Forever, Erma Read online

  Not today. Boys don’t want to write historic speeches on brown paper bags any more. They want to write secret code messages on their eyeballs and be 007 spies. They don’t want to ride a charger at Appomattox and return General Lee’s sword with honor. They want to dress up their GI Joe dolls.

  They don’t even want to be a general throwing a half dollar across the Potomac. They want to stand on the shore and convince him that his half dollar in their bank would earn him 4½ percent dividend at interest compounded from day of deposit.

  There’s probably a couple of good reasons for the lagging interest of presidential aspirants. The presidency is no bargain. The campaign price tag is prohibitive...the personal price paid after election is exorbitant. But has that ever stopped an ambitious, pushy mother? Indeed not!

  “You’re going to be president of the United States,” I said, collaring my son. “And already we’re getting a late start. Bring me that old photograph album.”

  “Aw Mom,” he growled. “I’ve got a game this afternoon.”

  “That’s what Millard Fillmore said when his mother collared him. Now then, some of these pictures will have to go. You know how those national magazines are when a president is named. They dig up all the old photographs they can find. Burn this one of you on the rug in the nude. And this one. Your bloomers are hanging suspiciously heavy around your ankles. And get rid of those old report cards. No sense asking for trouble. Now, who’s your idol?”

  “Willie Mays.”

  “Oh, good grief. Let’s pick Thomas Jefferson. He talked a lot and would be good for at least two terms of quotations. Now, about your handwriting...”

  “It’s not bad.”

  “That’s your problem. You’ve got to learn to write illegibly or no one will read anything you write. Now, what about sports?”

  “I like baseball.”

  “No, no, who ever heard of a president liking baseball? Besides, they’d never stand still for a baseball diamond on the White House lawn. You be thinking about a sport that you can do in the Rose Garden in front of a dozen reporters or so.”

  “Aw Mom, this is nutsy.”

  “Nutsy! Don’t you want to sit at that big desk and know that the eyes of the world are upon you...that everything you do or say affects them in some way? And that your strength is their strength...your weakness, their weakness...your promises...their promises?” (He pulled himself erect and began to hum the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”) “And just think, boy, it all began here today in this room with Mama.”

  He looked at me impersonally, his head held high with pride....Mama who?”

  “I Don’t Want to Go to Grandma’s”—May 1966

  “I don’t want to go to Grandma’s.”

  The first time you hear your child say it, it’s as shocking as dancing on a grave, spitting on the flag or knocking apple pie!

  How dare she disfavor this woman who looked into her wrinkled, newborn face, as she lay toothless and bald, and said proudly, “She’s beautiful!” How dare she discard this woman who let her bake cookies with her dirty hands, who let her pound on her piano with sticky fingers.

  When did the magic go? She used to be in the car before her parents had their coats on. Grandma let her do grown-up things.

  When did the magic go? Maybe it was the day she looked anxiously out at the “big table” in the dining room and Grandma saw the look and said, “Maybe you should start eating with the adults now.” (Before that she had food fights in the kitchen with her cousins.) A door closed that day on childhood. Had she tried the door, she would have realized it swung only one way. She never could go back again. The trip through the door leading to the “big table” was awkward, not nearly the fun she thought it would be. There was cigar smoke that made her cough and talk about washing machines and politics. It was boring being in the crack between childhood and maturity.

  From that day forward Grandma’s house was never the same. The player piano sounded out of key and wasn’t fun anymore. The front steps no longer were an adventure. Children’s conversation was silly, and adult conversation was meaningless. There was nothing to do at Grandma’s.

  Why did the magic go?

  It was time to move life along. There were experiences to gather, friends to cultivate, interests to be indulged and decisions to be made. There were things she had to do alone...away from the family. It was time to expand her world.

  And Grandma’s house? For several years, it diminished—along with Grandma. She took along books to cushion the boredom.

  It wasn’t until she had children of her own that she had time to reflect on the house and its occupants and what they had meant to her. And she hungered for it. The magic had returned.

  “I don’t want to go to Grandma’s.”

  Let the door close softly, Grandma. They’ll be back.

  Going Deaf from Rock ’n’ Roll—January 23, 1967

  “Pardon me, madam,” said the young man at the door. “I’m doing a survey among mothers to see whether or not they agree with an acoustical engineer from Arizona that rock ’n’ roll may cause teenagers to go deaf.”

  “No, I don’t need rolls or bread today....If you’ve got any of those little buns with the jelly inside, though—”

  “No, madam,” he said, raising his voice, “you don’t understand. I’m not a bakery man. I’d like to get your opinion on what hearing experts are saying about rock ’n’ roll music and whether or not you think excessive—”

  “Oh, Excedrin! You want me to do a commercial! My, yes, I have headaches all the time. It’s this loud music. You see, we’ve got four radios in the house. Along about four o’clock it sounds like the U.N. General Assembly singing a serenade in four languages to Red China. So I simply crawl under the sink with a shaker full of Excedrin and—”

  “Madam,” he said, facing me squarely, “we’re not doing a commercial. We’re doing a survey. Do you have a teenager in your home?”

  “You’re going to have to keep your lips in full view of my eyes at all times,” I explained. “And talk a little slower!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you have a teenager in your home?”

  “I think that’s what it is,” I said hesitantly.

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Well, it’s difficult to tell. The bangs are two inches above the hemline and there’s a lump on the hip shaped like a small transistor, two button eyes and a long cord that connects the hip to the ear.”

  “That’s a teenager,” he added impersonally. “Now, have you noticed any impairment in her hearing since she started listening to rock ’n’ roll music?”

  “Nothing unusual.” I pondered. “She still doesn’t respond to simple commands like: Clean your room. Change your clothes. Get the door. On the other hand she picks up phrases like: Have you heard the joke about...The bank balance is down to...Let’s feed the kids here and slip out to dinner...like she was standing in the middle of the Capitol rotunda in Washington.”

  “Then the increased decibels have made no change in your teenager?”

  “Pardon me while I get the phone.”

  “I didn’t hear anything ring,” he said.

  “It’s always like that after I’ve listened to three hours of Maurice and His Electric Fuse Foxes. Just a ringing sound in my ears. Would you believe that once the guitar player got hiccups and it sold three million records? Are you saying something, young man? I told you you’d have to keep your lips in full view of my eyes at all times. And speak a little slower!”

  Daughter Learning to Drive—July 18, 1969

  I saw an old school chum of mine last fall and couldn’t believe my eyes. She looked haggard and tired. There were lines around her eyes, and she seemed preoccupied and unsure of herself.

  “What in the world is wrong with Evelyn?” I remember asking. “If it’s something terminal, I want to know.”

  “It’s not that simple,” said my companion. “Her son is learning to drive.”

  My d
aughter has been driving for three days, five hours and 17 minutes. Compared to Evelyn, I look like Pat Paulsen with a migraine.

  I find myself sitting around in the evening, and for no apparent reason I will lift up my right foot and jam it down on an imaginary brake pedal.

  Sometimes I will lay down my fork and say mechanically, “I don’t wish to excite you, but would you mind turning off your windshield wipers? They are tickling the neck of the pedestrian riding on your hood whom we picked up going down the opposite direction of a one-way street.”

  The nights are the worst. The other night I dreamt she got her license.

  My husband cannot understand what all the shouting is about when he takes her out he carries on a conversation, listens to the radio and occasionally catnaps, but then he has the kind of courage it takes to get your teeth cleaned without taking an anesthetic.

  Heaven knows I tried to make her feel comfortable and relaxed. The first day I took her out I said softly, “This, my child, is an automobile. It is a vehicle to be enjoyed. It will take you along many happy roads of pleasure. It will afford you many happy hours on the highways and open up new horizons of relaxation and leisure. It is mechanically engineered to take you where you want to go and return you on the best highways the country has ever known. Remember, seven out of ten people drive a car. Little old ladies do it. People who wear glasses do it. Even people who can’t type do it. Relax, take your time and hang loose.”

  She turned the key in the ignition.

  “Thirty million Americans die each year on the highway!” I shouted hysterically.

  She put the car into gear.

  “If I go through this windshield there won’t be a Mother’s Day that you won’t feel terrible.”

  She eased the car onto the highway.

  “Just because they haven’t recalled this model doesn’t mean we’re home free. Speed kills. There’s a drunken driver waiting for you over the next hill. Drive defensively. You go over twenty and I’m using my ejection seat button. The light is green. What color are you waiting for?”

  There is talk of lowering the driving age. It might be a good idea. There was a time when I had more patience. But who ever heard of a five-year-old behind the wheel of a car?

  Phone Messages—October 22, 1969

  I caught the tail end of one of my husband’s lectures to the children the other night on Who Took the Phone Message I Didn’t Get?

  I have heard it before. It is one of his better efforts, in which he explains what a pencil is, tells of the humiliation he suffers at the office, and ends up with excerpts from President Truman’s famous Give ’Em Hell speech.

  The children blink and point an accusing finger at each other and promise never to let it happen again. It will.

  Frankly, I am in favor of raising the age of children answering the phone to 23 years old. I base this on several facts. First, I have been savagely beaten, kicked and maimed on the way to my own telephone. Second, spies detained in Cuba get more messages through the Red Cross than I get in my own house. Third, at the age of 23, it is likely the children are married and have a phone of their own.

  Sometimes when I am feeling overly sadistic about it, I can imagine how history might have been altered had a youngster been on the line taking messages.

  “Anyone call today?” asks General Eisenhower.

  “Oh, yes,” answers his son, “a girl with a deep voice called Winnie Burchill.”

  “That’s Churchill. What did he say?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Think.”

  “It was something about an invasion. He’ll be ready to go on either June second, eighth or ninth or December fifth or eleventh. One of those days. He said the weather was either going to be sunny or rainy. I don’t remember. Hey, did you notice what the base movie was when you passed by?”

  Or what if Neil Armstrong had called directly home and gotten one his youngsters on the line.

  Mrs. Armstrong: “Was that the phone ringing?”

  Child: “Yes, it was Daddy. He just called from the moon.”

  Mrs. Armstrong: “Why didn’t you call me?”

  Child: “You were hanging out the wash.”

  Mrs. Armstrong: “Well, what did he say. Is he all right?”

  Child: “He said he wants you to tell the world he took a little step for mankind and a giant leap just for the fun of it. Something like that.”

  Mrs. Armstrong: “What else did he say?”

  Child: “He didn’t bring me anything so I hung up on him.”

  Who knows? Maybe Grant wanted to surrender to Lee and a teenage corporal wrote the message on a breath mint and ate it. Maybe General Custer was supposed to fight at Big Little Horn and someone goofed the message up to read Little Big Horn. Maybe Julius Caesar never got the phone message saying, “Jeane Dixon said forget the Senate today.”

  Oh, well, we’ll never really know for sure, will we?

  Working Mom’s Telephone Crisis—May 28, 1971

  In talking with a working mother the other day, she disclosed one of the little-discussed hazards of holding down a job with one hand and tending a family with the other. She called it the Telephone Crisis.

  At least once a day a working mother will be summoned to the business phone to hear the voice of her child say, “Mom, can I make a raft and mess around on the Ohio River with Huckleberry Hickey?”

  Striving to keep her carpetland composure, the mother, remembering she is a professional, will clutch her throat and shout, “You leave the house and I’ll break your head!”

  “If you want to find out how indispensable you really are,” said one mother, “just get a job and wait for the phone to ring. My kids have had me called out of conferences involving thousands of dollars to electrify me with such breathless decisions as:

  1. Can I split a Pepsi with Kathy?

  2. Guess what the dog dug up?

  3. Did you wash my white shorts for gym tomorrow?

  4. I got an 83 on my health test.

  5. Rick just got his driver’s license. Can I go with him to town and see how he does in traffic?

  The plight of the working mother and the Telephone Crisis reaches a feverish pitch in the summer months when the children are at home. There is perhaps nothing that strikes fear in a mother’s heart as much as the following sequence:

  “Hello, Mom. This is Debbie.”

  “Give me that phone! Mom, this is Wesley and make her stop slapping.”

  “You’re gonna get it. I’m telling! Mom, tell him it’s his turn to set the table.”

  “I thought you told her she couldn’t have fifteen girls in here at once.”

  “I’m telling. Mom, did you know...quit it! You’re hurting me.”

  “You’re not even bleeding much. Mooooommmmm!”

  Click.

  Until the Telephone Crisis is resolved, it is safe to assume there will not be a woman in the White House. Can you imagine getting a busy signal on the Hot Line?

  I’ve Always Loved You Best—July 20, 1971

  It is normal for children to want assurance that they are loved. Having all the warmth of the Berlin Wall, I have always admired women who can reach out to pat their children and not have them flinch.

  Feeling more comfortable on paper, I wrote this for each of my children.

  To the firstborn...I’ve always loved you best because you were our first miracle. You were the genesis of a marriage, the fulfillment of young love, the promise of our infinity.

  You sustained us through the hamburger years: the first apartment furnished in Early Poverty...our first mode of transportation (1955 feet)...the 7-inch TV set we paid on for 36 months.

  You wore new, had unused grandparents and more clothes than a Barbie doll. You were the original model for unsure parents trying to work the bugs out. You got the strained lamb, open pins and three-hour naps.

  You were the beginning.

  To the middle child...I’ve always loved you best
because you drew a dumb spot in the family and it made you stronger for it.

  You cried less, had more patience, wore faded and never in your life did anything first, but it only made you more special. You are the one we relaxed with and realized a dog could kiss you and you wouldn’t get sick. You could cross a street by yourself long before you were old enough to get married, and the world wouldn’t come to an end if you went to bed with dirty feet.

  You were the continuance.

  To the baby...I’ve always loved you best because endings generally are sad and you are such a joy. You readily accepted the milk-stained bibs. The lower bunk. The cracked baseball bat. The baby book, barren but for a recipe for graham piecrust that someone jammed between the pages.

  You are the one we held on to so tightly. For, you see, you are the link with the past that gives a reason to tomorrow. You darken our hair, quicken our steps, square our shoulders, restore our vision and give us humor that security and maturity can’t give us.

  When your hairline takes on the shape of Lake Erie and your children tower over you, you will still be “the baby.” You were the culmination.

  Mike and the Grass—May 1973

  When Mike was three, he wanted a sandbox, and his father said, “There goes the yard. We’ll have kids over here day and night, and they’ll throw sand into the flower beds, and cats will make a mess in it, and it’ll kill the grass for sure.”

  And Mike’s mother said, “It’ll come back.”

  When Mike was five, he wanted a jungle-gym set with swings that would take his breath away and bars to take him to the summit, and his father said, “Good grief, I’ve seen those things in backyards, and do you know what they look like? Mud holes in a pasture. Kids digging their gym shoes in the ground. It’ll kill the grass.”