Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag! (13 page)

I calculated I had ten or twelve hours of worry ahead of me when my third child called. “Don't tell me, you're climbing Mt. Everest in tennis shoes.”

“Actually, I'm staying home this weekend,” he said.

I could not believe his insensitivity. Now I had to worry that he had no friends or social life. Unable to relate to anyone, he would become more withdrawn and finally trust no one. Eventually, he would pull his blinds and eat out of a saucepan on the stove and talk to a cat. I would never go to his wedding where everyone said, “She looks too young to be his mother.” I would never dandle grandchildren on my knee where people would say, “She looks too young to have grandchildren.”

And do they appreciate all this concern? They do not. They sit around and blame you for their shortness, for having a cowlick, for baldness, moles, and their place in the family.

It's a big price to pay for a romantic night, a bottle of cheap wine, and one reckless act.

THE GREED CYCLE

In the beginning children were taught the value of a nickel ... and it was good.

They were taught they could earn a nickel by not crying and not playing with their gum and making tinkle. Little piggy banks were filled to overflowing. Some children could have owned property if they had been able to focus or write their own name.

Then they were introduced to the tooth fairy. And she was good.

The tooth fairy paid cash for fourteen teeth unless the tooth was placed under the pillow before the 15th or the 30th of the month. If this was the case, a check would be postdated at a local bank. There were cost-of-living increases as the years went by.

The allowance was born and it was even better.

Children were paid to baby-sit themselves on New Year's Eve. Children got paid money for setting the table, not making the dog crazy, not allowing more than twenty kids at a time in the house, not losing the mail, and not tearing up the paper. Not letting the garden hose flood the yard cost extra and breathing was negotiable. With the allowance came the first financial phrase a child learns, “Do I have to use my own money?”

Then came the “No Pass-No Pay” legislation, which meant that if the child did not get a passing grade, parents would not give him money. There was a school in the Midwest with a falling enrollment that paid students to attend classes. And it was good again.

When children reached their teens, parents explained they could no longer sit on their assets. They had to look for a job. And it was ... it was okay.

Children were cheered by the fact that Bill Walton got a million dollars a year for signing his name, Katherine Graham earned in excess of $375,000 and didn't even have to deliver the Washington Post, and the mayor of New York City made $88,000 a year by smiling and appearing on the 6 o'clock news.

They eventually settled for a job for minimum wage selling roofing over the phone.

Then came nepotism ... and it was ... not real good. A child was hired to help his dad paint the house and everything was to be on a strictly professional basis. His father told him what time to go to bed at night so he would be fresh in the morning. His mother routed him out and forced him to eat breakfast. Every fifteen minutes, his father would check to see if he had put drop cloths over the shrubbery and taken off the hardware around the windows.

Every time he got a phone call, his mother would tell them he joined the service and not to call anymore. She also checked his clothes to make sure he wasn't dripping paint before he could use the bathroom. He was paid with a postdated check that, if cashed on the date it was written, would incarcerate his parents for the next fifteen years.

And the kid paid taxes ... and that was good for him.

When his dad asked for his W-2 form so he could declare him as an exemption, the child said, “Why would you want to do that?”

The father said, “Because for the last year we have fed, clothed, boarded, transported, indulged, and kept you in good health.”

The child said, “Forget it! I'm filing separately so I can get a refund.”

“But if we claim you, the government allows us an exemption right off the top. If we don't get that exemption, we're in a higher bracket.”

The child said, “you should have thought of that before you bugged me to go to work this summer. I wanted to stay here at home and visit with you and Mom and discuss my philosophy of life, but no, you weren't happy until I was out taking a job away from some unfortunate who needed it.”

It was hard to believe the child sold his parents down the river for a lousy $15.95 refund.

Then the child married and had a baby and one day Grandma pried open the little fist of the baby and pressed a nickel into it and the baby put it in its mouth to see if it was good. And it was. He held out his other hand and opened it for another nickel.

The greed cycle had begun again ... and it felt good.

WHAT KIND OF CHILDREN WOULD

BRING PARENTS INTO THIS WORLD?

Saturday: 2:20 p.m.

My friend Hazel pushed her way into the back door and paused cautiously.

There were thirty-five unwashed glasses on the countertop by the sink. The washer had a better pulse than I did. There were six cars in the driveway. A plastic bucket, a volleyball, and a stack of poker chips were in the middle of the table. The dog was eating beer nuts out of an ashtray. Newspapers turned to the theater section were strewn all over the kitchen. Pans dotted the stove, and from a distance radios blared.

“Either the kids are home or you have just been burgled.”

“The kids are home,” I said. “So, how have you been?”

“I was going to say 'fair,' but then I don't have a snake sitting on the hood of my car.”

“I'm snake-sitting. Did I tell you our son is going back to school and is coming home to live?”

“That's one thing I can say about Russell,” she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “He's independent. You wouldn't catch him living at home with us. After all, he is twenty-six years old!”

“Then he has his own apartment?”

“Apartment!” she snorted. “My dear, he has his own house. Dan and I figured we might just as well have equity in a home as pay rent on his apartment. I mean, at the end of all those years, what have you got to show for it except a bunch of rent receipts.”

“You bought his home?” I gasped.

“It was the least we could do,” she said. “After all, where was he going to put all that furniture he carted away for the last eight years? It has all worked out perfectly. Just when we made the last payment on his car, his lease was up on the apartment.”

“You bought his car?”

“How else could he get to his father's plant? We originally bought him a motorcycle, but those things are so dangerous. When we paid his insurance premiums, they told us because he rode a motorcycle he was a high risk. We couldn't afford that kind of rate.”

“Then you pay his insurance.”

“Only his car, Dear, and his health. I mean, what are kids supposed to do these days? Most of them can't even afford to be sick. We figured insurance was safer than taking a chance on being hit with a hospital bill cold turkey. Especially since he's taking some night classes and burning the candle at both ends. We do the best we can with his food, utilities, and the new baby coming.”

“Russell is married?”

“For the second time. Believe you me, it's not true that two can live as cheaply as one. The girl eats like a horse. But she's much nicer than the one we pay alimony to. Now there's a piece of work. I worry about Russell, I really do. All that responsibility. The future so iffy. But it's like Dan and I told him, 'You have to get out of the nest and stand on your own two feet sometime.' If you don't mind a piece of advice, boot your son out. You'd be doing him a favor, and it's the only way he's going to know what independence is all about. He'll either sink or swim!”

“It's a whole new ballgame, isn't it, Hazel?” I said, folding up the newspapers. “Manners, morals, values, everything is so different from when we were first married.”

“Isn't that the truth,” she said. “Did you hear where health insurance companies are thinking of cutting down on the cost of birth by paying new mothers to leave the hospital early?”

“How early?” I asked.

“If you leave within twenty-four hours after delivery, they'll pay you from $50 to $200.”

It took awhile for the shock of what she had told me to take effect. From a woman who clutched her bedsprings for thirty days after the birth and then had to be evicted physically, I couldn't believe what I had just heard. Every woman knows once you turn in your paper slippers, they put you in a pair of track shoes and a T-shirt with a red S on it and you hit the ground running.

Why, giving birth is the last stronghold women have for getting any consideration. This is your day in the sun ... maybe your last one. You have given the ultimate gift to your husband, who takes everything else back and credits it to your account. You have fulfilled your mother's dreams of revenge. You have given your father a picture to replace Debbie Reynolds in his billfold. You have enough stretch marks to spread guilt for two fur coats, a quartz watch, and a trip to St. Croix in January. We just gave birth to a quintessential headache and now they want to buy us off.

“There's a real contradiction here,” I said to Hazel. “Men think nothing of putting their car in the shop for three days until they can get parts. They stand in line, wrapped in a blanket, for forty-eight hours to get World Series tickets. They understand a hank that needs two days to clear a check. But they're ready to go for instant birth. Just add heavy breathing and simmer for twenty-four hours.”

“I think they ought to at least wait until the sedative wears off,” said Hazel.

“How long was that for you?” I asked.

“About three years.”

“Well, at least you have Russell married. I can't get mine off the dime. When it comes to marriage, they speak another language. Would you be shocked if I told you my husband and I had never had a meaningful conversation in our entire lives? I don't even know what it is.”

“It probably has calories,” sighed Hazel.

“And marriage contracts. What kind of a way is that to start a marriage ... dividing up the money before you've made it, the house before you've furnished it, and the kids before you've conceived them? All this talk about the new sexual freedom. How does that differ from the old sexual freedom? And why do they need a manual for it? You're lucky, Hazel. Your son saw something in you to emulate.”

“Don't rush it. It's a real trip. For Russell's first wedding, we spent $5,000. They split the same week the wedding proofs faded.”

“But he got a nice girl this time around?” I asked, hopefully.

“He met her on a beach in California. She sat around in bib overalls and played the guitar and ate passion fruit. She had no idea how to turn on a stove, and the closest she ever came to domesticity was a plastic fork tucked in her headband. When my son asked her to marry him, she spoke her first words to me, 'Gift Registry.' I've never seen such a list. I ask you, where would a girl like that learn words like Wallace, Wedgwood, and Waterford? We sold off some stocks and bought her a pickle fork for a wedding present.”

“Things do change,” I sighed. "Is it my imagination or are the babies doing the diaper commercials getting older?

I saw one the other day that spoke lines and looked old enough to prepare its own formula. Toilet training doesn't seem as important to today's mothers as it was to us. Maybe they have more important things to do."

“You talk about babies in diapers getting older,” snorted Hazel. “Have you seen some of the new mothers lately? They're getting a little long in the tooth.”

“I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby,” I said.

“They probably think it's a lot of fun to have a baby who will sit around and connect liver spots on Mommy's arms, but in reality, there are a lot of problems older mothers haven't even considered. For example, just when Baby is outgrowing his need for naps, Mommy will need them, and when his teeth start coming in, Mommy's will start falling out.”

“True,” I nodded, “and the worst adjustment will be when the babies get to be teenagers. If a mother has a child at the age of thirty-five, she will be fifty-one years old when her son starts to drive at age sixteen. Anyone knows that at that age it's too late for a mother to develop patience and too early for her to die.”

“Trust me,” said Hazel, “it's only a matter of time before older mothers are racing their kids for the baby food. Sometimes I feel sorry for this generation. I think they're really screwed up.”

“They sure seem to know everything there is to know about sex. Did you know that more people make love on Sunday than on any other day of the week? Or that the peak hours are 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.?”

“Who cares?” said Hazel.

“Or that more women sleep next to the wall than men and that men wearing boxer shorts are more likely to become fathers?”

“Give me a break.”

“Hazel, we bum 150 calories making love, which is just under throwing a Frisbee, which burns 200 calories.”

“And here's one for you,” said Hazel. “Garlic is still the most effective form of birth control.”

“I was being serious,” I said.

“So am I, and I say it's hogwash. If you believe kids today have smarts about sex then you'll believe that Cathy Rigby invented puberty. Can you imagine how much a child knows about sex after watching soaps for most of his life? It's a false picture. A child can be bom within six weeks after conception and be married before the year is up. If it is a long-running series, it could take only three months for a full-term baby. However, in a three-part miniseries last year, three births occurred, including twins who were born three weeks apart when they were preempted by a baseball play-off.”

“I never thought of that.”

“Young people don't know what to believe anymore. Eggs don't produce babies. They hatch panty hose. Women don't carry babies where they're supposed to. They have Jordache pregnancies. Love isn't a reason to have a baby ... sagging ratings are.”

“You should hear my mother talk about kissing on television. Whenever a hero used to kiss a heroine, it looked like a tribute to Mt. Rushmore. Nowadays it's an aerobics exercise.”

“Isn't that the truth,” said Hazel. “What was it Henry Fonda called it in On Golden Pond?”

“Sucking face.”

“Ummm, be honest,” she said. “Does it really titillate you?”

“Not really. I just sit there and wonder where all of Joan Collins' lipstick goes ... or if one of them has a bad back.”

“Sometimes,” said Hazel, “I watch all the fuzzy fade-ins and fade-outs and obscure overlaps and try to figure out what part of the body is being shown. And the heavy breathing!”

“I can hear the same thing when I ask my husband to move the sofa,” I said.

“The problem with kids,” said Hazel, “is you can't tell 'em anything. I read where some high school teacher in the Midwest tried to simulate married life in his classroom. He had the kids pair off and gave them an income and a budget.”

“What happened?”

“Well, each pair of students was supposed to give birth to an egg. They named it, decorated it, housed it, and figured out how they were going to raise it. He even had them take the egg home, and one of them was required to attach it to a big toe by a string to show them how constant raising a child is.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

“Well, they found out you can do a lot of things to make eggs look different. You can paint them in different colors, decorate them with gold, put them in a satin-lined bed or a bed made of pencil shavings, but underneath they are pretty much the same. They found they looked fragile, but a couple of them were dropped and cracked and they still survived. But at least it gave 'em a taste of the 'real world.' Hey, I gotta run. Talk to you tomorrow.”

I closed the door and mechanically began to pick up glasses and carry them to the sink. The “real world.” How many times had I threatened our kids with it? I told 'em it was a jungle, a place where you can count your friends on one hand, a future existence where you won't have your parents to kick around anymore.

The “real world.” When our son was nine, a group of boys shoved his head into a paper towel dispenser in a theater rest room and demanded his money. We had sent him to a Disney movie because we didn't want him to see violence.

When our daughter was sixteen, her best friend was killed one night by a drunk driver.

When a son was twelve, his bicycle was stolen, which he bought with his own money. The policeman said, “Tough. You should have locked it.”

When one of our sons went to camp, his best friend was black and he heard the word “nigger” and saw firsthand the ugliness of prejudice.

In their short lives they had known rejection, discrimination, life-threatening sickness, fear, disappointment, violence, and pain.

The “real world.” Why didn't I tell them it was a myth? From the day they entered it ... slippery and warm and complacent ... they were smacked on the behind to fill their lungs with cries of annoyance, shock, and rage. How much more real can it get than that!

WHAT ARE FRIENDS FOR?

Their world started out small enough. It encompassed an area from the bedrooms to the gate on the basement steps. They were certainly cloistered enough, seeing only parents, siblings, relatives, and an occasional visitor from the outside.

It might have remained that way had it not been for the fact that it was my world too, and I was beginning to talk to the tropical fish.

I needed a surrogate mother ... someone who would sit with my children in my absence and bring to them the same high standard of care, intelligence, and integrity. A special person dedicated to preparing them for their places in society.

I found all of that in “Debbie,” an eleven-year-old with braces who had no social life and could make change for a $50 bill at 3 in the morning. She was to be the first of many baby-sitters who could show our children that authority could be fun and profitable.

The kids were present when I interviewed her. “Debbie,” I said (they were all named Debbie), “I'm going to ask you a few hypothetical questions just to make sure you can handle any situation that may arise as a baby-sitter. First, tell me what you would do if a child refused to go to bed.”

“I would threaten to eat him!” she said, blowing a large bubble from her gum.

“Very good. Now, how much liquid do you give a child younger than six before putting him to bed?”

“When they complain of being thirsty, you mist the plants on their window sill and tell them to inhale deeply.”

“Wonderful,” I nodded. “Now, here's a toughie. What do you do when one of your charges pushes a coin up his nose?”

She thought a moment. “What denomination is the coin?”

“A dime.”

“For a dime,” she said, “I wouldn't lose my place in the book I'm reading. For a bill, I might get out the vacuum sweeper and suck it out.”

The kids cheered and I hired their first prime-time surrogate mother. ,

I have to admit, she became the most important person in my life too. Gynecologists and hairdressers came and went, but if Debbie got a date or had plans, I didn't want to live anymore. Getting ready for her visit was $3 short of a wedding. The house had to be picked up. The soft drinks were iced, snacks set out, the TV set adjusted, and kids threatened and stashed away in their rooms. I tipped Debbie for staying awake. I tipped her for answering the phone. I tipped her for returning empties to the carton.

In fact, I remember the very day she discovered there was more to life than “don't forget to flush” and Winnie the Pooh. It was a Wednesday. In the prime of her life, she was struck down by puberty, a condition requiring a social life. We never saw Debbie again, but she made an impact on the lives of my children.

As their world got bigger, so did the circle of friends who were absorbed into our lives ... the steady stream of sleep-overs and eat-overs—children who played musical chairs and beds throughout the neighborhood.

Usually, there was no warning of their visit. You would be calling the family to dinner and shutting off the oven when your child would say, “Can Stanley (Jack, Joanie, Gloria, residents of the free world) stay for dinner?”

There's an entire generation out there today who believe Mrs. Bombeck serves half-macaroni and half-spaghetti with sauce so pale it wouldn't stain a table-cloth—and chicken parts that aren't identifiable even to another chicken.

Sometimes, I was faced with a critical food shortage during a surprise guest attack and put my FHB (Family Hold Back) plan into action.

It always reminded me of a brilliant story told by the late humorist, Sam Levenson. Sam was one of eight children and “company” had its privileges. Before the meal, his mother told the kids, “When the meat is passed around say, 'No thank you. I'm not hungry,' so our guest won't think he's taking the food out of our mouths.” It worked, but when dessert was served, his mother sailed it quickly by the kids, saying, “You didn't eat your dinner! So you don't get dessert!”

Without fail, every time I was having pork chops, the kids invited a friend to dinner. There is nothing you can do to make a pork chop look bigger. I've tried. I've breaded them so that the egg fans out two inches on all sides, tucked dressing around them like a skirt, and arranged them on a saucer, but they still look like what they are ... not enough pork chops. Sometimes I think there should be an award to honor the acting ability of a mother who sits at the table nibbling on a bone sandwich and feigning fullness.

It always amazed me that I cooked 738 meals a year, packed 1,040 lunches, made 2,055 snacks and 30 special banquets for birthdays and holidays, and if a friend refused to eat something, the family would turn on me like a bunch of vigilantes.

“Why do you serve those stupid things that roll around a plate?” (Peas.) “Do we have to eat those slimy sticks that swell up when you start to chew them?” (Asparagus.) “I know those lumps are yucky, but if you hold your breath and swallow them, they'll disappear.” (Onions.)

I'll never forget an ungrateful teenager who was the guest of our daughter. “Try these cookies,” she was told, “they've made Mom a legend.”

The girl bit into one and made a face. “The apple did the same for Eve,” she said.

Eventually, persons from the outside exude influence over your children's destiny, which brings to mind Miss Marpling, the children's piano teacher.

I hadn't thought of her in years until I ran into her in a department store dining room a few weeks back. I must say I was surprised. She looked wonderful. The nervous twitches around her mouth were gone. The eyes that used to spin counterclockwise in her head were steady now and held my gaze. And I realized she was smiling. I had never seen her smile before—even at recitals.

“Miss Marpling,” I said, “how long has it been?” She took a deep breath. “Eleven years, two months, one week, and three days.”

“And are you still placing those pudgy little sticky fingers on the piano keys? Goodness gracious, do you have any idea how many little people you had marching to the tune of your metronome?”

“You still blame me, don't you?” she said. “Don't be ridiculous,” I said. “Do you honestly think I still go to pieces every time I hear 'There's a Rose in the Bottom of My Teacup'? When the doctor explained to me it was just a child's way of working out parental hostility, I understood it.”

“Mrs. Bamhardt blames me,” she said bitterly.

“That was different. You had absolutely no right to assign 'Lady of Spain' to a beginning accordion student for a recital. I hear she still isn't right.”

As I ate lunch, I occasionally cast a glance at Miss Marpling and a wave of affection came over me. What had she done that was so wrong? She took three children off my hands for an hour every week and introduced them to the “March of the Little Toy Soldiers” (to be played lively), the “Parade of the Turtles” (to be played softly), and “The Yodeler and His Echo” (to be played in the basement in Kansas City, Mo.).