If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (11 page)

She flipped back eight pounds of hair to reveal a little gold ring the size of a comma in her earlobe.

It was hardly worth my scrubbing up for.

11

How to Speak Child Fluently

One evening at the kitchen table, after the dishes had been cleared away, my son sat there writing feverishly in a spiral notebook.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“An English assignment,” he said. “On things my mother taught me.”

I cast my eyes downward, trying to look humble. “Mind if I read it when you're finished?” He shook his head. An hour later, I settled down to what he had written.

Things My Mother Taught Me

LOGIC

If you fall off your bicycle and break your neck, you can't go to the store with me.

MEDICINE

If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to freeze that way. There is no cure, no telethon, and no research program being funded at the moment for frozen eyes.

ESP

Put your sweater on. Don't you think I know when YOU'RE cold?

FINANCE

I told you the tooth fairy is writing checks because computerized billing is easier for the IRS.

CHALLENGE

Where is your sister and don't talk with food in your mouth. Will you answer me?!

HAPPINESS

You are going to have a good time on this vacation if we have to break every bone in your body.

HUMOR

When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me.

I will never understand children. I never pretended to. I meet mothers all the time who make resolutions to themselves. “I'm going to develop patience with my children and go out of my way to show them I am interested in them and what they do. I am going to understand my children.” These women wind up making rag rugs, using blunt scissors.

I firmly believe kids don't want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you're in big trouble. To me, they remain life's greatest mysteries.

I have never understood, for example, how come a child can climb up on the roof, scale the TV antenna and rescue the cat... yet cannot walk down the hallway without grabbing both walls with his grubby hands for balance.

Or how come a child can eat yellow snow, kiss the dog on the lips, chew gum that he found in the ashtray, put his mouth over a muddy garden hose... and refuse to drink from a glass his brother has just used.

Why is it he can stand with one foot on first base while reaching out and plucking a baseball off the ground with the tips of his fingers... yet cannot pick up a piece of soap before it melts into the drain.

I've seen kids ride bicycles, run, play ball, set up a camp, swing, fight a war, swim and race for eight hours... yet have to be driven to the garbage can.

It puzzles me how a child can see a dairy bar three miles away, but cannot see a 4 x 6 rug that has scrunched up under his feet and has been dragged through two rooms. Maybe you know why a child can reject a hot dog with mustard served on a soft bun at home, yet eat six of them two hours later at fifty cents each.

Did you ever wonder how you can trip over a kid's shoes under the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, on the front porch, under the coffee table, in the sandbox, in the car, in the clothes hamper and on the washer... but can never find them when it is time to cut grass?

If child raising were to be summed up in one word, it's frustration. You think you're on the inside track and you find you're still in the starting gate. It's not that you expect dividends on what you're doing... only a few meager returns.

Okay, take the car incident. My oldest took her car to the garage for repairs last week and used my car while hers was being fixed.

For three days I sat home without wheels (which is like telling Zsa Zsa Gabor she can't have any more wedding cake).

On the day her car came back she returned my car keys and said, “Hey Mom, you owe me three dollars for the gas I put in your car”.

I could not believe what she was saying. These words were being uttered by a child I poured eight hundred and eighty-seven dollars' worth of vitamins down. Paid one hundred fifty-four dollars for her old teeth under the pillow. Indulged in two thousand dollars' worth of toys (batteries extra). Foot the bill for one hundred eighty-six skin preparations to kill a single pimple. Sent to camp. Took the sink apart to find her lost class ring. Worried myself sick when she cracked an A in human sexuality.

Then I remembered a letter that a teenager had written me after she had read one of my books. Maybe that would get through to her.

“Listen to this,” I said, reading from the letter.

"Parents go through life, Mrs. Bombeck, saying to their children, 'I've worked my fingers to the bone for you. I've made sacrifices and what do I get in return?'

"You want an answer, Mrs. Bombeck? You get messy rooms, filthy clothing, disheveled hair, dirty finger-nails, raided refrigerators ad nauseam. You get something else too. You get someone who loves you but never takes the time to tell you in words. You get someone who'll defend you at every turn even though you do wear orthopedic socks and enjoy listening to Pal Boone and changing your underwear everyday and acknowledging their presence in public.

"Yes, sometimes you talked too much mid sometimes you turned away too soon. But you laughed with us and cried with us and all the agony, non-communication, frustrations, fears and angers showed us that despite the need to be free and independent and do our own thing... you cared.

“And when we leave home, there will be a little tug at our hearts because we know we will miss you and home and everything it meant. But most of all, we will miss the constantly assured knowledge of how very much you love us.”

My daughter looked up. Her eyes were misty. “Does that mean I don't get the three bucks?”

In a way, I blame experts for the mess parents are in today. They laid a ton of guilt on us so that we questioned every move we made.

I read one psychologist's theory that said, “Never strike a child in anger.” When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he is recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on a Sunday?

Another expert said, "Be careful in the way you discipline your children or you could permanently damage their Id.

Damage it! I didn't even know where it was. For all I knew it either made you sterile or caused dandruff. Once I suspected where it was, I made the kid wear four diapers just to be safe.

And scratch the wonderful “pal” theory that worked so great with our parents. My son slouched into the kitchen one night, threw his books on the countertop and said, “I've just had the worst day of my entire life and it's all your fault.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked.

“Just because you made me go back up to my room and turn off all the lights before I went to school, I missed the bus. Then, with all your nagging about cleaning up my room, I couldn't find my gym clothes and got fifteen points knocked off my grade.”

“The gym clothes were folded in your bottom drawer.”

“Yeah, well, what yo-yo would expect them to be there?”

“You've got a point.”

“I hope you're happy,” he grumbled. “I have failed English.” “I did that?”

“That's right. I told you I had a paper that was due before lunch and you made me turn my lights off last night and wouldn't let me do it.” “It was one-thirty in the morning.” “Just forget it. It's done. Did you have a good lunch today? I hope so because, thanks to you, I didn't get any.”

“What's THAT got to do with me?” “You're, the one who wouldn't advance me next week's allowance. And more good news. You know the suede jacket you got me for my birthday last year? Well, it's gone.”

“And I'm to blame for that?” “I'm glad you admit it. All I hear around here is, 'Hang up your coat, hang up your pajamas, hang up your sweater...' and the one time I take your advice and hang up my jacket on a hook in the lunchroom, someone rips it off. If I had just dropped it on the floor by my feet like I always do, I'd have that suede jacket today.”

“It sounds like quite a day.”

“It's not over yet,” he said. “Didn't you forget something?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like, weren't you supposed to remind me I had ball practice after school?”

“I put a note on your desk.”

“Under all that junk I'm supposed to find a note! It would serve you right if I got cut. And I might just do that. I swear, I was talking to some of the guys and we decided parents can sure screw up their kids.”

I smiled. “We try.”

In analyzing the problem of parenting and understanding children, it would seem inevitable that this country will eventually resort to a Parental Park 'N' Swap.

I have never met a child who did not feel that he is maligned, harassed and overworked and would do better if he had Mrs. Jones for a mother who loves untidiness and eats out a lot.

On the other hand, I have never met a parent who did not feel unappreciated, persecuted, servile and would have been better off with Rodney Phipps who doesn't talk with food in his mouth and bought his mother a hair dryer for Mother's Day.

What I'm suggesting is a Sears parking lot that could be made available every Saturday afternoon, where parents and their offspring could come to look, compare and eventually swap if they felt they could do better.

When I mentioned this to my card club, they fairly quivered with excitement. “I have always wanted to 'trade up' to a child who picked towels up off the floor,” said Peg.

“I have one like that,” said Dorothy. “But she's a drain stuffer. If it doesn't fit down the drain she lifts out the trap and shoves it down.”

“That doesn't sound so bad,” said Evelyn. “I'd take a drain stuffer over a shower freak any-day. Empties a forty-gallon water tank three times a day.”

“At least she's clean,” said June. “I'll swap someone a long-hair who is an endangered species. Someday he's going to get lost behind that hair and never find his way out again.”

“LOOK,” said Peg, “I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse. I'll offer my towel dropper for a boy who never learned how to use the telephone and I'll throw in a three weeks' supply of clean underwear.”

“I'll do you one better,” I said. “I'll swap or trade a quiet boy who is never late to dinner, gets up when he is called, sits up straight, has just finished two years with his orthodontist, is reasonable to operate and doesn't play his stereo too loud. No offer is too ridiculous.”

The entire card table put down their cards and leaned forward. Finally June asked, “What's the catch?”

“No catch. He just knows two words... 'You know?' ”

Everyone went home keeping what they had and feeling better about it.

When does parenting end?

It all depends on how you regard your children. Do you see them as an appliance that is under warranty to perform and when they start to cost money, get rid of them?

Are they like an endowment policy you invest in for eighteen or twenty years and then return dividends through your declining years?

Or are they like a finely gilded mirror that reflects the owner in every way and one day when you see a flaw in it, a distortion or one tiny idea that is different from your own, you cast it out and declare yourself a failure.

I said to my husband one night, “I see our children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless... they crash... you add a longer tail... they hit the rooftop... you pluck them out of the spouting... you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly... Finally, they're airborne, but they need more string and with each twist of the ball of twine, there is a sadness that goes with the joy because the kite becomes more distant and somehow you know it won't be long before this beautiful creature will snap the lifeline binding you together and soar as it was meant to soar—free and alone.”

“That was beautiful,” said my husband. “Are you finished?”

“I think so. Why?”

“Because one of your kites just crashed into the garage door with his car... another is landing here with three surfboards with friends on them and the third is hung up at college and needs more string to come home for the holidays.”

12

"Travel Is So Broadening I Bought a Maternity Dress to Wear Home"

My husband and I are not your standard jet setters who whip over to Southern France every year to get away from the “little people.”

But when our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary rolled around I said to him, “I want to go someplace where they haven't seen my two dresses.”

“That narrows it down to Europe,” he said.

Because it was a good day and all the parts of our bodies were working, we optimistically chose a package tour that would take us to fifteen countries in twenty-one days. It was obvious that I would need a wardrobe that was not only versatile, but could fit into a gym bag.

That's when I ran into an incredible phenomenon... the preplanned, no-fault, can't miss, color-coordinated, basic wardrobe.

“This,” said the salesperson, “is the Weekender. It has four basic pieces that will take you from a super casual afternoon to a formal evening. And here is the Fortnighter. It's an eleven-piece coordinated collection designed to meet all the fashion requirements of a three-week holiday. This, of course, is the Around-the-World in Eighty Days and forty-four pounds. It's twenty-two pieces that combine to make one hundred fifty-five outfits.”

“This little stack of clothes weighs forty-four pounds?” I asked.

“Of course not. The clothes only weigh eight pounds. There's a thirty-six-pound can of deodorant that comes with it.”

“How does it work?” I asked. “You just press the nozzle and...” “Not the deodorant! The wardrobe!” "Simple. Here is your basic pantsuit. Take off the blouse, add a vest and you're ready for polo. Take off the slacks, put on the shorts and you're dressed for bicycling. Zip the lining into the shorts, add the halter and it's a bathing suit. Take the straps off the halter and it's a bra. Add a short skirt and you're ready for tennis.