Motherhood, The Second OldestProfession (11 page)

If you Can’t Stand the Heat… Turn Off the Stove

In a Sunday school class one morning, the teacher asked, “And what did the disciples say before they ate the fish?”

A five-year-old boy in the front row waved his hand vigorously and said, “I know. They said, 'These fish got any bones in them?' ”

As a mother who has dedicated her life to force-feeding her children, I have every reason to believe this story is gospel.

Kids are without a doubt the most suspicious diners in the world. They will eat mud (raw or baked) rocks, paste, crayons, ballpoint pens, moving goldfish, cigarette butts, and cat food.

Try to coax a little beef stew into their mouths and they look at you like a puppy when you stand over him with the Sunday paper rolled up.

I got so much food spit back in my face when my kids were small, I put windshield wipers on my glasses.

I read a survey once that said fifty-eight percent of the children interviewed resented the fact that parents make them eat food they don't like.

My children always had an unusual diet. They tolerated hot dogs only when they cost $1.50 in the ballpark, hamburgers that were 1/15 inch thick and suffocated in secret sauce, charred marshmallows that were speared on a bent coat hanger, and anything left under a car seat longer than fifteen days.

In general, they refused to eat anything that hadn't danced on TV.

By mid-1970's, I faced up to a cold, hard fact. Home cooking was dead! A victim of nutrition and a well-balanced diet served up by a mother.

Show biz food was in! Hamburgers with cute names, catchy songs about tacos, and free balloons with every shake. I did what any red-blooded American mother would do. I fought back.

I installed golden arches above the stove with an electric Scoreboard and focused a red light on the pie to keep it warm.

I added a lighted menu and a drive-in window and served everything in a bag that leaked coleslaw and contained a two-inch plastic fork.

I served pizza wearing a straw hat and a cane. And when their attention began to lag, I propped my mouth open with a fork and let them yell their order into it, but it didn't work.

There's just something exciting to a child about eating in a car that smells like onions every day of the year.

For the next several years, we ate all of our meals in the car.

Then one day, our son said a curious thing. He said, “Didn't you tell me I could eat anywhere I wanted for my birthday?” We both nodded. “Then I want to eat at home.”

“Well, I don't know,” I said, looking at my husband. “Can we afford it?”

“Sure, what the heck, it's his birthday.”

On the night of the birthday dinner, everyone even looked different. They were taller.

“Hey, look at this,” said one of the boys. “What do you call these?”

“Silverware,” I said. “That particular piece is a knife.”

“Neat.”

“And these are plates.”

“I've never eaten in a place where you can take your dog before,” said our daughter.

As the family sang “Happy Birthday,” our son said, “Could we do this again next year? Maybe sooner?”

As I tossed the china noisily into a trash barrel, I said, “Let's not get carried away. We'll see.”

“Every Puppy Should Have a Boy”

The ad in the paper said the puppy was “partially housebroken.”

That is like being “partially pregnant.”

Sylvia should have known better, but she was one of thousands of mothers every year who give in to family pressure and get a dog.

The first thing Sylvia did was to set up house rules. Anyone who saw the little puddles or dog bombs first was to clean it up. Then, you were to rub his nose in it and put him outside. No one was to feed him at the table. He was to sleep only in his own bed in the utility room. Everyone would take turns putting him out and bringing him in. Praise him when he did good, punish him when he did bad.

The first week, Bob's feet never touched the floor. He was the darling of the Forbes household.

The second week, they were less enthusiastic about his being there. (One of the kids even told him to “shut up!” when he yapped in the middle of the night.)

By the third week, Bob was Sylvia's dog. She fed him, bathed him, and let him in and out fifty times a day.

One night four years later, Sylvia heard her sons whispering. One was saying, “You better clean up Bob's mess.” His brother answered, “It's my year not to see it. You didn't see it last year.”

She gathered the family together and said, "I thought all of you should know that we are going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. Our living room carpet is now one large, continuous wall-to-wall stain. The bottom line is, I am getting a new carpet and Bob goes. Please, I don't want anyone to say anything until I am finished. Try to see Bob as I see him—a twenty-eight-year-old man in a shaggy fur coat who watches television for six hours every evening and never leaves the room for a commercial, if you get my drift.

"He knows nothing of nature. He has never seen a tree, a blade of grass, a curb, a low chair leg, or a car tire.

"He has no curiosity as to why the velvet on the chair is so hard for him to reach or why they make a shag carpet so difficult to balance yourself on on three legs.

“I have tried everything, including sawing a hole in a $300 door that lets out the heat in the winter and the cool air in the summer. Bob is out!”

Even though Sylvia went on to be elected to the U.S. Senate, write three books, and give the commencement address at Harvard, she will always be remembered as the selfish mother who put carpet before compassion.

What kind of a mother would...

deny having grandchildren three times before the rooster crows?

Treva

Treva hadn't spoken a word since they left the baby shower. As her daughter Gloria struggled to find a comfortable spot for her stomach under the steering wheel, Treva knotted her nose tissue into a ball, lost in her own thoughts.

They centered on Gloria's mother-in-law, Gayle. That woman had been bad news ever since her son married Gloria two years ago. Even at the wedding she was a royal pain. A bridegroom's mother is supposed to wear beige and keep her mouth shut. Everyone knows that. But not Gayle. She whipped around the reception like Mrs. Aster's pet horse, leaving Treva in the kitchen to slice ham like a field hand.

And the gift of a honeymoon to Acapuico made their bathroom heater look sick!

To make matters worse, Gloria thought the sun rose and set in the woman's backyard. Now she was trying to take over on the baby her daughter was carrying—Treva's first grandchild!

“You're quiet, Mom,” said Gloria. “Did you have a good time? Can you believe how many prizes Gayle won? Imagine getting twenty-three words out of the word bassinet. You never said how many you got.”

“One,” said Treva—“ass!”

“Mother!” she said. “Shame on you.” Then, following a silence, “Did you hear that Gayle is going to videotape the birth of our baby?”

“Pull the car over. I'm going to throw up,” said Treva.

“Mom,” said Gloria softly, “there's no reason for you to be jealous of Gayle. It's your grandchild too and both of you will get equal time with it.”

“Jealous! Is that what you think I am?” Treva laughed in a high-pitched voice. “Don't be ridiculous. The baby won't be able to tell us apart, except I'll be the grandmother who bought him a stuffed teddy bear and Gayle will be the grandmother who bought him the San Diego Zoo. Let's drop it. How do you feel about ham?”

“Compared to what?” asked Gloria.

“I'm trying to figure out what to have for Christmas dinner.”

“Mom! It's five months away. We haven't had Thanksgiving yet.”

“Thanksgiving is settled. We're having your favorite, turkey.”

Gloria slowed down and lowered her voice. “Mom, we've been through all of this before. Chuck and I just can't go on every holiday hopping from one house to another eating for four people—five this year. I'm going to weigh 500 pounds trying to keep all of the parents happy.”

“Look, if you want to go to Gayle's, just say so. I've lived with disappointment before, I can do it again.”

Gloria stopped the car and turned toward her mother.

“Mom, do you remember the old story about (the wise king and the two women fighting over a child?”

Treva shook her head stubbornly.

“Each woman claimed the child was hers. Finally, the wise old king put the baby on a table before him, picked up a sword and said, 'Very well, since neither of you can decide, I will cut the baby in half.' At that moment, in an unselfish act of love, the real mother rushed forward and said, 'No! Give the baby to her.' At that moment, the king knew who the real mother was. Do you understand what that story is saying, Mother?”

Treva looked at her daughter with tears in her eyes. “It is saying Gayle kept her mouth shut and gets custody of the new grandchild and I get stuck with a twenty-pound turkey and a ten-pound ham!”

That night in bed Treva couldn't sleep. She kept seeing Gayle, who began to look like Rosalind Russell as Auntie Mame, waving from a cruise ship with her grandchild by her side and throwing streamers and promising to write.

She hated herself for being so competitive, but her arms ached to hold a baby once more. She had never adjusted to the empty nest. Maybe if she set up a nursery in the spare room, Gloria would leave the baby here on weekends. New parents always need time to themselves. Perhaps she and Mel could even take their grandchild to Florida with them and build sand castles on the beach.

She fell asleep fantasizing about a tall dark stranger saying, “You don't look old enough to be a mother,” only to have her blush and say, “I'm not. It's my grandchild!”

TREVA ... TEN YEARS LATER

The minute they heard Gloria's car in the driveway, Treva and her husband swung into action with all the precision and efficiency of the Lippizan cavalry.

Treva whipped the planter off the coffee table and put it in the hall closet, locked the bathroom door, shoved a bowl of candy under the lounge chair, put the dog in the utility room, and took the knob off the TV set and dropped it in her pocket.

Her husband Mel covered the sofa with plastic, put his bowling trophy on top of the refrigerator, blocked the entrance to the basement with a kitchen chair, put the toaster cover over the phone, and closed the lid on the piano to cover the keys.

Then both put toothpicks in their mouths to announce they had just eaten.

They broke their own record—one minute, thirty-six seconds.

Gloria dragged in with her four children under eight years of age and fell into a chair. The children scattered as though they ran on batteries, except Jeffrey, who sat in the middle of the floor and screamed.

“What's the matter with him?” asked Treva.

“He's teething,” said Gloria tiredly.

“Have you tried a little whiskey on the gums?” asked Treva.

“I had a belt just before I came and I feel better,” said Gloria.

“So what brings you to the neighborhood?”

“Nothing in particular. You got any crackers?” she~ asked, going to the kitchen and flinging open the doors. “Would you look at this. Wild rice! There was never any wild rice when I lived at home.”

“You hate rice.”

“I might have developed a taste for it if I knew it cost this much. So what time are you having Thanksgiving dinner?”

Treva and Mel exchanged glances.

“Ah, we're not going to be home this year for Thanksgiving, dear,” Treva said quickly. “We're going out. Mel, check on Danny, the toilet's running.”

“Do you know how long it's been since we've spent a holiday together?”

“What about Gayle?” asked Treva. “Gloria! Where is Jeffrey's diaper?”

“He just started taking it off when it has a load in it. Go get your diaper, Jeffrey. I know . . . poopoo. Gayle? They're going on a holiday cruise again. If I didn't know better, I'd feel no one wanted us for the holidays.”

“Sweetheart, you don't want to chew on that cassette. Give it to Grandma. And don't cry!”

“Mother, when you take away something, you have to give her something else.”

“I'm about to,” said Treva, raising her hand.

“It's a shame you don't have that roomful of toys like you used to. That kept 'em busy. Do you really use that room for a chapel?”

“There isn't a day I don't go in there and meditate,” said Treva. “What about Gayle? Does she still have her nursery -away-from-home?”

“No, she converted it to a tack room three years ago.”

“A tack room in the house?”

“Doesn't matter. They don't have horses anyway. Well, listen, I've got to get going. You'll call on Thanksgiving?”

“Of course I will. Melanie! That's Grandma's dusting powder and it cost $12.50 a box. You must leave it here. You can visit it the next time you come. Melanie, don't take that lid off! Please!”

“You want me to clean it up?” said Gloria.

“No, I can do it when you leave,” said Treva. “Take care of yourself, dear, and . . . don't turn your back on them.”

As the car pulled out of the driveway, Treva and Mel mechanically and without words went about a ritual they had done many times before.

Treva put a sponge in each hand and began moving quickly through the rooms sliding her hands up and down the door frames, the refrigerator, and the cabinets. She let the dog out of the utility room, put the knobs back on the TV set, and brought the planter back into the daylight.

Mel wheeled out the sweeper and vacuumed up crumbs and dusting powder. He retrieved his bowling trophy from the refrigerator and turned off the spigots in the bathtub. The candy went back on the table.

As Treva picked three Band-Aids off the wall in the foyer, Mel rubbed out a white spot on the piano bench where a wet glass had been.

As Treva headed for the chapel, Mel said, “Remember that first Thanksgiving when Gloria didn't come home and you draped her chair in black bunting and put her picture in the empty chair?”

Treva winced. “Give it a rest, Mel.”