Forever, Erma Read online

  Perhaps the most feared of all looks is a mother’s No Look look. This appears to be a blank expression to a child who is jumping on the sofa with his muddy feet or running around at an adult party at 2 A.M., but beware. The most literal translation of the No Look look comes from a youngster who interpreted it as “When the company goes, head for the bed and look small and helpless until it blows over.”

  No More Oatmeal Kisses—January 29, 1969

  A young mother writes: “I know you’ve written before about the empty-nest syndrome, that lonely period after the children are grown and gone. Right now I’m up to my eyeballs in laundry and muddy boots. The baby is teething; the boys are fighting. My husband just called and said to eat without him, and I fell off my diet. Lay it on me again, will you?”

  OK. One of these days, you’ll shout, “Why don’t you kids grow up and act your age!” And they will. Or, “You guys get outside and find yourselves something to do...and don’t slam the door!” And they won’t.

  You’ll straighten up the boys’ bedroom neat and tidy: bumper stickers discarded, bedspread tucked and smooth, toys displayed on the shelves. Hangers in the closet. Animals caged. And you’ll say out loud, “Now I want it to stay this way.” And it will.

  You’ll prepare a perfect dinner with a salad that hasn’t been picked to death and a cake with no finger traces in the icing, and you’ll say, “Now, there’s a meal for company.” And you’ll eat it alone.

  You’ll say, “I want complete privacy on the phone. No dancing around. No demolition crews. Silence! Do you hear?” And you’ll have it.

  No more plastic tablecloths stained with spaghetti. No more bedspreads to protect the sofa from damp bottoms. No more gates to stumble over at the top of the basement steps. No more clothespins under the sofa. No more playpens to arrange a room around.

  No more anxious nights under a vaporizer tent. No more sand on the sheets or Popeye movies in the bathroom. No more iron-on patches, rubber bands for ponytails, tight boots or wet knotted shoestrings.

  Imagine. A lipstick with a point on it. No baby-sitter for New Year’s Eve. Washing only once a week. Seeing a steak that isn’t ground. Having your teeth cleaned without a baby on your lap.

  No PTA meetings. No car pools. No blaring radios. No one washing her hair at 11 o’clock at night. Having your own roll of Scotch tape.

  Think about it. No more Christmas presents out of toothpicks and library paste. No more sloppy oatmeal kisses. No more tooth fairy. No giggles in the dark. No knees to heal, no responsibility.

  Only a voice crying, “Why don’t you grow up?” and the silence echoing, “I did.”

  Confirmed Shouter—March 5, 1969

  Ever since President Nixon’s inaugural plea to “speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices,” I’ve had misgivings about my big mouth.

  I’ve always admired parents who discipline their children in hushed whispers: “Arthur, you are a naughty boy for turning on all the gas jets. Now I want you to drag your little sister out into the fresh air, give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and apologize. Don’t make Mama have to raise her voice.”

  I’m a shouter. Once on a vacation when one of the kids turned on the car heater while going through Georgia, my mother told me they felt the vibrations as far north as Port Huron, Michigan.

  No one is born a shrew. I used to watch women getting flushed and angry while they chewed out their children and I’d say to myself, “My goodness, that woman is going to have a heart attack. No one should discipline a child in anger.” (I was five at the time and being flogged with a yardstick by my mother.)

  Having children of my own knocked a hole in that theory. To begin with, there were only 32 hours out of every week when I wasn’t angry, and then I was sleeping.

  Also, I discovered children never took a “no” seriously unless the dishes rattled when you said it.

  And the real clincher came when I discovered I had runners. “Runners” are kids who, when they commit some sin, take off for the fields, trees, basements, neighbors, attics or sewers.

  Did you ever try to whisper to someone you couldn’t see? I took to shouting.

  We once had a neighbor who was born out of her time. She belonged in a hoopskirt eating a basket lunch at Tara.

  I lived next to her for four years, and not once did that disgusting old dame raise her voice. Of course you can imagine what that made me sound like. (The Shore Patrol breaking up a floating crap game.)

  Anyway, one day the boys were throwing a ball against her house and she appeared like an apparition at the door, gestured to them and said softly, “Boys, would you all come here for a moment?”

  I watched her gesturing, talking and smiling. When she finished the boys disbanded.

  I pounced on my son. “What did that mealy-mouthed little frail have to say to you boys?”

  “She said if we broke her windows, she’d break our faces!”

  From that day forward I forgave her for her quietness. What she lacked in volume she made up for in content. What class!

  I should love to follow President Nixon’s advice, but when you’ve got varicose neck veins from years of shouting, it isn’t going to be easy. Will you put down that coffee cup and pay attention? I said it isn’t going to be easy!

  Youngest Child Tries to Tell a Joke—May 23, 1969

  Our youngest child has been trying to tell a joke at the dinner table for the last three years. The same one.

  I feel sorry for the kid. To be on the tail end of a family means anything you come up with has either been told or isn’t worth telling. We can always tell when his favorite magazine comes in the mail. He will rush into the kitchen and say, “Why did it take three Boy Scouts to help a little old lady across the street?” and one of the older ones will shout, “Because she didn’t want to go, you cluck!”

  Personally I wish he’d take the magazine, crumple it and stuff it in every opening in his face, but he never does. He always looks amazed that someone knew the answer and says, “That’s right.”

  Next month, it’s the same old deal. “How do you stop an elephant from charging?” His sister, looking bored, will snap, “Let me guess. You take away his credit cards.”

  “That’s right,” he says, perplexed.

  About three years ago he said, “Have you heard the story about a man who bought a mousetrap and went to the refrigerator for cheese and—”

  “Which reminds me,” interrupted his father. “Who ate the beer cheese?”

  “I didn’t eat it,” one of the kids said. “I used it for bass bait.”

  In the months to follow, we were to hear the preamble to the joke dozens of times...always with interruptions, never completed.

  Finally, one day last week I said, “Tell me your joke about the man with the mousetrap and the cheese for bait.”

  “Well,” he said, perching himself on the stool, “he found out he didn’t have any cheese for bait, so he cut a picture from a magazine of a piece of cheese. When he woke up the next morning, know what he found in his trap? A picture of a mouse.”

  “Tell it at dinner,” I urged.

  Under protest, the family sat rigid and listened to the story without interruption. By the time he got to his punch line he was hysterical. His eyes were shining with excitement, and I thought he was going to explode as he built for his big finish. “And do you know what he found in his trap?” he asked. “A mouse!”

  No one said a word. I wonder whether Henny Youngman got started this way.

  “Are We Rich?”—June 3, 1971

  The other day out of a clear blue sky Brucie asked, “Are we rich?”

  I paused on my knees as I retrieved a dime from the sweeper bag, blew the dust off it and asked, “Not so you can notice. Why?”

  “How can you tell?” he asked.

  I straightened up and thought a bit. Being rich is a relative sort of thing. Here’s how I can always tell.

  “You’re rich when you buy your
gas at the same service station all the time so your glasses match.

  “You’re rich when you can have eight people to dinner and don’t have to wash forks between the main course and dessert.

  “You’re rich when you buy clothes for your kids that are two sizes too big for the one you buy ’em for and four sizes too big for the one that comes after him.

  “You’re rich when you own a boat—without oars.

  “You can tell people have money when they record a check and don’t have to subtract it right away.

  “People have money when they sit around and joke with the cashier while she’s calling in their charge to see if it’s still open.

  “You’re rich when you write notes to the teacher on paper without lines.

  “You’re rich when your television set has all the knobs on it.

  “You’re rich when you can throw away a pair of pantyhose just because it has a large hole in it.

  “You know people are loaded when they don’t have to save rubber bands from the celery and store them on a doorknob.

  “You’re rich when you can have a home wedding without HAVEN FUNERAL HOME stamped on the folding chairs.

  “You’re rich when the Scouts have a paper drive and you have a stack of The New York Times in your basement.

  “You’re rich when your dog is wet and smells good.

  “You’re rich when your own hair looks so great everyone thinks it’s a wig.”

  Brucie sat quietly for a moment, then said, “I think my friend Ronny is rich.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “His mom buys his birthday cake at a bakery, and it isn’t even cracked on top.”

  “He’s rich, all right,” I sighed.

  When God Created Mothers—May 12, 1974

  When the good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of overtime when the angel appeared and said, “You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.”

  The Lord said, “Have you read the specs on this order?

  “She has to be completely washable, but not plastic;

  “Have 180 movable parts...all replaceable;

  “Run on black coffee and leftovers;

  “Have a lap that disappears when she stands up;

  “A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair;

  “And six pairs of hands.”

  The angel shook her head slowly and said, “Six pairs of hands? No way.”

  “It’s not the hands that are causing me problems,” said the Lord. “It’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have.”

  “That’s on the standard model?” asked the angel.

  The Lord nodded. “One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, ‘What are you kids doing in there?’ when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn’t but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say, I understand and I love you,’ without so much as uttering a word.”

  “Lord,” said the angel, touching His sleeve gently, “come to bed. Tomorrow—”

  “I can’t,” said the Lord. “I’m so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick...can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger...and can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower.”

  The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly and sighed. “It’s too soft.”

  “But tough!” said the Lord excitedly. “You cannot imagine what this mother can do or endure.”

  “Can it think?”

  “Not only think, but it can reason and compromise,” said the Creator.

  Finally the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek.

  “There’s a leak,” she pronounced. “I told you that you were trying to put too much into this model.”

  “It’s not a leak,” said the Lord. “It’s a tear.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “It’s for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness and pride.”

  “You are a genius,” said the angel.

  The Lord looked somber. “I didn’t put it there.”

  Motherhood—Love and Laughter—September 1974

  Every once in a while, my flip approach to motherhood arouses the wrath of a few readers.

  “Why did you have children?”...You’re a terrible mother!”...“I feel sorry for your family!” filter across my desk.

  When I was born, I was 40 years old with a cup of cold coffee in one hand, a sponge in the other and the original Excedrin headache. My parents exclaimed, “Good grief! We’ve given birth to a 130-pound parent!” Or so it seemed.

  As I sat in the middle of three children one night, chipping the enamel off my teeth by biting a knot out of a shoestring that a child had been getting wet all day long, I began to think about motherhood.

  There seemed to be several avenues open to me: (a) take myself seriously and end up drinking gin just after the school bus left; (b) take the children seriously and end up drinking gin before the school bus left; (c) admit to the fear and frustration and have a good time with it.

  It hasn’t been easy. Everyone loves a child. Face it. They’re young, adorable and innocent. The world is on their side. My three-year-old once sunk her entire set of teeth into my shoulder, causing me to go to the doctor for possible stitches. He gave the child a tetanus shot and barked at me, “What did you do to provoke the child?”

  In a public restaurant one night, I rapped one kid for loosening the tops on salt shakers, another for making rivers out of the gravy, and socked one in a chair for rearranging the furniture (with diners still in them), only to have a couple stop by the table and cluck, “Some people don’t deserve children.”

  I defy any parent who has been on a trip with a child who kicked the seat for 50 miles, threw his shoes out the window, lost his pet snake in Cleveland during the five o’clock traffic and spilled his slush down your back to tell me she has never considered abandoning him at the next Shell station.

  What mother has never fallen on her knees when she has gone into her son’s bedroom and prayed “Please, God. No more. You were only supposed to give me what I could handle.”

  And while we’re being honest, what grandmother has never heard her small grandson beat on the piano with his fists for three hours and not looked apprehensively at the clock? (TV blames it on irregularity, but the truth is they’re going bananas.)

  To my critics, I can only assure you there is love in every line. And remind you that he who laughs...lasts!

  How to Communicate with Toddlers—December 1974

  A father in Champaign, Illinois, is inquiring how to communicate with toddlers.

  You all know what toddlers are. They’re the little people about two feet tall who walk under coffee tables and are the only ones in the house who can take the caps off the child-safe aspirin bottles.

  Specifically the letter writer was having difficulty advising his toddler in the following areas:

  1. There are basic differences between food and clothing. You eat food and wear clothing. Food goes in; clothing goes on.

  2. Do not bite anything that will bite back. This includes the dog, other babies, electrical cords and your father when he is watching professional football on television.

  3. Washing your face after a meal is not considered cruel and unusual punishment. It won’t do any good to report Mommy and Daddy to the police.

  4. Your pacifier is not a permanent part of your face. Removing it is not considered major surgery and does not normally require an anesthetic.

  5. Don’t hide your tennis shoes in the oven when Mommy is making supper. It makes the roast taste funny.

  6. Don’t use the drapes in the living room to wipe your hands and face unless they are patterned.

  7. Diaper rash does not have to be terminal.

  I sympathize with the father from Illinois, but I don’t know what
to tell him. All my kids were born on a Monday, and you know how sloppy the production is on a day following the weekend.

  I never met three children who could understand me less. When I laid out the pajamas, put the sides up on the crib and turned on the night-light, they came alive like the “big midnight show,” standing on their heads, bringing out all the toys and playing patty-cake with the dog.

  When I picked up the phone, like mechanical robots on schedule they gargled bleach, rolled potatoes across the floor, climbed on top of the TV set and took off all their clothes.