I always knew that I would have a career in a creative field.  As a small child, I loved all modes of art and craft.  I vowed at age 5 that my house was going to be magenta when I grew up.  It's actually black and white.  I guess my style grew up too.

As an adolescent, I battled with the designer my parents had hired to redecorate our house.  When it came to my bedroom, I had a vision.  I wanted hip Marimekko in blue and green.  The designer wanted to add peach to the color palette and use chintz instead.  I was incensed!  Whose room was this anyway?  My parents bowed to the designer's expertise.

In high school, I took sewing lessons and decided that the world of fashion was my calling.  I fought tooth and nail with my mother over which foreign language would benefit my career.  My mother thought Spanish would be most useful, while I felt that French was best for the Paris shows.  I speak a few words of each today, along with some useful phrases in Italian, but I never made it to the runway.

In college during the 80's...I'm giving away my age...the corporate world and the dream of wearing a Power Suit beckoned.  I studied Business and earned a degree in Marketing so that I could pursue Advertising as a vocation.  I wanted to make commercials.  That never happened either.

A few years later, married with a baby, I attended a holiday cocktail party where I met a woman who had gone back to school to study Interior Design.  Conversing with her, the light bulb went on.  This was what I wanted to do!  Within three weeks, I was registered and attending the Harrington Institute of Interior Design.

Recently, while walking through the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, I bumped into my parent's old designer.  She looked at me, shook her head and said, "I knew it.  I just knew you were going to become a designer!"  I wish she would have told me back then.  It would have saved me from nearly flunking out of high school Spanish.

ann h. kendall