Motherhood, The Second OldestProfession (3 page)

What kind of a mother would...

go to her grave thinking ERA stood for Earned Run Average?

Connie

Connie paused over her job application blank and rubbed her eyes. She was tired. She should never have stayed up to watch the end of the Miss America pageant, but she was glad she did. How often do you get a chance to see history being made? Imagine. A Miss America who was only 5'2". There really was a God.

As she resumed filling in the blanks, she saw the black that had rubbed off on both fingers. “Terrific,” she said out loud. She had just smeared her eye shadow and probably looked like a raccoon. She always forgot she had the stuff on.

All of it was new to Connie. The pantyhose every day, the bag that matched something, the wrinkle eradicator that she put under her eyes in an attempt to erase the damages caused by two teenagers, and of course her new diet: one divorce and 700 calories a day.

place of last employment. Connie could barely remember.

age. Somewhere between estrogen and death.

marital status. She spit on her finger trying to get the black to come off.

Connie had been born married. She and Martin exchanged vows right out of high school. They did everything by the book. Bought the house, had the two planned children, went to Florida on the summer rates, and saved two years for a home freezer.

She wasn't happy and she wasn't sad.

Then one day she was at the airport seeing a friend off when she overheard a woman talking about her husband who had just passed away. She said, “The house is so quiet. There is no one to talk to ... no one to fix things ... no one whose presence you feel as you sleep ... no one at the table to share your food or your day and no one who makes you feel 'alive.' ”

Connie froze.

The woman had just described her life with Martin!

After the divorce, she tried a variety of jobs from her home: babysitting for friends, housesitting for neighbors, and selling cosmetics on commission. (What a joke! She couldn't even eat a ham sandwich wearing lip gloss.)

She needed a full-time job. And after three months of trudging from one office to another she made a major discovery. She wasn't qualified for anything, and she had no goals.

Goals. How she wished she had one besides being able to cross her legs in hot weather. Miss Arkansas had a great goal last night. She wanted to work for World Peace and stamp out hunger throughout the world. She started to write it in, then stopped. Maybe it sounded pretentious.

Connie took a deep breath and checked her resume. It would have put an insomniac to sleep.

“Miss Sawyer will see you now,” said the receptionist.

Miss Sawyer looked like all the other personnel managers Connie had been meeting for the past several months. Her makeup was impeccable, her hair looked like an unmade bed, and she wasn't a day over twelve.

“You have no college,” said Miss Sawyer.

Connie cleared her throat. “I was going to take some classes at the junior college, but I couldn't find a parking place.”

“You didn't check the box marked sex,” Miss Sawyer said, as if she were grading a term paper.

Connie wanted to say, “only during a full moon,” but decided against it. “Female,” she said. Miss Sawyer checked it off.

“Your experience is limited,” she observed. “Have you no computer experience?”

“I got married right out of high school,” Connie answered.

Miss Sawyer shook her head. “I'm afraid you're just not qualified for anything we have, but we'll keep your application on file and if anything comes up, we'll call you.” She reached for her phone (a personnel trick), signaling that the interview was over.

Connie sat in the parking lot, her head bowed over the steering wheel. She was too angry to cry. Not qualified for anything! Who said so? A child, not unlike her own, who should have known better, said so. She had wanted to say to the infant behind the desk, "I know you! And you know me! Didn't I hold you in my arms, nurse you, powder your behind? Didn't I feed you and hang crepe paper for your birthday parties? I went to your class plays and took your pictures and clapped the loudest. I went to your science fairs and walked for hours while you explained how bread mold can cure cancer.

“I listened to your piano recitals, balanced your meals and made out the budget. I learned how to sew and to cut hair I helped hamburger before anyone knew it could be helped. I made a thousand decisions in one day, counseled you, kept you well, and gave you stability. I listened to you when you talked, I laughed with you when you laughed. And I cried with you when you cried. Now my whole life hangs in balance and you ask me what I'm qualified for.”

Angrily, Connie got out of the car and returned to the office where she stood before Miss Unmade Bed.

“Did you forget something?” Miss Sawyer asked coldly.

"Yes. I forgot to tell you that early this morning an interviewer told me I was too quiet. Two hours later, another said my eyebrows showed negativism and wanted to know if I could drive under pressure. I have been told if I could get a number 2 license I could drive an airport shuttle or if I were a size nine, I could rent cars. An hour ago, a girl in front of me with a mouth like Emmett Kelly and an IQ the same size as her bust got the job.

“Let me tell you who I am, Miss Sawyer, and what I'm qualified for. I'm a thirty-five-year-old woman who was a professional wife and a mother for seventeen years and I was very good at it. If you will kindly get me two extra sheets of paper, I will be glad to list my background and my skills!”

Everybody Else's Mother

She has no name. Her phone number is unlisted. But she exists in the mind of every child who has ever tried to get his own way and used her as a last resort.

Everybody Else's Mother is right out of the pages of Greek mythology—mysterious, obscure, and surrounded by hearsay.,

She is the answer to every child's prayer.

Traditional Mother: “Have the car home by eleven or you're grounded for a month.”

Everybody Else's Mother: "Come home when you feel

like it."

Traditional Mother: “The only way I'd let you wear that bikini is under a coat.”

Everybody Else's Mother: "Wear it. You're only young

once."

Traditional Mother: “You're going to summer school and that's that.”

Everybody Else's Mother: "I'm letting I I.irold build a raft and go down the Ohio River for a learning experi

ence.

A few mothers have tried to pin down where Everybody Else's Mother lives and what background she has for her expertise on raising children. They have struck out.

The best they can come up with is a composite that they put together by pooling their information.

As close as can be figured out. Everybody Else's Mother is a cross between Belle Watling and Peter Pan. She likes live-in snakes, ice cream before dinner, and unmade beds. She never wears gloves on a cold day and voted for Eugene McCarthy. She is never home.

She's never been to a dentist, hates housework, and never puts her groceries away. She sleeps late, smokes, and grinds the ashes into the carpet with the toe of her shoe.

She eats jelly beans for breakfast, drinks milk out of a carton, and wears gym shoes to church because they're comfortable. She never washes her car and doesn't own an umbrella.

Everybody Else's Mother moves a lot and seems to be everywhere at the same time. Just when you think she's moved out of the neighborhood, she reappears. She is quick to judge and has handed down more decisions in her time than the Supreme Court has in the last 200 years. She has only one child and a friend who “was a dear” carried it for her.

She has never used the word “No.”

If Everybody Else's Mother showed up at a PTA meeting and identified herself, she would be lynched.

From time to time, the existence of Everybody Else's Mother is questioned. It is probably wishful thinking. Does she exist?

Oh yes, Virginia, she really does. She lives in the hearts of children everywhere who have to believe that somewhere there is an adult on their side. Someone who remembers the frustration of needing to belong to a peer group at some time of your life to do the forbidden . . . just because it's there.

Just because one has never seen her, does that prove she's not there? Would one question the existence of monsters that appear in bad dreams or tigers that crawl on the bed in the darkness and disappear when the lights go on?

Everybody Else's Mother is very real and for a few years she's a formidable opponent to mothers everywhere. Then one day she disappears. In her place is ninety pounds (give or take) of rebellion and independence, engaging in verbal combat, saying for themselves what Everybody Else's Mother used to say for them.

It's called Puberty. There's nothing like it to make you yearn for Everybody Else's Mother. She really wasn't such a bad person after all.

The First Day of School for “The Baby”

WHAT DINA SAID:

"Mike, I don't know what you're scared of. Mother's going to be right here when you come home. My goodness, you've got a nice little yellow bus to ride and your own lunch box and your name pinned on your sweater. Now what could go wrong?

“You're a big boy now, and you have to act like one. You're going to make all kinds of new friends. Now you march right out there and sit on the curb and stop acting like a baby. You don't have a thing to be frightened of.”

WHAT MIKE DIDN'T SAY:

I don't know anything.

I have new underwear, a new sweater, a loose tooth, and I didn't sleep last night. I'm worried.

What if the bus jerks after I get on and I lose my balance and my pants rip and everyone laughs?

What if I have to go to the bathroom before we get to school? What if a bell rings and everyone goes inside and a man yells, “Where do you belong?” and I don't know?

What if my shoelace comes untied and someone says, “Your shoelace is untied. We'll all watch while you tie it”?

What if the trays in the cafeteria are too high for me to reach and the thermos lid on my soup is on too tight and when I try to open it, it breaks?

What if my loose tooth wants to come out when we're supposed to have our heads down and be quiet? What if the teacher tells the class to go to the bathroom and I can't go?

What if I get hot and take my sweater off and someone steals it? What if I splash water on my name tag and my name disappears and no one will know who I am? What if they send us out to play and all the swings are taken? What do I do?

What if the wind blows all the important papers that I'm supposed to take home out of my hands? What if they mispronounce my last name and everyone laughs?

Suppose my teacher doesn't make her D's like Mom taught me?

What if the teacher gives a seat to everyone and I'm left over? What if the windows in the bus steam up and I won't be able to tell when I get to my stop?

What if I spend the whole day without a friend?

I'm afraid.

WHAT MIKE SAID:

“See ya.”

WHAT DINA DIDN'T SAY:

What am I doing, sending this baby out inio the world before the umbilical cord is healed? Whcrc's .ill the

relief and exhilaration I'm supposed to feel? If only I hadn't been so rotten to him all summer. “Go play! Get out of the house! Take a nap! Why don't you grow up?”

I think I blew it. I talked too much and said too little. There are no second chances for me. It's all up to someone else.

Now it's my turn. My excuse for everything just got on that bus. My excuse for not dieting, not getting a full-time job, not cleaning house, not re-upholstering the furniture, not going back to school, not having order in my life, not cleaning the oven.

It's the end of an era. Now what do I do for the next twenty years of my life?

These walls have been so safe for the last few years. I didn't have to prove anything to anyone. Now I feel vulnerable.

What if I apply for a job and no one wants me?

What if changing toilet paper spindles is my maximum skill?

What if I'm kidding myself about writing the book that I told everyone is inside me?

What if I can't let go of my past? It's only 8:15 in the morning.

I'm afraid.

Pacifier Pioneers

A group of mothers was discussing the ten most significant contributions to the quality of their lives one night. Most of the suggestions were quite predictable: penicillin, fire, electricity, the automobile, not to mention The Pill, polyester, and ten-foot phone cords.

I don't care what women say, the number one choice for me is the pacifier. How many women would be with us today were it not for that little rubber-plastic nipple that you jammed in a baby's face to keep him from crying?

Today, it's as much a part of a baby's face as his nose or ears, but thirty years ago the pacifier was considered a maternal crutch, a visual that screamed to the world “I can't cope.”

I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.

We found them under beds, buried in sofa cushions, thrown in ashtrays and lost in the garbage. No child ever got sick from “fooler around the mouth.”

I kept the pacifier a secret from my mother for as long as I could. But one day she dropped by unexpectedly and demanded, “What is this?”

“It's a pacifier.”

“Do you know that if you keep using this pacifier, by the time this baby is four years old, her teeth will come in crooked and her mouth will have a permanent pout?”

“Do you know, Mother, if I do not use that pacifier, I may never permit her to become four?”

We American pioneers of the pacifier have given it the respectability it deserves. After all, what other force in the world has the power to heal, stop tears, end suffering, sustain life, restore world peace, and is the elixir that grants mothers everywhere the opportunity to sleep . . . perchance to dream?