If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (13 page)

When he wanted a horse, I tried to warn him that I just wasn't up to it, but did he listen? He did not. As I led the beast around by the reins, I was repaid for my vigilance by being stomped on by a fifteen-hundred pound horse.

“We are not going out for football,” I told

him the summer of his fifteenth year. “What do you mean what has that got to do with me? I'm your mother. If you want to kill your mother, I can't stop you, but every Mother's Day... mark my words... you're going to feel just terrible.” (I carry with me today a trick knee suffered when I ran onto the playing field with an extra mouthpiece to protect fifteen-hundred dollars' worth of braces.)

It never ended. He jumped off the high board at the pool just to give me stomach cramps and as soon as I thought I had myself under control, he came home with his learner's permit to drive. (The only boy I know who was given a ticket for speeding... in reverse.)

I thought all of it was behind me until the other night when he was leaving the house with his little board with the wheels under his arm.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Trying to find an empty swimming pool, a hill, or a paved ditch. Then I am going to balance myself on this little board up the side of it until I fall off.”

I climbed on the skateboard, clutched him mound the waist and closed my eyes. “Why don't you like your mother?” I whimpered.

14

I'm Laughing So Hard I Can't Stop Crying

An interviewer once asked what the Bombeck family was “really” like. Did we seem as we are in print? A composite of the Bradys, Waltons, Osmonds and Partridges sitting around cracking one-liners.

The last time my family laughed was when my oven caught fire and we had to eat out for a week.

I did not get these varicose veins of the neck from whispering. We shout at one another. We say hateful things. We cry, slam doors, goof off, make mistakes, experience disappointments, tragedies, sickness and traumas. When I last checked, we were members in good standing of your basic screw-up family.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

And how do you know laughter if there is no pain to compare it with.

When Did I Become the Mother and the Mother Become the Child?

A nuclear physicist once figured out if a woman has a baby when she is twenty years old, she is twenty times as old as the baby.

When the baby is twenty years of age and the mother is forty, she is only twice as old as the child. When the baby is sixty and the mother is eighty, she is only IVs times as old as the child. When the child is eighty and the mother is one hundred, she is only \% times as old as the offspring.

When will the baby catch up with the mother?

When indeed.

Does it begin one night when you are asleep and your mother is having a restless night and you go into her room and tuck the blanket around her bare arms?

Does it appear one afternoon when, in a moment of irritation, you snap, “How can I give you a home permanent if you won't sit still? If you don't care how you look, I do!” (My God, is that an echo?)

Or did it come the rainy afternoon when you were driving home from the store and you slammed on your brakes and your arms sprang protectively between her and the windshield and your eyes met with a knowing, sad look?

The transition comes slowly, as it began between her and her mother. The changing of power. The transferring of responsibility. The passing down of duty. Suddenly you are spewing out the familiar phrases learned at the knee of your mother.

“Of course you're sick. Don't you think I know when you're not feeling well? I'll be over to pick you up and take you to the doctor around eleven. And be ready!”

“So, where's your sweater? You know how cold the stores get with the air conditioning. That's the last thing you need is a cold.”

“You look very nice today. Didn't I tell you you'd like that dress? The other one made you look too old. No sense looking old before you have to.”

“Do you have to go to the bathroom before we go? You know what a big deal it is at the doctor's. You have to ask for the key and walk ten miles down all those corridors. Why don't you just go anyway... just to get it over with.”

“If you're not too tired we'll shop. Did you take your nap this morning? When you get tired, tell me and I'll take you home. You know I can't shop when you stand on one foot and then the other.” (Good Lord, did you really tuck her arm in yours nearly pulling her feet off the floor?)

Rebellion? “I'll thank you, missy, to let me make my own decisions. I know when I'm tired, and when I am I have the good sense to go to bed. Stop treating me like a child!” She is not ready to step down yet.

But slowly and insidiously and certainly the years give way and there is no one to turn to.

“Where are my glasses? I never can find them. Did I fall asleep in the movie again? What was it all about?”

“Dial that number for me. You know how I always get the wrong one.”

“I'm not having a Christmas tree this year. There's no one to see it and it just dirties up the carpet for eight months or so.”

“Look what I made in macramé today. I'll make you a sling in blue for your kitchen if you want.” (It is reminiscent of the small hand in plaster of paris framed over the sofa.)

“Where's my flight number and the times of my planes? You always type it out for me and put it in the airline ticket pocket. I can't read those little numbers.”

Rebellion: "Mother really, you're not that old. You can do things for yourself. Surely you can still see to thread your own needle.

“And you certainly aren't too tired to call up Florence and say hello. She's called you fifteen times and you never call her back. Why don't you have lunch with her sometimes. It would do you good to get out of the house.”

“What do you mean you're overdrawn? Can't you remember to record your checks each time you write them?”

The daughter isn't ready yet to carry the burden. But the course is set.

The first year you celebrate Thanksgiving at your house and you roast the turkey and your mother sets the table.

The first time you subconsciously turn to her in a movie and say, “Shhhh!”

The first time you rush to grab her arm when she walks over a patch of ice.

As your own children grow strong and independent, the mother becomes more childlike.

“Mother, I did not take your TV Guide off the TV set.”

“Did so.”

“Did not.”

“Did so.”

“Did not.”

“Did.”

“Not.”

“I saw your father last night and he said he would be late.”

“You didn't see Dad last night. He's dead, Mother.”

“Why would you say a thing like that? You're a terrible child.”

(“I saw Mr. Ripple and he swung me on the swings for hours.”

“There is no Mr. Ripple. You made him up. He doesn't exist.”

“That's not true. Why would you say that? Just because you don't see him doesn't mean he isn't there.”)

“You never want to visit with me. You fiddle with those children too much. They don't even need you.”

(“Are you going to play bridge again? You always go out and you never have any time to read me stories!”)

“For goodness sake, Mom, don't mention Fred's hairpiece. We all know he has one and having you mention it doesn't help.”

(“You mind your manners, little girl, and don't speak unless you're spoken to.”)

The daughter contemplates, “It wasn't supposed to be this way. All the years I was bathed, dressed, fed, advised, disciplined, ordered, cared for and had every need anticipated, I wanted my turn to come when I could command. Now that it's here, why am I so sad?”

You bathe and pat dry the body that once housed you. You spoon feed the lips that kissed your cuts and bruises and made them well. You comb the hair that used to playfully cascade over you to make you laugh. You arrange the covers over the legs that once carried you high into the air to Banbury Cross.

The naps are frequent as yours used to be. You accompany her to the bathroom and wait to return her to bed. She has a sitter already for New Year's Eve. You never thought it would be like this.

While riding with your daughter one day, she slams on her brakes and her arm flies out instinctively in front of you between the windshield and your body.

My God! So soon.

Mike and the Grass

When Mike was three he wanted a sandbox and his father said, “There goes the yard. We'll have kids over here day and night and they'll throw sand into the flower beds and cats will make a mess in it and it'll kill the grass for sure.”

And Mike's mother said, “It'll come back.” When Mike was five, he wanted a jungle gym set with swings that would take his breath away and bars to take him to the summit and his father said, “Good grief. I've seen those things in backyards and do you know what they look like? Mud holes in a pasture. Kids digging their gym shoes in the ground. It'll kill the grass.”

And Mike's mother said, “It'll come back.”

Between breaths when Daddy was blowing up the plastic swimming pool he warned, “You know what they're going to do to this place? They're going to condemn it and use it for a missile site. I hope you know what you're doing. They'll track water everywhere and you'll have a million water fights and you won't be able to take out the garbage without stepping in mud up to your neck and when we take this down we'll have the only brown lawn on the block.”

“It'll come back,” smiled Mike's mother.

When Mike was twelve, he volunteered his yard for a campout. As they hoisted the tents and drove in the spikes his father stood at the window and observed, “Why don't I just put the grass seed out in cereal bowls for the birds and save myself the trouble of spreading it around? You know for a fact that those tents and all those big feet are going to trample down every single blade of grass, don't you? Don't bother to answer,” he said. “I know what you're going to say, 'It'll come back.' ”

The basketball hoop on the side of the garage attracted more crowds than the Winter Olympics. And a small patch of lawn that started out with a barren spot the size of a garbage can lid soon grew to encompass the entire side yard. Just when it looked like the new seed might take root, the winter came and the sled runners beat it into ridges and Mike's father shook his head and said, “I never asked for much in this life... only a patch of grass.”

And his wife smiled and said, “It'll come back.”

The lawn this fall was beautiful. It was green and alive and rolled out like a sponge carpet along the drive where gym shoes had trod... along the garage where bicycles used to fall... and around the flower beds where little boys used to dig with iced teaspoons.

But Mike's father never saw it. He anxiously looked beyond the yard and asked with a catch in his voice, “He will come back, won't he?”

My Turn

For years, you've watched everyone else do it.

The children who sat on the curb eating their lunches while waiting for the bus.

The husband you put through school who drank coffee standing up and who slept with his hand on the alarm.

And you envied them and said, “Maybe next year I'll go back to school.” And the years went by and this morning you looked into the mirror and said, “You blew it. You're too old to pick it up and start a new career.”

This column is for you.

Margaret Mitchell won her first Pulitzer Prize for Gone with the Wind in 1937. She was thirty-seven years old at the time.

Sen. Margaret Chase Smith was elected to the Senate for the first time in 1948 at the age of fifty-one.

Ruth Gordon picked up her first Oscar in 1968 for Rosemary's Baby. She was seventy-two years old.

Billie Jean King took the battle of women's worth to a tennis court in Houston's Astrodome to outplay Bobby Riggs. She was thirty-one years of age.

Grandma Moses began a painting career at the age of seventy-six.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh followed in the shadow of her husband until she began to question the meaning of her own existence. She published her thoughts in A Gift from the Sea in 1955, in her forty-ninth year.

Shirley Temple Black was named Ambassador to Ghana at the age of forty-seven.

Golda Meir in 1969 was elected Prime Minister of Israel. She had just passed her seventy-first birthday.

You can tell yourself these people started out as exceptional. You can tell yourself they had influence before they started. You can tell yourself the conditions under which they achieved were different from yours.

Or you can be like the woman I knew who sat at her kitchen window year after year and watched everyone else do it. Then one day she said, “I do not feel fulfilled cleaning chrome faucets with a toothbrush. It's my turn.”

I was thirty-seven years old at the time.

Beauty

According to her height and weight on the insurance charts, she should be a guard for the Lakers.

She has iron-starved blood, one shoulder is lower than the other, and she bites her fingernails.

She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She should be. She's worked on that body and face for more than sixty years. The process for that kind of beauty can't be rushed.

The wrinkles in the face have been earned... one at a time. The stubborn one around the lips that deepened with every “No.” The thin ones on the forehead that mysteriously appeared when the first child was born.

The eyes are protected by glass now, but you can still see the perma-crinkles around them. Young eyes are darting and fleeting. These are mature eyes that reflect a lifetime. Eyes that have glistened with pride, filled with tears of sorrow, snapped in anger, and burned from loss of sleep. They are now direct and penetrating and look at you when you speak.

The bulges are classics. They developed slowly from babies too sleepy to walk who had to be carried home from Grandma's, grocery bags lugged from the car, ashes carried out of the basement while her husband was at war. Now, they are fed by a minimum of activity, a full refrigerator and TV bends.