I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (18 page)

I regard the family Christmas newsletter with a mixture of nausea and jealousy.

Nausea because I could never abide by anyone organized enough to chronicle a year of activities. Jealous
because our family never does anything that I can talk about on a religious holiday.

For years, I have been assaulted with Frieda and Fred’s camping adventures, Marcia and Willard’s bright children (their three-year-old has a hit record), and Ginny and Jesse’s kitchen-table version of “The Night Before Christmas.”

“You know something?” I announced at dinner the other night. “We’re a pretty exciting family. This year, instead of the traditional Christmas card, why don’t we make up a newsletter?”

“What would we say on it?” asked a son.

“What everyone else says. We could put down all the interesting things we did last year. For instance, you kids tell me anything you did in school that was memorable. (Silence) This is no time for modesty. Just spit out any award or recognition you received throughout the school year.”

Finally, after five minutes, one son said, “I passed my eye examination.”

“See,” I said excitedly, “I knew if we just thought about it a bit. Now, where have we been that’s exciting?”

“We got lost that Sunday and went by the industrial school where you told us one of your relatives made license plates.”

“I don’t think our Christmas list wants to read about that,” I said. “Let’s see, have I been any place?”

“You went to that Sarah Coventry jewelry party last spring.”

“How about that?” I said excitedly. “Now, keep it rolling. Anyone got promoted? Married? Divorced? Hospitalized? Retired? Give birth? (Silence)

“Anyone say anything clever last year? How about the year before that? Did anyone compose a song? Write a letter? Belch after dinner? (Silence)

“Anyone protest anything? Stop biting their nails? Scrape a chair in the Christian Science reading room? Get up in the morning before ten? (Silence)

“Anyone lick a stamp? Kick the dog? Wash their gym suit? Sit up straight in class? Replace a light bulb? Breathe in and out?”

They all sat there silently contemplating their year. Finally, I brought out a box of Christmas cards.

“What are you doing? We thought you were going to send out a family newsletter for Christmas.”

“No sense antagonizing the poor devils who sit around and do nothing all year.”

I just signed a pact with the kids.

If they will sleep on Christmas morning until 3:30, I promise not to let my head fall in the gravy during dinner as I have done in previous years.

The “Christmasthon” has been a tradition at our house since the children were old enough to walk. They appear in our bedroom at some unreal hour and chant, “Mama.”

“What?”

“It’s Christmas.”

“Christmas who?”

“Christmas morning. Are you awake?”

“No.”

“Want me to turn on the light so you can see how late it is?”

“And blind your poor mother on … what day is it again?”

“Christmas.”

“Tell Daddy. He’ll be choked.”

“Daddy.”

“I gave at the office.”

Minutes later, Daddy is out of bed, shouting, “For God’s sake, do they have to sit around with a flashlight counting the hairs in my nose?”

Once on our feet, we are literally caught up in the ear-splitting pandemonium that is Christmas.

The numbing boom-boom of padded pajama feet on the carpeted stairway.

The deafening click of the switch as the lights illuminate the tree.

The crash of tissue in eager little hands.

The shattering roar of tongues licking peppermint.

The piercing scratch of the dog who wants outside.

The blatant blast of the fire as it crackles in the hearth.

The resounding clang of cereal detonating itself in a bowl.

What seems like days later my husband says, “You look like Dorian Gray. What time is it?”

“It is 3:15
A.M.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” he says, yawning.

“Will you keep it down?” I say irritably.

Last year, in Macy’s department store in New York, Santa Claus offered his knee to housewives. The results were interesting. As a group, housewives didn’t make a lot of demands as to what they wanted so much as what they didn’t want. They didn’t want drudgery in a box with a ribbon tied around it, any more than their husbands wanted a rubber band organizer for his office.

Our image has become so distorted through television that men are often confused as to what really turns us on.

The other day I was on my hands and knees in the bathroom trying to scrape a piece of caramel off the seat (don’t ask!). I was wearing a pair of slacks with the zipper pinned together, a sweat-shirt belonging to my daughter. My hair looked like a $1.98 wig that had been reduced.

My husband peered in with a package under his arm and said, “I didn’t know what to buy you for Christmas. You’ve got everything.”

I sat back on my heels numbly.

He had that same look on his face the first Christmas we were married and he bought me a cemetery lot and explained, “I was eating your pot roast and this idea came to me like a flash.”

He had that same look on his face the year he gave me an appointment card for a free yearly chest X ray/or 5,000-mile checkup—whichever came first.

He had that same look on his face last Christmas when he bought me a barber’s kit so I could cut the boys’ hair on the patio and save a few bucks. When I saw it, I ran from the room, crying.

“Well, what did you expect, for crying out loud,” he said, “a jewel for your navel?”

“And why not?” I charged.

“I didn’t know your size!” he shouted back.

“Just once,” I said, “I would like you to look at me and not see a plastic person with sticky jelly on her elbow, oatmeal in her hair, and a diaper pin on her blouse. Once … just once … I’d like you to see me as I really am—a temptress!”

I felt sneaky, but I had to know what he had in mind for this Christmas. I went quickly to the shelf in his bedroom where he had just put the package. I prayed. Please not a garden hose, a cheese slicer, or a card of iron-on patches. Slowly, I felt inside the box and eased out the contents. It was a large, fake jewel with a note: “One size fits all, Nosey.”

For years I’ve been telling educators they put school levies on the ballot at the wrong time of the year. If they had mothers vote during the Christmas vacation, there isn’t a levy in the country that would fail.

There is something about being trapped in the same house for a week with a kid with a bouncing ball that makes education important.

I don’t know which is worse—the child with nothing to do or the child with something to do.

The kid with nothing to do wants to talk about it. The $200 worth of Christmas toys are all dependent on four
Size C batteries that are available only at a Japanese discount house in Japan.

They cannot possibly invite anyone in because there would be a group of them with nothing to do.

They cannot go outside because they would meet someone else with nothing to do and be doubly bored.

They cannot do homework, make beds, empty garbage, or dry dishes because a vacation is when you’re supposed to have nothing to do.

They cannot watch television because that is something to do when there is nothing else to do.

The kid with something to do drives you nuts because whatever he does it involves you.

“If you could run in and pick up Charlie and Tim and stop at the store on the way back and get some ice cream and chocolate syrup, we could make a mess in the kitchen.”

“We’re waiting for you to get down the sled that Daddy stored under the lawn furniture, then we’ll get out of your hair.”

“Could we have three mason jars, the wheels off your vacuum sweeper, a box of cotton, two pieces of foil, and a banana? We got an idea.”

As I was telling my neighbor Maxine yesterday, “Kids today have no stimulant for imagination. The dolls eat and belch, toy cars go 70 miles an hour, their planes fly, their rockets launch, their stoves cook, their games light up, and TV takes them all over the world. They’re bored.”

“You’re right,” said Maxine. “Whatya wanta do today? Take a nap?”

“I’m getting too old,” I said. “Wanta look for loose change in the chairs?”

“That’s boring. We did that yesterday. We could hide from the kids.”

“Na … It’s no fun when they’re not here.”

The holiday season brings to the surface a breed of women who is not to be believed.

As a matter of fact, I have spent a lifetime avoiding these congenital savers who appear from nowhere and ask, “You’re not throwing away those old corn pads just because they’re used, are you?”

Their entire life revolves around making something out of nothing—or is it the other way around?

I was at a luncheon the other afternoon when, heaven forbid, I found myself surrounded by not one, but three Junk Junkies. It was like being in a foreign country.

“Do you need any more popsicle sticks?” asked Dorothy.

“No, dear, but I’m short on piano keys.”

“I’ve got some in my basement,” said Karen, “unless you want to use up my Tabasco bottles and the arthritic chicken bones.”

“We’ll get the favors out of the way, then we’ll start collecting glass from the rear windows of cars for our decanters,” she said proudly. Then, noticing I was there, she turned to me and asked, “What are you making for Christmas?”

“I am making myself sick.”

“No, no, I mean what creative things are you doing this year?”

I thought for a moment. “I am wrapping a bed sheet around the bottom of the Christmas tree to cover up the wooden stand.” (There was silence.) “I am using a wet sponge to moisten the stamps before I put them on my Christmas cards.” (No one moved.) “I replaced the light in the cellar stairway.”

Finally, Dorothy spoke. “You mean to say you haven’t
saved your eggshells for Christmas ornaments? Your old apple cores for sachet or your potato peelings for centerpieces?”

“Oh, I saved all of that together,” I said.

“What did you make out of it?” they asked excitedly.

“Garbage.”

The women looked at me piteously … unbelieving. Suddenly, because I felt inadequate and spiteful, I wanted to shock them. “What would you say if I told you I throw out my old coat hangers by the carload?” (They winced.) “And another thing. I don’t save my old milk cartons or my bleach bottles.” (They gasped.) “And I don’t dress my extra toilet tissue in a red suit for Christmas with a cotton beard. What do you think about that?” (They turned from me.)

They will feel more kindly toward me when they hear I paid fifteen dollars for a termite-ridden log painted gold and stuffed with eight hundred jelly beans on coat hangers with paper hats at the Christmas bazaar.

On the occasion of my fortieth birthday, I went into the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to have my driver’s license renewed.

The man behind the counter mechanically asked me my name, address, phone number, and finally, occupation.

“I am a housewife,” I said.

He paused, his pencil lingering over the blank, looked at me intently and said, “Is that what you want on your license, lady?”

“Would you believe, Love Goddess?” I asked dryly.

If there is one hang-up that plagues every woman it is the “Who am I?” thing. How can we serve a husband, kids, an automatic washer, the Board of Health, and a cat who sits on top of the TV set and looks mad at you because you had her fixed and still have something left over for yourself?

In my lifetime, I have had many identities.

I have been referred to as the “Tuesday pickup with the hole in the muffler,” the “10
A.M
. standing in the beauty shop who wears Girl Scout anklets,” and “the woman who used to work in the same building with the sister-in-law of Jonathan Winters.”

Who am I?

I’m the wife of the husband no one wants to swap with
.