Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag! (11 page)

“You didn't say that to your grandmother when you asked her what the biggest gland in the body was.”

“I knew it was the liver,” said Mother.

“She guessed,” I charged.

“She did not,” said Dad, “she just remembered her brother.”

“That's a pretty crummy thing to say,” said Grandma.

“Give Mom a break,” said my daughter. “Science and literature questions are hard!”

“She couldn't even remember that Barbara Billingsley was the Beav's mother,” said a son.

“Why should she remember that?” asked my dad.

“Because they both wear a girdle when they clean the oven,” said my husband.

“Time is up,” said my son.

“My God,” I said, “I've raised a child who would turn me in to the Nazis if I had a radio in World War II.”

“Do you know the answer or not?”

“She'd know how many stars in Joan Collins' belt,” said my husband.

The dice moved on.

Was it my imagination, or was I developing a nun wish? Sometimes my husband could be the kindest man in the world. Other times, he made me feel like I was lobotomized by domesticity. I'll never forget him on that trip to Spain a few years back. We were sitting there on the beach like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. He was fishing; I was needlepoint-ing. When we heard someone crawling over the rocks, we both turned. A bather—totally nude—was making her way toward the water. For a full five minutes, my husband and I turned to statues of salt.

She walked toward the water, searching the shoreline for rocks. At one point my husband cleared his throat and I thought he was going to say something, but he didn't.

Finally, she entered the water and swam out to a rock about fifty feet away and stretched out to catch some rays.

My husband turned to me and said, “Did you see that? She wasn't wearing shoes. She could have cut her feet to ribbons on these rocks.”

“You really are certifiable, aren't you? Here's a tramp who invades our space, and the only thing you see are her tender feet.”

“How do you know she's a tramp?” he asked. “She looks like she has a nice personality.”

“She has the intelligence of a food processor.”

“You don't know that either,” he snapped.

"When you leave an ankle bracelet on in salt water,

you're not too bright."

“Well, she obviously comes from a good family. Possibly military.”

“How can you possibly arrive at a revelation like that?”

“Her posture,” he said. “It's superb.”

“I cannot believe how naive you are. Would you want your son to marry someone with a tattoo of a duck on her hip?”

“It was not a duck. It was a family crest of some kind.” “Right. And Prince Charles has two lions tattooed on his bicep. Why are you so stubborn about this Woodstock dropout?”

“And why are you so vindictive and judgmental about a person you haven't seen ... fully clothed. Frankly, I'd like to see her in our family.”

“She comes into this family and I go out,” I said, jamming my needlepoint in the bag.

“Is this an ultimatum?”

“You bet your sweet bird it is. I hope you and your Dr. Ruth out there will be very happy.”

At this point, a male nude bather, wearing only a wedding ring, jumped into the water and joined our nymph friend on the rock.

“Now, he's slime,” said my husband.

“I don't know,” I said, “he strikes me as someone who would be very nice to his mother.”

My attention came back to the game in progress.

My dad was admonishing my mother for remembering that Miss America played “Nola” on her nose to win the talent competition in 1953 but never remembering to put starch in his shirts.

My husband accused his son of remembering that Wilt Chamberlain made 23,924 rebounds in his career but never remembering to put oil in his car.

My daughter said if her brother didn't take his turn so she could make a phone call, she was going to rearrange his face, and Mother was in a trance trying to remember who played the part of Melanie's baby in Gone With the Wind.

I realized a family has no allies. There are no pacts based on honor or loyalty between any of its members. Your confidante could sing like a canary. Your loyal booster could abandon you and turn into an adversary. The man who held your hand tenderly through sixteen hours of labor with your first child could charge you $135,000 for landing on Park Place without a trace of remorse.

“Well, all I know,” I smiled, “is running has given me energy I never knew I had before. Even when I hit the wall, I know I can keep going.”

“What wall is that?” he asked.

“You know that imaginary point where your legs feel like lead, your heart is ready to burst, your throat is dry, your mind no longer is capable of commanding your body, and all systems are running on automatic pilot. I've even had moments when I didn't even know what I was doing.”

“You were tying your shoe,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I've watched you. When you hit the wall, about five minutes out, you stop and tie your shoe.”

He knew. “What gave me away?” I asked.

“No one runs with a handbag.”

A WALTONS' CHRISTMAS

Saturday: 11:05 a.m.

“I need the phone,” I said as I checked my watch nervously.

My daughter looked disgusted, gave her good-byes, and hung up.

“What's the emergency?”

“I always call Grandma at 11 every day. It will only take twelve seconds. Trust me,” I said as I dialed.

“Mother, how's ...”

Grandma: “Fever's down, cold gone. Instant relief. You?”

“One bedrm., l.r. to go. Going out?”

Grandma: “Yes.”

“Dad?”

Grandma: “One birdie, one bogey, two beers. Serviceman arrive?”

“Negative.”

Grandma: “Heard from B.R. Tues.”

“Who's B.R.?”

Grandma: “Letter to follow. This is costing you a fortune. Love you.”

“Ditto.”

As I hung up, my daughter said, “That is the most incredible conversation I've ever heard in my life. What's the hurry?”

“Ever since Grandma found out I'm a toll charge and it cost 12 cents a minute to call here, she's been talking like a want ad.”

“And you call her every day!” she said incredulously. “What do you have to talk about?”

Calling one's mother is a phenomenon few people can understand ... unless they're a daughter. A need for your mother develops the day you come back from your honeymoon. I can honestly say I never knew Mother at all until Ma Bell came into our lives.

It took the daily phone call to learn that her secret pie crust came from a secret box in the supermarket. I had to discover by a slip of the tongue that she hid her billfold in the refrigerator in the vegetable crisper because only junk food addicts would rob a house in the first place and would never look under the lettuce.

One day she surprised me by commenting on how kissing on television bothered her. She said they always looked like they were chewing on a ham sandwich and bit down on a piece of fat they were trying to get out. Another time she admitted that when I was six months old she was bathing me and I fell off the table. She never told anyone in case I wasn't “right” and she didn't want to take the blame for it.

“Grandma's a neat lady,” observed my daughter. “I think I always remember her best at Easter. Remember how she used to bake a lamb cake smothered in coconut with jelly bean eyes ... and the cream-filled eggs three times our weight?”

“You bounced off the walls for three weeks. Then she started to hide hard-boiled eggs,” I smiled.

“And after awhile she got a little fuzzy as to where she hid the eggs, and along about July or August when Granddad would cut the grass and grind up a three-month-old egg, it smelled like the bottom of a septic tank. It was Grandma's finest hour.”

“I disagree. Grandma's finest hour is the parade of the boxes at Christmas.”

“Is she still saving all those boxes every year?”

“You, who got a ring in a rectal thermometer box last year, have to ask that!” I said.

“Where does she store all of them?”

"You've seen her at Christmas. She's like a minesweeper. No sooner is the paper off the present than she is winding the ribbon around her fingers and smoothing the creases out of the wrapping paper. Then she stacks them like Russian dolls, takes them home to her closet, arranges them by size, and waits for all of us non-box savers to grovel.

“You should see her closet. If Tutankhamen's mother had a tomb, this would be it. You've never seen such a box glut in your life. One year I tried to borrow one of her boxes and she reminded me that I jammed an afghan in one the year before and broke down the sides. I said, 'Mother, I'm begging,' and as she handed one off the shelf said, 'Tell me what time it is to be opened and I'll be there.' ”

“We talking Grandma?” said my son, joining us.

“Umm, we have to sit down sometime and figure out what we're doing Christmas.”

“What's to figure out?” said my daughter. “We all come home Christmas Eve, decorate the tree, open the presents, eat ourselves into a coma, and it's all over.”

“Wait a minute,” said her brother. “Tell me Mom isn't planning another Walton Christmas.” I tried to laugh with them, but the sound stuck in my throat.

“Admit it, Mom,” said my daughter, “that had to have been not only the worst idea you ever had ... but the worst Christmas in the history of holidays.”

I remembered the exact moment the idea began to form ...

It was Christmas night in 1979. I was under the tree and had just opened a box containing six shrimp forks. It was a gift to me from Harry. Hany was our puppy. My husband sat in a chair comatose watching “Bowling For Beers.” Tinsel hung from his ears and lights circled his head. We had decided to leave him decorated through New Year's before we took him down.

A bird that we had plugged in to hear his lighthearted sound chirped every three seconds. I grabbed it by the throat and began choking it to death. The kids were riding cardboard boxes down the hill in the snow. The new sleds were under the tree.

I asked myself, “Is this what Christmas is all about?” Is Santa Claus just a seasonal pitchman who arrives by helicopter, sells cat food, passes out samples of Monterey Jack in the supermarket, and hustles insurance to those fifty-five or over without a physical?

Has communicating with friends come down to the Christmas Newsletters Annual Barf-Off? Did I have to know that Elrod was sleeping dry at three weeks or that Estelle's ninety-year-old father just stiffened in her arms and died during dinner last summer?

And what about the fruitcake disciples who carne out of the woodwork every December to have you put your hands on their 90-pound bricks of fruit, look skyward, and shout, “Hallelujah!”

Did anyone care that we ran ourselves ragged to compete with the woodworking teacher who lived next door who hoisted a large sleigh on his roof, had 500,000 lights surrounding his house, and was shown on the 11 o'clock news with traffic snaked back to the freeway?

How far would we go to satisfy the Goddess of Greed? Parents are such saps. Every year we gather our children around our knees and inquire, “What do you want for Christmas this year, Sweetheart?”

An infant who has no control over his bladder, is unable to feed himself, and cannot focus both eyes in the same direction says clearly, “I want the Rattell Pirate Ship, Catalog No. 90456, made of nontoxic superconstructed balsa and equipped with a two-masted square-rigger, a crew of fourteen, a dinghy, treasure chest, cannons, adjustable sails, working anchor, derrick for hoisting, and a crow's nest, cost $185. Don't accept a substitute. Look for the store in your area on channel 4.”

I remember one year when all about me my friends had goals of working for peace and restoring America to a place of trust. You know what my goal was? Finding a doll for my daughter that drank milk, burped, rolled its eyes, said “I'm sleepy,” and then deposited something very disgusting in its diaper.

When our children speak, we listen. When they cry, we start the motor of the car. When they threaten to stop breathing, we salivate, grow fur, and become predatory.

I was sick of rummaging through “kinky'' little boutiques for my teenagers where I was the only person wearing shoes. Sick of being overdosed by incense and waited on by a guy with a ring in his nose and a tattoo of a snake on his tongue.

I grabbed a handful of tinsel and, lifting it with clenched fist, shouted, “I promise by all that is holy, I will never observe another Christmas without meaning.”

By the time Christmas rolled around the next year, I was ready for it.

“Going to the cabin for Christmas is going to be wonderful,” I said to my husband. “We can bake from scratch, light by candles, and heat by firelight, and what we don't have we'll live without.”

“You have just described the Depression,” he said dryly.

“I have just described the Waltons at Christmas. And look what a long run that family had. What made them so special was that they bought nothing. Every gift to one another was something they made with love and home-made paste. I bet there is creativity in this family that hasn't been discovered yet. Every gift exchanged this Christinas will be made from loving hands. The first thing I'm going to do when we get to the cabin is go through the forest, gather walnuts, and bake fruitcakes.”

“You hate fruitcake.”

“So, if no one eats them, we'll use them to extend the patio after Christmas.”

There was no deterring me from my excitement to stage a noncommercial, back-to-basics Christmas that our family would remember the rest of their lives. In theory, it should have worked. I sent the boys out to chop down a live Christmas tree in the forest behind the cabin and set about creating those wonderful Christmas smells from the kitchen.

My mother dumped a glass of jelly in a saucepan. When I asked her why, she said she needed the glass to glue yarn around for a pencil holder. She reminded me the jelly cost $1.19, the yam $1.50, and the glue $2.00, and for that she could have bought a gold-plated pen and pencil set from Bloomingdale's.

One child headed toward the bathroom with a bag of twine and a book, How to Macrame.