Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag! (19 page)

It's funny, but living rooms never seemed to change much. It was from such a room that my mother hid behind a curtain dividing the living room from the dining room to avoid meeting a bill collector. When I answered the door and told him my mother was not home, he looked over my shoulder, his eyes traveling the full length of the curtains, and said, “The next time your mother leaves home, tell her to take her feet with her.”

It was from such a room that my father was viewed before he was buried. A long-lost cousin came to the house that day to view the remains and, looking very confused, walked up to my mother and said, “Which one is he?” Mother fought for composure and said dryly, “He's the one lying down!” Undaunted, my cousin several times removed said, “I didn't know him and I barely know you, but by God, we're family!”

The other part of that dream had just spent the weekend here ... returning from their private worlds to reclaim their places in the most awesome, fragile, indestructible unit of feelings ever brought together under one roof: the family.

For years, anthropologists have been trying to figure out what is so compelling about the genes and drops of blood that bind a family together in a lifetime of commitment.

The relative who has no pride whatsoever in borrowing your last buck, but who runs to put in his teeth when he sees you pull into the driveway.

The grandmother who plays with the truth like a piece of bubble gum with everyone else ... stretching it into shapes that have never been seen before ... but who will look at your new baby and snort, “Funny-looking little thing, but maybe he'll outgrow it.”

The widowed aunt who says to her husband's brother, “He loved you so and always wanted you to have his fishing gear. Just before he died he said, 'Make sure Ben gets them because he is the only one who will appreciate them.' My price to you is $300.”

The child with whom you labored sixteen hours before he decided to enter the world, who buys a $50 cashmere sweater for an airhead he has known two weeks and who gives you a meat thermometer for Mother's Day.

What is the force that keeps them returning? Is it because even if they reject, ignore, or neglect their family, they're still loved? Even when they give nothing of themselves, they're still welcome? If they've lied, been insensitive, or screwed up, they're still forgiven? Is it because their place in the family is always there for them and no one else has a right to it?

I sat there wondering what kind of a book our family would write in the year 2038. Would they remember a mother who took knots out of shoestrings with her teeth that they had wet on all day long? Or would they only remember the day she acted like a crazy lady out of control when they ate a hole in the gelatin mold she was saving for her Amway party?

Would they remember two parents who laughed, made mistakes, enjoyed sex, and didn't know the questions, let alone the answers? Or would they remember two rigid, humorless people who dedicated their lives to saying no, waxing the kitchen floor, fertilizing the lawn, and urging them to cut their hair, get a job, and stop talking with food in their mouths?

Would the sons emulate the father who stored house keys in a tackle box with a tag marking each one? Would the daughter always serve apple sauce with pork chops like it was some law handed down from her mother?

Raising a family wasn't something I put on my resume, but I have to ask myself, would I apply for the same job again?

It was hard work. It was a lot of crud detail. It was steady. Lord, it was steady. But in retrospect, no matter what deeds my life yielded ... no matter how many books I had written marched in a row on a library shelf, no matter how many printed words of mine dangled under magnets on refrigerator doors, I had done something rather extraordinary with my life as a mother. For three decades, I had been a matriarch of my own family ... bonding them together, waiting for stragglers to grow up, catch up, or make up, mending verbal fences, adding a little glue for cohesion here, patching a few harsh exchanges there, and daily dispensing a potion of love and loyalty to something bigger than all of us.

My husband found me sitting in the living room and asked, “What are you doing sitting here alone in the dark?”

“Thinking about this weekend.”

“They're good kids,” he said reassuringly as he sat beside me. I rested my head on his shoulder. He added softly, “The snake is gone. It escaped from the cage in the utility room.”

I didn't move. Then I whispered without emotion, “We are selling the house, and those sick, ungrateful kids will never see us again.”

Drawing my knees up under my chin, I assumed a fetal position. I would remain in this position until the snake was found no matter how long it took.

Why did we continually test one another's patience, loyalty, and love? Could it be that's what the survival of a family is based upon?

The room was getting chilly. A car went by and its lights illuminated the room, then threw it again into darkness. I thought about the kids again and hoped with all my heart that they would someday aspire, as I did, to the dream of a family of their own and a living room that no one ever sat in.

Fulfillment? Immortality? Revenge?

What do you think?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erma Bombeck is the author of seven previous books: At Wit's End; “Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own!” (with Bil Keane); I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression; and the bestsellers The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank; If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries—What Am I Doing in the Pits?; Aunt Erma's Cope Book; and Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession. Her thrice-weekly humor column, “At Wit's End,” appears in 900 newspapers throughout the world and is read by an estimated 31 million people. Well known to television viewers, Erma was a regular on ABC's Good Morning, America for eleven years. She holds twelve honorary doctorates, was appointed to the President's Advisory Committee for Women, and has been named repeatedly to The World Almanac's annual list of the 25 Most Influential Women in America. Erma and her husband, Bill, make their home in Paradise Valley, Arizona. They have three children.