Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag! (7 page)

We explored every dead-end road in the United States, blazed trails where only covered wagons had been, and discovered maternity homes for bloodsucking mosquitoes.

I wondered if she too married a man with kidneys the size of basketballs who never felt the need for a bladder stop. Whenever I broached the subject, I was always told, “You're bored. You need something to do. Why don't you figure out where we are?”

In truth, I stopped reading road maps in 1977 when my husband accused me of moving the Mississippi River over two states.

It wasn't the first time he yelled at me for tampering with locations. We once quarreled over whether a prominent arch was a McDonald's or the gateway to St. Louis. Another time we had an ugly scene when I wrapped my gum in the Great Lakes and we couldn't find our way to the Canadian border.

Reading road maps is like being a vice president. You wear navy and keep your mouth shut. The only time you are consulted is when the driver is approaching a fork in the road at 55 mph and shouts, “OK, you wanted to drive ... now which way do we turn?”

It's funny, but the anatomy of our life together can be summed up in the road map experience.

The first year of our marriage, I told my husband I got nauseated when I read in a moving car and he laughed and said, “Sweetheart, I don't want you to do anything but just sit there and talk to me. Just leavc the driving to me.”

A few years later, when we had three children fighting over two car windows, he started to delegate things for me to do. One was to “keep those kids from killing one another.”

A few years later, he added, “Entertain them or give them a sedative.”

Then one day he said, “Start looking for the tumoff.” When I said I didn't know what turnoff he was talking about, he said, “Look in the glove compartment for the map. It's marked.”

“You know I get nauseated when I read in a moving car,” I said.

For the next ten years, I was never to see another monument, scenic wonder, Stuckey's, cathedral, sunset, or spacious sky. I sat for hours hunched over a mural of wavy lines, little circles, numbers too small to read, and distances too long to care.

I was to discover road maps made people say things they did not mean.

“We missed Fort Lauderdale. That's what I'd expect from a woman whose mother swims out to meet troop ships.”

“Oh sure, I'll get in the left lane ... when you get out of the sack in the morning and make my breakfast, I'll get in the left lane.”

“So which way do I go, Erma? Left or right? I'll give you a hint. You pat the dog with your left hand. You dry your fingernails out of the car window with your right.”

It's been ten years since I stuffed a road map up his nose. Ten years of riding in silence. That is not to say there is peace in the back seat of the car. Children do not go on a vacation to have a good time. If parents really wanted them to have a good time, they would leave them at home. Each rebels in his or her own way.

No self-respecting family would think of going on a vacation without the “Seat Kicker.” The Seat Kicker is a forerunner of the bionic leg. He positions himself just behind Daddy's seat and has been clocked at 200 kicks per minute for as long as 400 miles. The motion affects his hearing.

And not to be missed is the child we call the “Hysteria Connection.” You have just turned onto the freeway when she leans over to where Daddy is smiling in anticipation of a week without pressure and says, “Did you mean to leave the garden hose running, Daddy?” Daddy will not smile again on the trip.

She hears a strange knock in the engine that was the same knock her friend, Robin, heard just before the transmission went out of their car. She hears a newscast issuing tornado warnings for the place you are headed. She notes that the farther you go, the higher the price of gasoline gets, and her asthma seems to be getting worse and she probably will not be able to breathe in the cabin you have rented.

Occasionally, she turns to her brother and asks, “Did you tell Mom about the cat you have hiding under your bed?” or to her sister, “Everyone who's been accepted to State next fall has been notified by now.”

She hears sirens before anyone else in the car and smells burning rubber. She reassures her mother that the Ryans' dog had a hysterectomy and she got fat, too!

And just when you think the Hysteria Connection has dispensed all the good news a family can stand on a vacation, she says, “I didn't want to mention it, but when Daddy was hiding the key under the flowerpot by the door, I saw a man watching him from a parked car across the street.” Then she adds cheerfully, “I wouldn't worry. I've been exposed to measles and if I'm on schedule, the rash should appear tonight and we should all be coming home tomorrow.”

All of this makes you wonder why you cleaned out the fireplace, sucked the dust out from under the freezer, glued the tile down in the bathroom, fluffed up all the pillows, bought new underwear for the entire family, and ate three black bananas before the house-sitter came. Maybe to give your kids something “interesting” to remember.

THE IDES OF MAY

Friday: 9 p.m.

Throughout the years it has come to be known simply as the “closet experience.”

Kids haven't been home unless they've pawed through their old sports trophies and ribbons, 2,080 friendship pictures from grade school, rubber worms, dolls with no eyes, graduation tassels, rugs from Disneyland, pennants, report cards, sand-filled cameras, basketballs, kites, dog-eared letters, college catalogs, and license plates.

It was a monument to another myth. As parents, we had always been led to believe that you didn't lose a daughter or a son to an apartment... you gained a closet. When our children were younger, sometimes my husband and I would sneak into their bedrooms as they slept. We would gaze into their closets as I squeezed his hand and smiled, “Just think, Dear ... one day all of that will be yours.” We fantasized about the time each of us would have a rod of our own for our clothes ... a shelf without Christmas decorations ... floor space without boxes marked RAIN-SOAKED HALLOWEEN MASKS AND LUCKY GYM SHOES.

It never happened. Their apartments were too small to liold their treasures so they stored them at home and visited them with some regularity.

“What are you digging for?” I asked, wading through a room of boxes and old tennis rackets without strings.

“God Mom, you didn’t throw away my baseball cards, did you? They're worth a fortune. Do you have any idea what you can get for a Pete Rose with a burr haircut?”

“She threw away a box of my albums which would have been classics and snatched up by Sotheby's,” said his brother.

“You don't know that,” I said.

“Mom! The lyrics were clean!”

“All I know is I'm sick of saving all this mess. I feel like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, watching the mice nip at the wedding cake.”

“Mom, this is our history. It shows that we were here.”

“Your father and I live at a poverty level. What more proof do we need that you were here? Why don't both of you just toss some of this stuff out on this visit? Just make a little stack here by the door and I'll get rid of it. I mean it!”

A couple of hours later, I wandered in the room to turn off the lights. A pathetic little stack of memorabilia Was mounded by the door. On top was a royal blue graduation gown and a mortarboard with the tassel of the school colors. Our first high school graduate.

What a year that was. No matter how much we budgeted, no one could have prepared us for the Ides of May. No one ever told us that in May, your child wakes up in the morning with her hand outstretched, and every sentence is prefaced by “I need.”

The education that you thought was free back in September isn't. “I need $12 for a book I lost.” “I need $6 for a ticket for the baseball play-offs.” “I need $3 for a present for Miss Weems, who is retiring.” “I need your gas card and your car to drive to a party.” “I need $40 to sand a desk that someone who looks like me carved my name on.”

The kid who dressed like a wino for twelve years suddenly has a social life which requires a wardrobe. “I need heels for senior dress-up day.” “I need makeup for the class picture even though I'm in the last row.” “I need a dress for awards day.”

Parents who support a high school graduate in the final days of May should be eligible for graduation relief benefits. Before you kick in for a senior send-off, you better be sure he or she is going. “I need a car of my own to show everyone my parents love me.” “I need a $200 suit to wear under a graduation gown.” “I need a yearbook.” “I need $100 to go to dinner before the prom.” “I need rental fees for my tux.” “I need money for flowers.”

“I need money for graduation pictures.” The pictures are delivered in April. By June, the cap and gown have been stuffed in a closet. The diploma is jammed in the back of the baby book. The film of the graduation is in the camera and will remain there until the birth of the graduate's first child. The embossed thank-you notes are lost.

There is only one reminder left of that glorious day when your child filled you with such pride: 192 friendship pictures.

When your child ordered 200 of them in February, you would have thought he would have mentioned that he only had eight friends, but not a word was said. How could you possibly have known he was such a loser?

How do you unload 192 friendship pictures? Those of us with a cheap ethic can get pretty creative. I began by sending them to anyone who had ever spoken to me or looked at me like he wanted to speak to me. I sent them to strangers in the phone book who had our same last name. I sent them to creditors, like the gas and phone companies, with my check. For a while I used them as tips. (“Remember young man, there's more where these came from.”) I pasted them on the back of my letters and inked preserve wildlife underneath. I stuck them to the back of rest room doors with our phone number underneath.

Eventually, some of them were preserved in plastic to become coasters, and several of them found their way as a border around a bathroom mirror.

I took one out of my billfold and wrapped my gum in it one day. My luncheon companion was shocked. She had no idea I had seventy-eight of them left.

“I need money for a class ring.” Every year, millions of class rings are ordered by millions of high school graduates. Yet no one ever sees them. What happens to them?

Class rings are what are lost before your check for them clears the bank. They are what you take off every time you wash your hands the first week you have them ... and after that are never seen again.

Class rings are what make the strange noises in your washing machine and what you paid $35 to a washer repairman to retrieve under the pulsator. They are what you wear to bed and your hand swells and everyone gives you advice on how to get them off and when you lather up your hands with soap, they fall in the commode.

Class rings (belonging to boys) are what dangle from chains in cleavages of girls as a promise to spend the rest of your life together ... if you go to the same college.

Class rings (belonging to girls) dangle from the first knuckle of the baby finger of boys who say they'll wear them forever and are later found in their gym bag.

Class rings are what multiply, grow feet, and appear in the knife and fork drawer, the sewing basket, tied to the blind cord, and in the corner of the bathtub.

Sometimes they turn green.

“I need money for the prom.” In the movies, it's always a big scene. The boy picking up the girl for the prom will have a box containing a corsage in his hand. He's standing at the bottom of the stairway looking awkward and uncomfortable talking with the girl's parents.

Suddenly, she appears. Their “little girl” has emerged from her pigtails and jeans into a woman in a long, flowing dress. She has usually developed a bust of unbelievable proportions and the braces are off her teeth. Everyone is struck speechless as a sixty-eight-piece orchestra comes out of the woodwork and she makes her poised entrance.

It's a great scene if you're the mother of a daughter.

But no movie has ever filmed the scene in which a son emerges from the bathroom on prom night wearing white tux and tails, an ascot tie, wing-collar shirt, top hat, gloves, patent leather shoes, and a walking cane and looking like he just fell off a wedding cake.

There are no violins with a son. No magic moment when your eyes meet and there are tears in them. No moment when you throw your arms around him and declare him full-grown. A boy runs around like he has starch in his underwear.

He tries to be cool about the outfit, but you know him well enough to see the anxiety.

Will the toilet tissue clot the blood on his face that he got when he cut himself shaving?

Will his palms sweat when he dances?

Was that spot on the jacket there before he brought it home?

Will the corsage smell like the garlic in the spaghetti next to it in the refrigerator?

Will he have enough money for the restaurant?

Suppose he has to write a check at the restaurant?

Will they cash a check for someone who has no checking account?

Will he end up killing the jerk who talked him into a white satin tux with no pockets?

With a son it's corny to take pictures. Besides, he's late. You have to remember it all. The peck on the cheek. The slam of the door.

You run to the window to watch him climb into a rented limousine that is parked in front of your house and the two houses on either side. It cost more to rent than a week in a cabin at Hawke Lake, but he threatened to self-destruct if he had to appear in public in a station wagon with a bumper sticker that said have you hugged your children today?

You had to rent it for him as he didn't know how to spell “limousine.”

The mystique of the boy turned man lasts until you reach the bathroom. Heavy steam settles over fifteen Band-Aid wrappers, eight wet towels, foam-covered sink, three razor blades, shampoo and soap oozing down the drain, garment bag, boxes, tissue, and a bill for $56.75 impaled on the shower head.

The child lives!

“I need money for a cap and gown to graduate.” If you are naive enough to believe all men and women are created equal, just go to a graduation exercise sometime and look at the graduates all dressed alike.

For a ceremony that is supposed to be universal and dedicated to the principle of conformity, it's a crock. Even in academia, there is no democracy. If you are short, if you have a chest, or if you have a head that is not flat, forget it. Commencement exercises are not for you.

The gowns are basically one-size-fits-all. All of what? All of whom? No one knows. True, the arms are ample. (I only knew of one girl who had to let the sleeves out.) The gowns themselves wrinkle when the lights hit them and hold heat like a silo. The sleeves are designed to weigh down the collar so that halfway through the ceremony it shuts off the air to the windpipe, making breathing impossible.

Graduation gowns were basically made for tall people who weigh no more than 80 pounds. If you are short, you will have to either keep your shoulders lifted or cross your arms over your chest during the entire ceremony.

Speaking of chests, I used to wonder why pleats were a part of the traditional graduation costume. Now I know. Revenge. It's time to punish all the buxom girls who had three dates every Saturday and made their professors forget they were married and had small children. Pleats on a well-endowed girl make her look like she is about to faint backward.

I've done a lot of thinking about mortarboards. I never want to see the man who invented them. I have never seen anyone wear one who was mentally capable of graduating. How they got to the heads of learned men and women is a mystery.

I have seen women jam bobby pins and clips in them, only to have them zing off. Some men have tried putting them on the back or the side of their heads, crushed over their hair.

Millions of people attend graduation ceremonies every year all over the country to pay tribute to those who have attained academic excellence. Underneath that rented mortarboard and gown is a kid in shorts and an obscene T-shirt fighting to get out.

The Ides of May was a force to be dealt with. And just when we thought it was safe to write a check again, she threatened, “I'm going to college and become a doctor.”

My daughter found me with head bowed over the stack of disposables.

“What are you doing with my graduation gown?”

“The boys cleaned out the closet.”

“Those sleaze-buckets,” she said. “Why don't they throw out their own stuff? This gown brings back a lot of warm, wonderful memories for me.”

My mind raced. She had appreciated all the sacrifice and the love that went into making her moments of high school so special.

“I wore this graduation gown to a Halloween party when I dressed as a pregnant nun with a sign around my neck, the devil made me do it, remember?”

You could die from the sentiment.

“YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHO THIS IS”

Halloween.

She was four years old. Sitting at the dinner table, her legs dangled like they were hollow. They cleared the floor by a good 20 inches.

She divided her time between chasing a cherry tomato around the plate with a spoon and looking anxiously out of the window pleading, “It's dark already. Isn't it time to go?”

Her costume had been finished for a week. She couldn't wait another minute to put it on.

First came the padding ... large pillows secured with belts from everyone in the family. Then, large boots to disguise her feet. The baggy pants were next, held up by a rope threaded in the loops and a pair of suspenders.

Charcoal covered the fat cheeks and a bulbous nose looked incongruous on the small face. Large glasses, a large black mustache, and red fright wig completed the outfit.

It was a long drive and a familiar one as she sat on the seat in silence. As we turned the corner, we doused our lights and quietly eased into the driveway to avoid being seen.

“Can you breathe?” I whispered from the bushes.

“Yes,” she whispered back.

I pushed the bell and jumped out of sight just as the porch light came on. The door opened and a big voice boomed, “Well, what have we here? It's a beggar, Mother. Do we know any beggars?”

From behind the red fright wig, the slouch hat, and the mustache came a small voice, “You'll never guess who this is, Granddad!”

Of all the holidays on a child's calendar, Halloween seems to be the best—to hold more magic than Christmas, more promise than New Year's, more fun than a birthday, and more pageantry than the Fourth of July. It's supposed to be a prelude to a religious celebration of All Saints' Day, but no one will ever convince me it was not started by a group of mothers who were art majors and seized the opportunity to publicly humiliate the rest of us.

I chose a bad neighborhood from the beginning. The real estate agent tried to warn me. He said, “See that mailbox next door to you? The one with the flowers and butterflies hand-painted? Mrs. Walters did that... freehand.”

I thought I could overcome women who shaped their hedges into farm animals, hand-smocked yokes for their daughters' dresses, and made necklaces out of old potato peelings. But it was Halloween that did me in ... that one day when your children turn to you for your imagination and creativity.

I knew I was in trouble when I saw a hand-carved pumpkin in the window across the street... with capped teeth!

The woman on one side of me had been sewing sequins on her daughter's fairy godmother dress since July. The one on the other side was dressing her son as a dragon with a smoke vent on his mask and a bag of dry ice around his neck. It was going to be another year where my kids would stand under a bright porch light with a brown bag over their heads and someone would say, “What are they, Margaret? Am I missing something?”

My next-door neighbor would never put her cat on her kid's head and tell him to go as Davy Crockett. She would never stick a couple of magazines under his arm and tell him to go as a magazine salesman.

She would never dot her face with lipstick and send her daughter out as a contagious child. (The worst idea I ever had!) She would never spray-paint her son green and tell him he's dressed as a leftover.

As the years went on, picking a costume got tougher and tougher. Everyone dressed so weird and individual to begin with, it was hard to figure out who was “tricking” and who was “treating.” My husband still hasn't figured out the difference. He lives in Halloween past when anyone who didn't come to the door in a three-piece suit or a traditional dress was considered “in costume.”

Last Halloween the doorbell rang and I heard him exclaim, “Well, what have we here? Silver shoes. A fringed shawl. A comb in the hair. I got it! A Spanish dancer. Come here, Erma, and help me guess who this is.”

“For crying out loud,” I said, “it's Evelyn picking me up to go to the shopping center.”

Minutes later, he ran to the door to discover a bald-headed man with an earring in one ear, a vest, and a tattoo under his right eye.

“A pirate!” he shouted. “How about a nice popcorn ball?”

“How about using the phone?” he grumbled. “My motorcycle broke down and needs a tow.”

There was a succession of disappointments, including a woman in moccasins, suede prairie skirt, and a headband, who he thought to be a Native American. (She turned out to be collecting for UNICEF.) And he got real excited about a little kid who had big eyes and was wrinkled who my husband assumed was an extraterrestrial being from another planet. (He was our son's friend who just dropped by after swimming practice and was shriveled.)

I never got over tine sadness of his naivete. “I only gave out one treat,” he said, “and that was to a kid who was dressed as a bum. He had a great costume. Faded blue jeans with the knees out, T-shirt cut off above the navel, shoes with holes in them, and a week's growth of beard and a backpack.”

Our son is still trying to figure out why his father met him at the door and handed him a popcorn ball.

In retrospect, I don't think there was any part of childhood so hard for my kids to relinquish than Halloween. They wanted it to go on forever. At first I thought it was a matter of how much humiliation they would endure for a crummy pillowcase full of popcorn balls and bubble gum that turned your tongue blue. But it was more than that. It was the last magic kingdom where they could pretend they were someone else. After the land of make-believe came reality, and people who lived there didn't seem to have a whole lot of fun. So they left the night of goblins and witches rather reluctantly.

I noted that each year they took less time to “dress” and went out later. The last year our son went out, he was dressed in a crew-neck sweater and carried a calculator and piece of Brie.

“Give me a hint,” I said. “What are you supposed to be?”

“A yuppie,” he said.

The kid could have driven to the bank, written his own check, and bought his own candy.

How do you know when you're too old to go begging on Halloween?

How about when the mustache tickles your mask and you can't stand to keep it on?