Motherhood, The Second OldestProfession (10 page)

What kind of a mother would...

rather be rich and thin than pregnant?

Sarah

There are three things in this world that people refuse to accept: an incurable bad back, directions without a map, and a woman who does not want a child.

Sarah did not want a child. She was thirty-two, happy with her marriage, happy with her job, and happy with her life. What she was unhappy about was the people around her who seemed to feel her choice not to have children was their business.

People like her mother, her sister Gracie (mother of five), her best friend Dodie, and her gynecologist, who reminded her, “You're not getting any younger." (Who is?)

One day, in a moment of intimacy when she and her mother were alone, Sarah attempted one last time to explain to her mother why she preferred to remain childless.

“Try to understand, Mom,” she said. "I'm not against children. I'm just against them for me. For Gracie, it's fine. She's a born mother. I just don't want to go through life with little gates all over the house and a bathtub full of ducks and boats. People who have children change, and it's scary. They lose a part of themselves that I don't want to lose. It's like someone flipping a switch. All of a sudden you're not a person anymore. You're attached to another human being. Separate them and they both die.

"I don't want to be an extension of someone else's fever, someone else's hunger, pain, disappointment, and frustration. I had a wonderful childhood, but when I was a child I never began to appreciate all your work and sacrifice. What did you get out of it? A lot of slammed doors and a wooden pig that held recipes for your birthday.

"If I had children, Mom, I'd be having them for all the wrong reasons—because you wanted to be a grandmother or Steve wanted someone to carry on his name or I couldn't stand the pressure of people wanting to know why I don't have children.

“I don't think I'm selfish. I'm certainly not bitter or angry. I just feel I have a choice and I have every right to make it. Do you understand?”

Her mother nodded.

The next morning, in a planned moment of intimacy, Sarah's mother called her other daughter, Gracie, and said, “I think I know why your sister doesn't want a child.”

Gracie glued the receiver to her ear. “Why?”

“Well,” said her mother, "I don't pretend to understand all of what she said, so I'll quote verbatim. She's scared! It's that simple. The idea of having a baby scares her spitless, and besides, she doesn't want all the mess around the house, like rubber boats and gates.

“She made it pretty clear that if I want to be a grandmother again, it's in your ballpark, since you love the crud detail. Besides, she said with her luck she'd catch a fever from them and probably eat every time they ate and weigh a ton. Does that make sense to you?”

“Perfectly,” said Gracie.

Within the hour, Gracie called Dodie, Sarah's best friend, and said, “Hold on to your hat. You know how none of us could figure why Sarah shouldn't have a child and be as miserable as the rest of us? Well, Mom talked with her this morning and she finally confessed.”

“What's her problem?” asked Dodie.

“I couldn't believe it when Mom told me. Sarah is afraid of losing her shape! She never weighed over 115 pounds in her entire life.”

“I think I've heard about that,” said Dodie. “It's called sagophobia. It's a fear of the entire body falling down around your knees.”

“And listen to this,” interrupted Gracie, "she said that if anyone in the family should have a packful of kids, it's me. I low do you like that? She said I've always got a houseful of old gates and soldiers and boats all over the place, but I'm used to it.

“She didn't say it in so many words, but Mom guessed the real reason is that Sarah is up for promotion and she can't afford to pass it up. I'm not too shocked, are you?”

“Not really,” said Dodie.

When her husband came home, Dodie handed him a drink and said, “You'll never guess what Sarah's sister told me today.”

“Surprise me,” said Bob, opening up the paper and burying himself behind it.

“She said Sarah wants a baby, but they can't afford one. And all this time she's been putting up such a brave front and all, pretending she didn't want one. Gracie said she's up for promotion if she can keep her weight under 115.1 don't know what they're going to do if she doesn't get it. Obviously Steve's job is on shaky ground. They won't even be able to adopt. I wonder why they bought a boat? Are you listening to me?”

“I heard every word,” said Bob.

Several days later, while playing handball with Sarah's father, Bob said, “Congratulations. I hear Steve and Sarah are adopting a Korean child and going boating this summer if he can turn his career around.”

That night, Sarah's father said to her mother, “Have you talked to Sarah lately?”

“Not in the last day or two.”

“I heard the strangest rumor at the gym today. Something about Sarah wanting to adopt, but Steve doesn't want to. Does that make sense to you?”

“Perfectly,” said his wife.

Exactly one week from the time they had their “little talk,” Sarah's mother paid her daughter a visit, looked her in the eyes, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “I want you to know that whatever your decision for your future, your father and I will support you a hundred percent. I know now why you said the things you did and we love you for it.”

As Sarah told Steve that night, “Imagine my thinking my mother wouldn't understand a word of what I was saying. Sometimes I think we underrate mothers.”

Motherese

It's a language unto its own, spoken and passed down from one mother to another.

There are hundreds of phrases. The following ones will get a mother through the first seventeen years of a child's life.

Oldies But Goodies

THIS IS GOING TO HURT ME WORSE THAN IT HURTS YOU.

WHEN YOU GROW UP, YOU'LL THANK ME FOR BEING SO STRICT.

WE'LL SEE.

DON'T TALK WITH FOOD IN YOUR MOUTH. ANSWER ME!

I'M DOING THIS BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.

NEVER MIND, I'LL DO IT MYSELF.

I'M NOT GOING TO SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN.

LITTLE PITCHERS HAVE BIG EARS.

CHILDREN SHOULD BE SEEN AND NOT HEARD.

NO SENSE CRYING OVER SPILT MILK.

DO YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR?

I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT.

KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE.

On Age

WHY DON'T YOU GROW UP?

SOMEDAY YOU'LL BE OLD.

YOU'RE NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER.

YOU'LL GROW UP FAST ENOUGH. WHEN 1 WAS YOUR AGE . . .

WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO ACT YOUR AGE?

I'LL TREAT YOU LIKE AN ADULT WHEN YOU START ACTING LIKE ONE.

YOU'LL ALWAYS BE MAMA'S BABY.

Guilt Grabbers

I'M GOING TO SEND ALL THAT FOOD YOU LEFT ON YOUR PLATE TO ALL THE STARVING ARMENIANS.

DO YOU WANT MOMMY TO LEAVE THE HOUSE AND NEVER COME BACK?

IF YOU SLEEP WITH DOGS, YOU GET FLEAS.

YOU'RE GOING TO DRIVE ME TO AN EARLY GRAVE.

BE GLAD I'M SCREAMING. WHEN I STOP . . .

THIS IS THE LAST TIME I'M GOING TO BEG.

WE'RE NOT ASKING YOU NOT TO GET MARRIED. WE'RE JUST ASKING YOU TO WAIT.

JUST KEEP PLAYING WITH MATCHES AND YOU'LL WET THE BED.

THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR NOT LISTENING.

I'M ONLY ONE PERSON.

Great Exit Lines

JUST WAIT TILL YOU HAVE CHILDREN OF YOUR OWN!

DO YOU THINK I WAS BORN YESTERDAY?

IF YOU DON'T LISTEN, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FEEL.

THAT DOES IT. I'M SENDING YOU TO REFORM SCHOOL.

WHERE DID I FAIL?

WHY ME, GOD?

Philosophical Bon-Bons

YOU MADE YOUR BED, NOW LIE IN IT.

I MAY NOT ALWAYS UNDERSTAND YOU, BUT I AM ALWAYS WILLING TO LISTEN.

WHAT'S A MOTHER FOR BUT TO SUFFER?

FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON ME—FOOL ME TWICE, I'LL KILL YOU.

IF YOUR GIRLFRIEND JUMPED OFF THE BRIDGE WOULD YOU DO IT TOO?

IF YOU FALL OFF THAT SWING AND BREAK A LEG, DON'T COME RUNNING TO ME.

What kind of a mother would...

have Joan Crawford for a role model?

Janet

It was a masculine house. You could tell just by looking at the outside of it that inside all the toilet seats were up.

The yard looked like a missile site. The front door was held open by flyers and throwaways. Someone had drawn a sixth finger on the helping hand sign in the window and added, all major credit cards accepted.

The driveway looked like a used car lot. Janet's compact brought the total number to six. As she balanced four bags of groceries, she kicked open the door with her foot. The dog nearly knocked her over trying to get out.

God, wouldn't you think they'd get a clue that the dog wanted out when he tunneled under the door? Janet's eyes took in the kitchen.

Breakfast cereal had hardened in the bowl. The butter had turned into a beverage. The kitchen phone was off the hook. The TV was blaring. Mechanically, she put the milk in the refrigerator before moving down the hall. At a bedroom door she yelled, “Mark! Turn that stereo down input on your headphones.”

When he didn't answer, her suspicions were confirmed. The music fed into his ears and blared out of his nose. The next stop was her bathroom, where she pushed in the lock button and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She wasn't your basic Oil of Olay success story. At forty-six, Janet's hair was coming in Brillo gray and zinging out in every direction. Every muscle in her body had surrendered to gravity. (She dropped out of aerobics class when the only thing she could touch were her knees to her chest . . . and only because her chest met her knees halfway.)

This had been the worst day of her life! Her best friend was happy because she was going on a cruise. The elastic broke on her maternity underwear (she wasn't pregnant), and her dentist had just informed her her gums were receding. Someday she'd put her body together.

All her friends had, but then all her friends didn't have three full-grown sons at home squatting in the nest with knife and fork poised, waiting for her to come home from work each night and drop something from the microwave into their beaks.

The children of her contemporaries were long gone. They were living with someone, bumming around with guitars on their backs, having babies, or wrestling with high interest rates.

At first, she was flattered that her kids never wanted Mother's Day to end. That was before Joan Crawford became her role model. Now, she just felt used.

The porch light had been burning day and night for three years.

The refrigerator held empty milk cartons, dried out lunch meat, and empty ice cube trays.

They borrowed her hair dryer, camera, luggage, car, and money without asking.

They kept hours like hamsters.

They were still small, dependent children in big hairy bodies with deep voices.

What was she supposed to do? Turn her back on them when they needed her? Was it John's fault his marriage hadn't worked out? Cindy had seemed so perfect for him. They had everything in common. Both loved raw pizza dough, both were left-handed, and both liked the way Liza Minnelli sang “New York, New York” better than Frank Sinatra.

It should have worked.

Then there was Peter. At twenty-four (two years younger than John) he was well on his way to becoming the oldest living schoolboy in North America. He had changed his major twelve times, having passed only two things last semester: human sexuality and his eye test.

As for Mark, Janet was convinced his future was shaped when, in her eighth month, she got caught in a revolving door. It was to have a serious effect on her youngest. His first words were “hello-goodbye.”

Their relationship had never been good. She honestly never knew why. When anyone asked her how many children she had, she'd say, “Four. John, Peter, Mark at home, and Mark away from home.”

Mark at home was miserable. He was the most negative kid Janet had ever set eyes on. There was no pleasing him. No one ever cooked his favorite food. Everyone picked on him. He hated his room. He hated his clothes. He hated his life.

For the last three years, he'd worked on and off, but mostly he sat in his room strumming his guitar and waiting for a dish to rattle.

Janet slipped into her robe and gave a last glance in the mirror. Would there ever be a day when she and George would pick at a salad by candlelight and hoist a glass of white wine without him saying, “My God! Smell this. This glass was used for creme rinse.”

As she turned to run water for a quick shower she saw it. Her bottle of Gossamer Gold shampoo that contained pure organic honey herbs and H-D phylferrous additive that was to make her a legend in her own time was on its side with the cap off. All $4.69 of it had gone down the drain. She had hidden it carefully behind the Ace bandages and a box of Midol and “they” had found it.

That shampoo was more than her ticket to fat, sexy hair. It was her last bastion of privacy, her only selfish indulgence that separated her from all that gusto!

She had had it with their insensitivity, their noisy mouths that every night at the dinner table attacked food like scissors, their mildewed towels, their tennis balls under the brake pedal.

She was sick of hearing a siren in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep until all the cars were in. She was exhausted from sharing their lives and their problems. As a mother, she had stayed too long at the fair.

Outraged, she stomped out of the bathroom and beat with both fists on Mark's door. When no one answered, she barged in. He was propped up in bed, bare-chested with his headphones on, strumming his guitar.

“Did you wash your hair today?” she demanded.

He shook his head.

“You're lying. I know fat, sensuous hair when I see it.”

“Okay, so I borrowed some shampoo. I'll pay you back.”

“The Martins are going on a cruise. My elastic broke, my gums are shrinking and you're going to pay me back.”

“What are your gums shrinking from?”

“My teeth!”

“I suppose you're gonna rehash how much my teeth cost and how ticked off you were when I dated the girl with the overbite.”

“I was ticked off because the woman was thirty-three years old and it was her eleven-year-old daughter who had the overbite.”

She looked around the room. Like its occupant, it was half child, half man. The wrestling trophy from his junior year in high school was on the nightstand along with a suspicious letter that said final notice and had a return address of Municipal Court, Division of Traffic. Clothes dotted the floor, newspapers were draped from chairs, and a sherbet glass with something brown in it was under the bed. “This room is a dump!” she said. “How can you breathe in here? It's June, for God's sake, what's your ski sweater doing out?”

Mark looked at her closely. “Why don't you get it over with? Tell us all to leave.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Boot us out. Clean house.”

“Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind.” She looked desperately for a place to sit down. “I've tried to be a good mother, Mark. And a patient one. I really have.”

“You've been a good mother,” he said evenly. “So finish your job.”

“What do you mean finish my job?”

“You chickened out. All our lives you told us what to do, how to do it, and when. You've done it. You don't have-to prove anything anymore. It's graduation day. Say good-bye to us and get on with your life.”

“You have no right to say that to me. I've been through it all with you kids—from exhaustion to anger to guilt and back again.”

“You're at martyrdom and you've been there a long time. How long can you keep bucking for Mother of the Year?”

“Is that what you think? Then why don't you move out?”

They sat there for a long time.

Finally Janet said, “What will you do? Get a job? Get married?”

“You always said there was no one good enough for me.”

“That was before I knew you showered in your underwear.” She smiled.

They looked at one another for a long time.

“Mom,” said Mark, “I'm scared.”

“Me too,” said Janet, closing the door.

Her hands were shaking and she felt like she was going to cry. What if fat, sexy hair and independence were overrated? She squared her shoulders, “What the heck. Joan Crawford made it in 'Mildred Pierce.' ”