The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 65

EnrO MP Silver linings In the second part of her talk with a couple coping with illness, Linda Weltner relates the husband's surprising response to his new helplessness. Ever So Humble, Page 69. Classified, 70 THE BOSTON GLOBE THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 1993 i Vi i yaggr ur i. iirs ri lyde and Child Caring For kids, there's no time like the present By Barbara F. Meltz CONTRIBUTING REPORTER Time is a difficult concept.for young children to grasp, a fact that can sometimes amuse, but may also confuse or frustrate parents.

Not long ago, foif example, my husband and I talked with our 5-year-old son about which day camp he wanted to go to this summer. We made a point of explaining that even though we had to make a decision now, day camp was a long time away, Mary Ann Pentr's condo in the former Mount Vernon Church tower overlooks the Back Csy and the river. not until June, which is after school ends, nSdrenV i A bell-tower condo at the beginning of summer. We talked about! how the seasons change and how hard it is to think about wearing bathing suits when we are wearing snowsuits. Eli said he understood.

He chose a camp, the topic was dropped. gives its owners great views and plenty of exercise understanding of time doesnt match their about it tr i I i I i By Robert Campbell GLOBE CORRESPONDENT About 10 days later, the first day back to school after vacation, he asked me, "Is today day camp?" I was surprised at the question, but I went back over the time frame, starting with the seasons: winter, spring, summer. we ticked off the number of months until June. Then we counted how many days there are in most months. That's a long time away," he said.

"It is a long time away," I agreed, confident he'd grasped the concept this time. About a week later, out of the blue, he asked, "How many days until camp?" Researcher Janette Benson says it's typical that children's understanding of time doesn't match their ability to talk about it. "Just because children have the words Monday, tomorrow, 3 o'clock, summer doesn't mean they have the con-MELTZ, Page 68 The church burned in 1978. A few years later, Cambridge architect Graham Gund rebuilt it as a prizewinning condo complex called Church Court. Gund kept as much of the old church a typical Boston Victorian effort, Gothic in style, Roxbury pudding-stone in material as he could.

Daringly, he even reused the tower, shoe-horning a condo into it "I'm different I enjoy unique things. It's a tower. It's like a retreat You look down at the world," Mary Ann tells a visitor. She and Clyde bought the tower a year ago, moved in last summer. That was easy.

Their furniture moved in, too. That part wasn't so easy. Take the living room couch, for instance. To maneuver it up the tower, they had to cut the legs off and reattach them later. The headboard of the bed had to be steamed off and replaced.

The queen-size mattress and box springs were specially made, in thirds, by Big John's of Cambridge. "The only thing we didn't have to take apart was the rosewood armoire in the bedroom," says Clyde. "It's huge, but it was built in the first place to be taken up narrow stairs in Paris. It disassembled: AIT we had to do was undo the pewter bolts." To get from any room to any other room, you have to climb or descend a full flight of stairs. Sometimes the stairs are straight sometimes they're spiral.

"Children love it they think it's a tree house," says Mary Ann, thinking of a niece and nephew. The Pentzes don't mind the stairs. "It might both- A house with seven rooms. On seven floors. One room on top of another.

Climb up and down. Pretend you're an elevator. Count them. Start at the bottom. Entry, kitchen-dining, living, guestroom, bedroom, study, library.

You're winded. You're entranced. You're in the home of Clyde and Mary Ann Pentz. Like church mice, the Pentzes live in1 the former bell tower of what once was Mount Vernon Church, on the corner of Beacon Street and Massachusetts Avenue in the Back Bay. An artist's sculptural visions take the form of furniture By Christine Temin GLOBE STAFF DO, luneck's Iieves that "furniture is the perfect medium for sculpture.

Furniture meshes with our lives. Everyone has to have it But how many people actually have space for pedestals and sculpture in their homes? "Furniture is about energy," Huneck goes on, and his furniture isn't just something to sit on. It's a series of lessons for living. There's a crash course in Huneckiana in Boston at the moment at the Levinson Kane Gallery, which the artist has converted into an apartment that many visitors will probably find hard to leave. Here are chairs with carved rabbits that curve around you when you sit down; lamps whose stems are attenuat-, ed dachshunds; tables held up by Jcarved dogs, or by pin-striped HUNECK, Page 66 started as an antique picker," Stephen Huneck explains.

A what? "It's like the lowest form of antique dealer. Fd go to houses and farms and knock on people's doors and ask them if they had any furniture to sell It's a good way to learn about furniture, because you never know what you're going to find." Huneck learned so much as an antique picker up in St. Johnsbury, Vt, that he finally started making his own furniture, first for his rambling 18th-century farmhouse, then for other people's houses and for their art co'ctions. Huneck does not consider himself a furniture maker per se, He's an artist who be- dog-borne table and fish-topped chairs show his fondness for animal motifs..