Aunt Erma's Cope Book (10 page)

9. The non-Mother billfold. I'd want to die every time someone whipped out a billfold that unrolled like a giant tongue with 187 snapshots of their children. As I rummaged through a half stick of gum, a claim check for the parking lot, a piece of material I was matching, and a Kennedy half dollar, I'd explain lamely, “I sent my children's pictures out to be cleaned.”

10. Fifteen-hundred-meter run. From wherever I was, I threw in my hand/ran up the aisle/stopped the game/stopped eating/quit talking/and hit for home so I could be there when I heard those wonderful words of praise from my children: “You'd better be home. I forgot my key.”

I figured out long ago that guilt was like mothers. Everyone in the world had at least one. And it was passed down like a torch to the next generation. When you thought about it, a mother traditionally cried at weddings, but when there was a birth, there was always that crooked little smile on her face that said, “You're about to get yours.”

I didn't have a friend who hadn't heard other mother's thirty-six hours of hard labor, her stretch marks that would never tan, and how their appearance in this world at the same time as the Depression was “probably a coincidence, but we'll never be sure, will we?”

By the time I was twenty-five I had a list of things I was going to regret for the rest of my life that covered a wall.

“If you let that baby cry while you polish your nails, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life.”

“If you don't get out of that bed and take an antibiotic and go to school to see Andy dressed as a grain of wheat in the Thanksgiving pageant, you are going to regret it for the rest of your life.”

“If you don't curse gravy and become a born-again cottage-cheese disciple, you are going to regret it for the rest of your life.”

“If you don't go with your husband on that fishing trip to Raw Waste Lake, where the cabin has a wood stove and the land temperature is 92 degrees and the lake temperature is 50 and has leeches, and pretend you are having a good time, you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

If I had a dental appointment, I felt guilty. If I was sleepy and had to go to bed early, I felt guilty. If we ran out of toothpaste, I felt guilty. If someone asked me for the time and my watch had stopped, I felt guilty.

I apologized to the washer repairman who removed a pair of training pants out of the hose for forty-two dollars for not having the child toilet-trained.

I apologized to a baby sitter for not having better television reception and fresh lemon for her cola.

I even apologized for bothering a recording that told me to call back the next day when the office was open.

Of all the sins I committed in the name of sanity, possibly none was regarded with so much loathing and disgust as the mother who did not get up in the morning to get breakfast for her family.

It was unthinkable . . . un-Americari . . . and downright unconscionable.

I had always thought if training films were shown to brides contemplating marriage, the one that would have saved a lot of them from embracing matrimony would have been the one on the mother getting her family out of the house in the mornings.

It was a study in guilt.

I got blamed when the milk was warm and the bread was frozen and the kitchen floor was cold on their bare feet.

It was my fault that their homework was not finished because I made them turn off their lights at 1 A.M. and go to bed.

I assumed the blame for the gym clothes not being dry because I left them in the washer all night instead of setting the alarm and putting them in the dryer.

If a fork was bent, I got it.

If they yelled at me that they needed a note to get back into school after being ill and I didn't get it to them by the time they closed the front door, let it be on my conscience if they were sent home.

If I made them make their beds and they didn't have time to go to the bathroom, then all day their headache would be my fault.

If they dawdled and missed the school bus, it was my punishment to drive them to school and pick them up afterward.

After they had left I viewed all the food left on their plates. If I ate it, I went off my diet and was considered a bimbo. If I threw it away, I was wasteful and was considered a bad wife.

I was a cheap shot. Everyone knew it. I couldn't get out of a conversation without someone saying, “You paid full price for it?” “You carried the baby the full nine months?” “Get serious. You couldn't have gone through four years of college without learning how to play bridge.” “You didn't breast-feed? How tragic.”

By the time I was thirty, I knew enough about guilt to start spreading a little of it myself. After all, how would my children know anything about it if I didn't set an example?

Since I had always been lousy at long speeches and shouting, I opted to use the nonverbal guilt medium.

These forms have always been grossly underrated but are really quite effective.

I started out with the time-honored, no-fail, classic one: sighing.

Whenever one of the kids would fill up a glass to overflowing, I would sit there in absolute silence looking like I had just been told the rabbit died. Then slowly (don't hurry it) I would take a deep breath, deep enough to make my chest rise and get a catch in my throat, and then let it out slowly.

When this is done unhurriedly and with feeling, you can just feel the rottenness of the accusee.

Another favorite was the pantomime with limited dialogue. It's a little dramatic, but it works. When one of my children informed me he was going on a picnic on Mother's Day with his friend's family, I would square my shoulders (this is important; it denotes courage) and give a very weak smile. Then without commenting one way or another, I'd go to the sewing basket and get a piece of black fabric and begin to drape his empty chair at the dinner table. (By this time he should be feeling so miserable he has the phone in his hand.) Now you're ready for the zinger. Smile painfully and say, “Have a good time, son.”

My ace in the hole was the “I'll do it myself” number.

When I asked my husband or one of the children to take the garbage cans to the curb and they didn't respond right away, I'd paddle out in the darkness in a pair of

bedroom slippers (preferably in the snow), a coat that didn't fit, no hat and no gloves, and begin to drag the cans noisily to the driveway inch by inch . . . HOLDING MY SIDE.

It was important in this operation to say little . . . just wince, strain, and occasionally yell to a neighbor, “How lucky you are to have people who love you.”

One afternoon I announced to my husband and son that the television antenna had blown off course. No one moved. I rattled around in the garage for the ladder, dragged it to the side of the house, and slowly ascended to the roof. I must have sat up there three quarters of an hour waiting for someone to follow me. I had just confirmed my suspicion. Ruth was probably right. It was time to read /'// Give Up Guilt When I Stop Making You Feel Rotten.

The book was two years old, but it was still twenty years ahead of where I was. The author, Jim Preach, said it was time adults let go of traditions. Relationships were changing. The days when a family existed as a matched set were gone. Never had there been a time when individuals flourished and there was no need to feel guilty about its passing.

Already I felt better. Just knowing that I was no longer responsible for clean underwear if my son had an accident was a weight off my mind.

Jim also said that a lot of guilt stemmed from setting goals too high not only for yourself but for others. You cannot always agree, he said, but at least you can try to understand.

“If you're at odds with your children, don't make them feel guilty for their actions and yourself feel guilty because you don't agree, just keep lines of communication open and establish some kind of rapport.”

It wasn't easy advice. Children and parents were living in different worlds. The new morality was like future shock and I couldn't get used to it. Could a girl who suffered from terminal contrite when she drove a boy to lust by wearing patent-leather pumps find happiness in a home where her kids watched The Flying Nun and figured they'd made their Easter duty?

I wasn't the only parent who felt it. We talked about it a lot. What we thought was a normal communication gap had become a cultural cavern that widened every day.

While parents prattled on about writing notes of thanks for graduation gifts, the kids weren't even planning on showing up for the ceremony.

While parents were rousting their kids out of bed and laying the responsibility for cutting the grass on them the kids were smoking it.

One afternoon I answered the phone. It was a girl asking for my son. In my time a girl never called a boy unless she was asked to pass on a homework assignment or was inviting him to the cotillion.

To show my displ asure at the custom, I sucked in my breath slowly in preparation for my “sighing” number. My son looked at me sharply and I smiled even when my face turned blue.

17

contemporary etiquette

that's AWRIIITE

there's A special place in heaven for chaperones where the sun always shines, varicose veins dissipate, and the bar never closes.

I had enjoyed a self-exile from school activities for several years, mainly because I figured I had served my time. I had gone to camp and eaten raw chicken cooked over a tin can punched with holes, chaperoned a group of sixth-graders through a meat-packing plant, and sat through summers of Little League softball games that were real squeakers: Giants, 87-Dust Devils, 34.

When Mrs. Bitterly, the advisor of the senior class, called me to help chaperone the prom, I instinctively started to decline. Then I changed my mind.

I got out my trusty book of etiquette to brush up on what a chaperone did. It said: “The presence of an adult guards our young people from possible foolishness or from involving themselves in situations from which they are not mature enough to extract themselves.”

That didn't sound so bad. And after all, what better way to understand today's young people than to spend an evening with them.

It's logic like that that fills nursing homes.

To begin with, my son said he wasn't going to the prom. It cost too much to rent a suit, the evening was a bore, and, besides, no girl had asked him yet.

Mrs. Bitterly called a meeting of the chaperones for the following Wednesday to fill us in on what to expect.

“If any of you has a hearing problem,” she said, “let me know now.”

A woman said. “I can hear perfectly.”

“Then you may be excused,” she said. "We are looking for people whose hearing is already impaired. By the end of the evening the music could conceivably make you lose your appetite, make you nauseated, or render you sterile. Those of you proficient in lipreading skills will do well.

"Now, we are doing away with the hand stamp this year. We used to stamp the hand of every guest at the prom. When they went out and came back the stamp showed up under a fluorescent lamp. However, last year, Mrs. Miller had trouble with a few older rowdies who crashed the party and had the stamp tattooed on their tongues. She didn't feel she should quarrel with this.

"I cannot stress enough: be sure of your authority. When you walk into the parking lot and discover three hoods who do not attend the school ripping off a car and have a tire iron in their hands, make sure you have a better threat than, 'You know this makes you ineligible for the Robert Frost poetry awards in the spring.'

"If you are going for a 'bust' of any kind, make sure you are familiar with the facts. Two years ago, a guidance counselor summoned an emergency unit, two police cruisers, and a priest for a boy who had just thrown two Tic Tacs into his mouth to improve his breath.

"You may dance if you like but know that the current craze is disco and if you do not have a flight plan filed, you could hurt yourself.

“Lastly, how do you know when the prom is over? First, there will be a ringing sensation in the ears and the band will be gone. Your eyes will no longer smart from Clearasil and your car will be the only one left in the parking lot ... if you are lucky.”

Personally, I thought Mrs. Bitterly overreacted. Other than the fact that for a few days following the prom I answered the phone and it wasn't ringing, I did fine. The kids seemed to have a good rime. Maybe it was my success with the prom that prompted me to approach my son and ask him about his future.

“I've been checking into it,” he said. On his desk were catalogues from every school you can imagine; none of them sounded familiar. I leafed through a few of them:

Diablo Karate School. . . Electronics Institute and Tape Deck Installation . . . and College of Transcendental Bowling.

“Are you serious about these?”

“I've eliminated a lot of them,” he said. “Especially the ones behind the Iron Curtain. Their football teams are lousy.”

“Well, why don't we check out a few?” I said. “Your father and I could go along and we could make a vacation out of it.”

I have spent better vacations in intensive care.

The first school was out because it was twenty miles from the ski slopes.

The second school was out because their football team lost six games the previous year.

The third school was out because they had a grading system.

The fourth school we looked at, he loved. I expected John Belushi to fly through a window any minute dressed in ham and cheese. The rooms looked like cells with terminal mildew. A girl in a bathrobe was walking her dog in the corridor. Someone was cooking illegal brownies.

“How many ironing boards do you have?” I asked.

A hush fell over the entire dorm.

“What are the posted hours that you have to be in at nights?”

A hush fell over the entire campus.

“Where is your house mother?”

A hush fell over the entire state.

They weren't guilt-stricken. They were all laughing themselves to death.

I couldn't pretend to be anything but confused over the change in relationships. “Roommate” had an entirely different connotation, as did “companion,” “associate,” and—as one of my daughter's friends listed the unwed father on the birth certificate—“significant other person.”