I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (5 page)

“In your father’s billfold,” I interrupted.

“Where’s my favorite V-neck sweater?” said a son.

“In the dirty-clothes hamper.”

“Can I wear it?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll sit by an open window and probably die before lunch.”

“Mustard or catsup?” I muttered, holding his sandwich.

“Catsup.”

As I opened the sandwich and tried to force the catsup out, the phone rang.

“Hello,” said my daughter. “Just a minute. It’s for you, Mom.”

I shook my head.

“She can’t come to the phone now,” she said tartly. “She’s hitting the bottle.”

“What’s your name?” I asked my youngest. He told me and I scribbled it on his lunch bag.

“Wilma Whiplash called,” said my daughter, pressing a message in my bathrobe pocket. “She’d like to meet you for lunch at the House of Chicken.”

I nodded. And all morning I thought about Wilma Whiplash. Who was she? Had I met her and couldn’t remember? Was she an old schoolmate? An Avon lady? A program chairman? An editor’s wife? One of my children’s teachers? A secretary trying to peddle underground pictures of the office Christmas party?

“I’m Wilma Whiplash,” said a voice at 1
P.M
. at the House of Chicken. “I know you don’t know me, but I read your column in the newspaper and figured you’d be a scream at lunch.”

“What’s your name?” I asked dryly.

“Wilma Whiplash,” she smiled. “Your dress is darling. Where did you get it?”

“In the dirty-clothes hamper.”

“Ah … what are you drinking?”

“I don’t care. Mustard or catsup.”

“Where do you get all your wild ideas?”

“In your father’s billfold,” I said numbly.

I felt sorry for her, but it served her right.

Communication has always been a problem among families. We started off with one child who was misunderstood literally. From the day he uttered his first word to present day, no one seems to know what he is talking about.

For some unknown reason, I am the only one in the family who can translate. When he was a toddler, he stood for hours at his father’s elbow, shouting, “Me no, na, noo noo,” and his father would shrug and say, “What does he want?”

“Well, what do you think he wants?” I’d say irritably.

“He’s either telling us the dog hates cold spaghetti, he hates the encyclopedia we bought for him, or he just swallowed his pacifier.”

“He is trying to tell you he dropped a cookie down his drawers. I mean how dense can a father be?”

As he got older, things got worse.

“That kid has to have his mouth fixed,” said my husband.

“What now?”

“He just told me he has to know all of his bowels by tomorrow because the teacher is having an English elimination.”

“He’s always had troubles with v’s,” I said.

“That isn’t all he has trouble with. If he goes around talking like that, they’re going to put him in a class where he makes recipe holders out of wooden blocks and clothespins all day.”

“All he’s ever tried to do,” I sighed, “is imitate the rest of the family and he doesn’t know how to pronounce the words yet.”

“I’ll say,” said his brother. “He told the whole bus the other morning that you were a syndicated Communist.”

“And he told everyone his teacher had hubcaps put on her teeth so they would look better,” said his sister.

“And he told a client of mine on the phone the other night that I couldn’t come to the phone because I was unapproachable. Really, something has to be done. At a football game the other night he yelled out, ‘All we need now is one perversion and we win the game.’ ”

“What’s the matter with that?” I snapped. “I told him myself one player had a mucilage separation in his shoulder and another was having trouble with his nymph gland and with the quarterback having a sensuous shoulder, we needed all the perversions we could get!”

You should have seen my family sit up and look at me. I guess it’s because I don’t lose my temper too often.

Then we have the other extreme of a son who speaks only four words a year. One day as I was separating an egg, the whole thing cracked and slithered to the floor. He looked at me and said, “Way to go, Mom.”

My eyes misted. I didn’t think he even knew who I was.

I have always been envious of the mothers of children who talk. What an insight they must have into the personality of their child. What good times they must enjoy … the intimate laughter … the first blush of a shared secret.

Our relationship is a lot like the President and Congress.

“What’s that hanging out of your notebook?”

(Shrug shoulders)

“You’re having your school pictures taken tomorrow? And what’s this one? An insurance form for football? I didn’t know you went out for football. What do you play?
When
do you play?”

(Grimace)

“Hey, here’s one directed to my attention. They need someone to bake cakes for the ox roast. I think I could manage that.”

“That’s left over from last year.”

“Oh, here’s one. ‘Memo to: Revolutionary Troops. Cross Potomac tonight at 7:30
P.M
. Bring money. Signed George Washington.’ Thought I’d toss in a little humor there.”

(Sigh)

“Look here. You’re having an Open House. I think I’ll go.”

(Moan)

Now, if you think things at home are painful for the
mother of a non-verbal child, you should try enduring Open House.

No sooner was I in the door than a mother accosted me and asked, “What do you think about Miss Barbie and Mr. Ken in the boiler room? I’m sure your son told you about it, didn’t he?”

Then another one approached and said, “I would have known Mr. Brickle just from my son’s description, wouldn’t you?” (Lady, I wouldn’t have found the building if there hadn’t been a Boy Scout in the parking lot.)

Finally, “It’s a shame you were too busy to come to the Booster’s Awards. We thought since your son was on the team.…”

As I was ready to make my exit, my son’s teacher put a hand on my arm. “I want to talk about your son’s problem,” she said.

So! It wasn’t me. It was definitely a case of a poor, shy boy who couldn’t express himself, so he lived in a world of silence.

“Your son can’t seem to keep his mouth shut,” she said. “He talks incessantly during class, shouts out the answers before there are questions, and is known to his classmates as ‘Elastic Mouth.’ ”

“He’s never been what you would call a talker,” I confessed. “At home he talks in bulletins. Like the people on television where a husband says to his wife, ‘Cold gone?’ and she nods and replies, ‘Fever’s down. Cough disappeared. Feel great!’ I mean when he comes home from school, I feel like Ironside interrogating a witness.”

It’s true. I always try to initiate a conversation by asking, “What kind of a day did you have at school?”

“Bummer.”

“There are some doughnuts in the bread box if you want them.”

“Dig it.”

“Your brother took a bite out of one, but.…”

“Gross.”

“Who was that boy I saw you walking with?”

“Hard man.”

“You like him?”

“No.”

“You don’t like him. Why not?”

“Comes on strong.”

We were having one of our exciting exchanges one night when his father came in.

“Will you listen to him?” I shouted. “If this boy doesn’t start communicating, we’re going to have to give him injections to keep his throat from drying up.”

“He’s no Buckley,” shrugged his father.

“Are you kidding? I tried lying in the middle of the floor when he came home from school one afternoon just to see if the sight of my lying there unconscious would generate conversation. Know what he did? He leaned over my still body and asked, ‘Did
Sports Illustrated
come?’ ”

“You are going to have to bridge the gap,” said my son’s teacher. “Cross over into his world and show him you care.”

A few weeks later, I broke one of my own house rules. I entered his bedroom. (We were going to wait until he got married and then sell the house.)

He had a notebook before him and was picking his teeth with a ballpoint pen. “What’s the greatest threat to man’s environment?” he asked suddenly.

“This bedroom,” I said, looking around in disbelief.

“People,” he amended. “They’re careless, and I am writing a paper on how we can help.”

“Where do you keep your bed?” I asked, bustling around.

“In the middle of the floor,” he said. “It isn’t made because I am airing it.”

“You’ve been airing it for three years,” I said. “Why have you been sleeping with forty-eight copies of
Sports Illustrated
, a Dixie cup, a hubcap, and eighteen mismated socks?”

“Ecology is a personal thing,” he mused. “It has to start with one person at a time. Every candy wrapper is important. Every bottle cap.”

“Why are my eyes watering?” I gasped.

“It’s the aquarium,” he said. “The catfish just isn’t doing his job.”

I looked at the polluted bowl of water with the pump that gasped and gurgled. Other than the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, it was possibly the only body of water to catch fire.

“Carelessness,” he continued. “I think that’s what it is all about. If you could just make people aware of how they are cluttering up our countryside.”

“Are you saving those soft-drink bottles for anything?” I asked.

“There’s a garter snake in one of them,” he said offhand. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, clutter. How about, ‘We must all band together and form groups to bring pressures against the Earth Molesters.’ How’s that?”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Did you know you have gym shoes under your bed that have rusted? A three years’ supply of crumpled nose tissue in your sock drawer? A piece of green bread under your pillow? A pre-schooler under your clothes on your chair? A nest in your toothbrush and a towel on the floor of your closet that just spoke to me?”

“Mom,” he said. “are you gonna help me with this paper on ecology or talk?”

I guess what it boils down to is that I don’t trust anyone under thirty. I didn’t trust anyone under thirty when I was under thirty. Particularly, I don’t trust children. It isn’t that they mean to lie, it’s just that by omission
or fancy mouthwork they spin some of the most incredible stories since Jack London.

One friend of mine was asked by her son one day whether he could go on a chartered bus to New York to see a basketball game.

The request seemed reasonable. She asked all the usual questions. “Was it chaperoned? Were there others going? Was it a school function?”

She didn’t find out until about fifty-five irate parents called her that her sixteen-year-old, newly licensed son was driving the bus into New York City. He failed to mention that small detail.

With teen-agers particularly, you have to touch all bases. You have to learn to speak and translate obscurity.

“May I go to a party Saturday night?” she will ask.

“Who is giving it?” asks the parent.

“One of the girls.” (Your own daughter)

“At a house?”

“Yes.” (Yours)

“Are the parents going to be there?”

“Probably.” (Providing the parents can drive from Miami, Florida, to Cleveland, Ohio, in three hours)

“Who else?”

“Just some of the kids from school.” (There are five schools in the entire district)

“How many?”

“Twenty or thirty.” (Couples)

“I assume it will break up early.”

“Definitely.” (With a little help from the local police)

I could write an entire book on the incredible stories my children pass on to me as gospel. One told me about a boy he met at camp who was closely related to Howard Hughes. However (here comes the zinger), since Hughes had disappeared he didn’t get his allowance, and for
twenty-five cents he would swallow a fly. My son believed him.

On another occasion he told me of a classmate (seventh grade) who flew his own airplane and was hijacked to Minneapolis one weekend. My son believed him.

He approached me in the kitchen one day and asked, “What day is it?”

“Tuesday,” I said. “Yesterday was Monday and tomorrow is Wednesday.”

He cocked his head to one side and asked, “Are you sure?”

They say communication at the dinner hour is the most important part of child rearing. When our table began to sound like F. Lee Bailey’s summation, we decided to do something about it.

“We are both at fault,” I said to my husband. “Why don’t we knock off picking at the kids while we eat. No chewing around about bicycles left outside to rust.

“No nagging about how they have the table manners of a weak king.

“No confrontations about report cards, dirty rooms, or bringing home the car with the tank empty.

“No harping about the garbage stacked up on the back porch, whose turn it is to do dishes, and who has the scissors in their room. We’ve got to stop criticizing them while they eat or they’re going to have ulcers.”

At dinner that night things were painfully silent.

“We had an amusing speaker at Kiwanis today,” said my husband, “who spoke on nuclear survival.”

The kids chewed in silence.

“You’ll never guess who I met in the Cereal and Spices aisle today.” They ate stiffly, only occasionally exchanging glances with one another.

“Anyone notice I defrosted the refrigerator?” I asked.

“Hey, has anyone heard what a five-year-old child said
to Art Linkletter when he asked what animal she wanted to be when she grew up?”

Finally, one of the children spoke. “Don’t you wanta know who broke the storm-door windows?”

“No dear, eat your dinner,” I smiled happily.

“Aren’t we going to talk about who left the lids off the garbage cans and the dogs got into them?” asked another.

“Absolutely not,” said my husband. “This is no time to discuss unpleasantries.”

“Aren’t we even going to talk about who traded who on what night and whose turn it is to clear?”

“Not during a meal,” I said softly.

As if on cue, all of them pushed themselves away from their half-eaten dinner.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“We can’t eat when you’re sore at us,” they said.

Getting through to kids is not easy for parents. Especially when they go into their “locked door” syndrome. Our entire house used to be open range. Anyone could graze anywhere and still be in plain sight. Now it has all the charm of a mental institution.