids whenever they were home from school.  Even though I was very busy, I made sure we had all our meals together and that I read them a story every night before bed.