I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (20 page)

“Will they remember how many committees I chaired, or will they remember the fresh doughnuts in the kitchen after school?

“Will they remember how cleverly I co-ordinated the blue in the sofa cushions with the pillows or will they remember I hung the outline of their hand in the living room like it was an original Renoir?

“It’s funny,” she said, “I came from a large family and I can’t even remember what color my bedroom was or if there was mud in the hallway or fingerprints around the light switches. All I can remember is the laughter, the love, and a crazy basketball hoop my mother made out of bent coat hangers and put over the clothes hamper and how my mother was always there to talk to.”

Well, I can’t begin to tell you how that story brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to be that kind of mother.

Yesterday, I stacked my cookies in pyramids and waited for the kids to come home from school. The phone rang. “Mom? I went home on Greg’s bus. We’re going to shoot baskets and mess around.”

“But … when are you coming home?” I asked soulfully.

“I don’t know. His brother will bring me.”

“Wanta know what I did today?” I asked excitedly.

“Not now, Mom. You can tell me when I get there.”

“But I’ll forget it by then.”

“Write it down.” (Click)

I ate a cookie and watched the clock. The door opened and I greeted our daughter.

“Hi, guess what I got on sale today?” I said, following her to her bedroom.

“Tell me while I change,” she said.

“Change for what? You going out again?”

“I’m going to the library. They’re holding a couple of books I have to pick up today.”

“Don’t you have time for milk and cookies and talk with a mother who is always here?”

“I’m on a diet. You eat ’em, but don’t ruin your dinner.”

“It’s no fun eating by yourself. Can I go with you?”

“You’d be out of place in the library. No adults go there in the afternoon.”

I ate another cookie and awaited the arrival of my other son.

“Did I get any mail?” he asked.

“A thing that looks like a picture from Baltimore. Did I tell you the funny thing the butcher said today?”

“Hey, that’s Jim O’Brien’s autograph I sent for. I’m gonna call Brian. Why don’t you run along and watch TV.”

I sat there deflated. That’s the trouble with mothers today. No wonder we’re rotten. There’s no one to communicate with us. No one to share our day after school. No one to give us a sense of importance. Small wonder we hang around the beauty shops in gangs, join organizations, have long lunches with fattening desserts. There’s no one to care. I stood outside of the bathroom door
and called in to my son. “I forgot to tell you something. Are you in there?”

“Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s Mother.”

“Mother who?”

I’m a household word
. A neighbor of mine suggested that since I have been writing a column for the newspaper, I have become a household word.

“You mean like bleach, leftovers, and grease-clogged sinks?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I mean like Flip Wilson, Carol Burnett, and Martha Mitchell.”

“Oh really now,” I said, “you do run on. If you asked someone what a Bombeck was, they’d think it was a nearly extinct bird in the Everglades who eats mosquito eggs.”

“My dear, you are wrong,” she insisted, “you have quite a following.”

With some immodesty, I decided to test her theory one afternoon when I called home from an airport in Philadelphia.

“Hello, operator. This is Erma Bombeck calling. I’m a household word and.…”

“Is Household the party’s first name or last?” she asked.

“Neither, I was being funny. This is Erma Bombeck and I.…” “Steinbeck?”

“No, Bombeck. That’s B as in Boy O-M-B-E-C-K.”

“Mary Household Bondack. Do you have an area code?”

“No, I don’t want to talk to Mary Household Bondack.”

“Then you wish to call station-to-station. If you do not
know the number in that city, you may hang up and call the area operator and 555-1212.”

“Operator. Don’t hang up! OPERATOR! (redial) Operator, I wish to call collect to … my name is Erma Bombeck. Not Ernie. Erma, E as in Edna r-m-a Bombeck.”

“Bomberg? Bromfield? Brombreck? Brickbat? Would you spell that again, Miss Beckbomb?”

“Look, you’re pretty warm with Brombeck. Let’s ride with that one. I am trying to call home collect and this is my number.”

The operator speaks. “I have a collect call from Mrs. Edna Brombecker.”

My son answers. “That’s my mom and she isn’t home now. She is in Philadelphia.”

“Dear heart,” I yelled, “it’s Mama. Accept the charges.”

“My mama isn’t home now. Can I take a message?”

“Yeah,” I shouted. “Call
Mrs
. Erma Bombeck at …”

“How do you spell the last name?” he asked slowly.

I hung up and sat there awhile, numb. I can’t believe this is how Martha Mitchell made it as a household word.

Joan of Arc?
A friend confided to me the other day that whenever an unpleasant situation arises, she resorts to play-acting. She pretends she is a character living out a scene.

“You are some kind of nut,” I said.

“We all do it,” she replied. “I’ve seen you when your husband goes out of town for a few days. I don’t know who you are, but you’re certainly not yourself.”

She was right, of course. Actually, I am several characters when my husband goes out of town. As I stand in the driveway, clutching my shawl and drawing my children close to me to stave off the harsh winds, I am
Marmee March, the brave young mother in
Little Women
. Upon my frail shoulders rests the responsibility of the family. I play it to the hilt. “Prithee have a good trip,” I yell. Then to the children, “Come, let us go in and pop corn and sing ‘Rock of Ages.’ ”

By the second day, being alone with the kids, I am not so gallant. I am Stella Dallas who is cast aside by society to serve and suffer without friends, family, or love. I am forgotten by the world (Mother didn’t even call) and sentenced to a life of loneliness, pain, and “Let’s Make a Deal.”

By the third day, as I visualize that bum living it up in a Holiday Inn Motel, I go into my Belle Watling routine. She’s the woman of pleasure in
Gone With the Wind
. I tell myself I was just a passing diversion to bear his three children, but now he has abandoned me and gone on to brighter lights in tinsel town. Is it my imagination? Or did I really get the cold shoulder at the meat counter?

My St. Joan is probably my best effort. I perform it my fourth day alone. It’s a consumptive performance where I clomp around in my robe and slippers until noon and when the washer repairman says, “I found a pair of training pants in your pump. That’s thirty-four dollars,” I just cough and say, “It doesn’t matter any more, really.”

By the fifth day, the kids have me on the run and they know it. Discipline and reasoning are gone. Play-acting has lost its fascination. As my husband pulls into the driveway, I approach him with a band of plastic daisies around my head while I shred my apron into small pieces.

“Who are you today?” he asks.

“Ophelia,” I snap.

“That bad?” he asks.

“That bad.”

Time.

It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by for the young, and runs out for the aged.

Time.

We talk about it as though it’s a manufactured commodity that some can afford, others can’t; some can reproduce, others waste.

We crave it. We curse it. We kill it. We abuse it. Is it a friend? Or an enemy? I suspect we know very little about it. To know it at all and its potential, perhaps we should view it through a child’s eyes.

“When I was young, Daddy was going to throw me up in the air and catch me and I would giggle until I couldn’t giggle any more, but he had to change the furnace filter and there wasn’t time.”

“When I was young, Mama was going to read me a story and I was going to turn the pages and pretend I could read, but she had to wax the bathroom and there wasn’t time.”

“When I was young, Daddy was going to come to school and watch me in a play. I was the fourth Wise Man (in case one of the three got sick), but he had an appointment to have his car tuned up and it took longer than he thought and there was no time.”

“When I was young, Grandma and Granddad were going to come for Christmas to see the expression on my face when I got my first bike, but Grandma didn’t know who she could get to feed the dogs and Granddad didn’t like the cold weather, and besides, they didn’t have the time.”

“When I was young, Mama was going to listen to me read my essay on ‘What I Want to Be When I Grow Up,’ but she was in the middle of the ‘Monday Night Movie’ and Gregory Peck was always one of her favorites and there wasn’t time.”

“When I was older, Dad and I were going fishing one weekend, just the two of us, and we were going to pitch a tent and fry fish with the heads on them like they do in the flashlight ads, but at the last minute he had to fertilize the grass and there wasn’t time.”

“When I was older, the whole family was always going to pose together for our Christmas card, but my brother had ball practice, my sister had her hair up, Dad was watching the Colts, and Mom had to wax the bathroom. There wasn’t time.”

“When I grew up and left home to be married, I was going to sit down with Mom and Dad and tell them I loved them and I would miss them. But Hank (he’s my best man and a real clown) was honking the horn in front of the house, so there wasn’t time.”

It is normal for children to want assurance that they are loved. I have always admired women who can reach
out to pat their children and not have them flinch.

Feeling more comfortable on paper, I wrote the following to put on the pages of their baby books.

To the Firstborn

I’ve always loved you best because you were our first miracle. You were the genesis of a marriage, the fulfillment of young love, the promise of our infinity.

You sustained us through the hamburger years. The first apartment furnished in Early Poverty … our first mode of transportation (1955 feet) … the seven-inch TV set we paid on for thirty-six months.

You wore new, had unused grandparents, and had more clothes than a Barbie doll. You were the “original model” for unsure parents trying to work the bugs out. You got the strained lamb, open pins, and three-hour naps.

You were the beginning.

To the Middle Child

I’ve always loved you best because you drew a dumb spot in the family and it made you stronger for it.

You cried less, had more patience, wore faded, and never in your life did anything “first,” but it only made you more special. You are the one we relaxed with and realized a dog could kiss you and you wouldn’t get sick. You could cross a street by yourself long before you were old enough to get married, and the world wouldn’t come to an end if you went to bed with dirty feet.

You were the child of our busy, ambitious years. Without you we would never have survived the job changes, the house we couldn’t afford, and the tedium and the routine that is marriage.

You were the continuance.

To the Baby

I’ve always loved you best because endings are generally sad and you are such joy. You readily accepted the milk-stained bibs. The lower bunk. The cracked baseball bat. The baby book, barren but for a recipe for graham cracker pie crust that someone jammed between the pages.

You are the one we held onto so tightly. For you see, you are the link with a past that gives a reason to tomorrow. You darken our hair, quicken our steps, square our shoulders, restore our vision, and give us humor that security, maturity, and endurity can’t give us.

When your hairline takes on the shape of Lake Erie and your children tower over you, you will still be “The Baby.”

You were the culmination.

There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

Not to feel the cold on your bare feet as you rush to the Christmas tree in the living room. Not to have your eyes sparkle at the wonderment of discovery. Not to rip the ribbons off the shiny boxes with such abandon.

What happened?

When did the cold, bare feet give way to reason and a pair of sensible bedroom slippers? When did the sparkle and the wonderment give way to the depression of a long day? When did a box with a shiny ribbon mean an item on the “charge”?

A child of Christmas doesn’t have to be a toddler or a teen. A child of Christmas is anyone who believes that Kings have birthdays.

The Christmases you loved so well are gone. What happened?

Maybe they diminished the year you decided to have your Christmas cards printed to send to 1,500 of your “closest friends and dearest obligations.” You got too busy to sign your own name.

Maybe it was the year you discovered the traditional Christmas tree was a fire hazard and the needles had to be vacuumed every three hours and you traded its holiday aroma for a silver one that revolved, changed colors, played “Silent Night” and snowed on itself.

Or the year it got to be too much trouble to sit around the table and put popcorn and cranberries on a string. Possibly you lost your childhood the year you solved your gift problems neatly and coldly with a checkbook.

Think about it. It might have been the year you were too rushed to bake and resorted to slice-and-bake with no nonsense. Who needs a bowl to clean—or lick?

Most likely it was the year you were so efficient in paying back all of your party obligations. A wonderful little caterer did it for you at three dollars per person.

Children of Christmas are givers. That’s what the day is for. They give thanks, love, gratitude, joy, and themselves to one another.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have children around a tree. It’s rather like lighting a candle you’ve been saving, caroling when your feet are cold, building a fire in a clean grate, grinding tinsel deep into the rug, licking frosting off a beater, giving something you made yourself.