Forever, Erma Read online

  I’d be a fool to pretend I hadn’t noticed the real me lost in a cloud of impersonal pronouns throughout the years. For example, at the office, it’s “Oh, you’re Bill’s wife.” On the playground, it’s “So you’re Andy’s mother.” At the neighborhood coffee Match, it’s “I’d know you anywhere. You’re the Wednesday Volkswagen in the car pool.” Even at the bank, it’s “Well, if you’re 002-968-994-05, why didn’t you say so?” You know how it goes.

  Actually, what I represent to other people isn’t half as important as what I represent to myself. One day, as I stood studying my reflection in a skillet lid, I plopped it down, went back to the bedroom, put my hair up in curlers and changed my dress. I put a dab of perfume behind each ear and returned to the kitchen. When asked where I was going, I snapped, “I’m going out to the garbage can all by myself!” No one understood. But I felt better.

  Identity is more than a tag or a label. It’s a feeling that takes a little time out of each day to develop—time that a housewife doesn’t usually have.

  The slick magazines are forever trying to build the feminine image by pointing out that the modern-day mother is a taskmaster of a hundred skills—“She must be chauffeur, dietitian, doctor”—and a list of 20 specialized fields, ad nauseam. Rubbish! I could be replaced at the car wheel by a chimpanzee (who could probably even be taught to park!). My meals are a living monument to the frozen foods industry. As for my medical background, if I can’t cure it with a Band-Aid or a kiss, I use my tongue paddle to dial a doctor.

  I contend it’s the absence of time to herself that breaks a home-maker’s back. Some days it’s like living in the eye of a hurricane. It’s refereeing a family of differences. It’s puppeteering a houseful of personalities. It’s making more decisions in a single hour than an umpire makes in nine innings. It’s the constancy of a job that runs from one night into the next day and into that night and into the next morning.

  Have you ever slipped out to the car and slumped down, only to have six beady eyes discover you and squeal, “We found her”? Have you ever locked yourself in the bathroom and watched entranced while a note slid under the door that read, Are the Popsicles frozen yet? Have you ever been in a group and been too embarrassed to confess that the last book you read was Guadalcanal Diary? Have you ever gone to dinner with a group of friends and been horrified to discover you mechanically buttered everyone’s bread and cut up their meat into bite sizes?

  This is what a woman is talking about when she says she’s lost her identity. Only I like to think it isn’t lost at all—just buried temporarily under a stack of ironing, a book that needs covering or a basket of mending.

  When the Memory Starts to Go—June 9, 1967

  As a youth, the thought crossed my mind several times. How would I know when I began to deteriorate?

  Would I quit running after buses? Would I wear a stocking cap to ward off a chill when I emptied the garbage? Would I forget to moisten my lips when I smiled? Or would it be a little thing—like having my legs go asleep and require medical attention every time I fell out of a foreign car?

  Surprisingly, it is none of these things. Deterioration begins with the memory.

  It’s true. Since reaching 40, I can’t seem to remember a thing, including the fact that I reached the age of 40.

  If I were cute about it, like Scarlett O’Hara stomping her foot on the veranda and pouting, “I swear, Ashley Wilkes, I can’t remember promising you to promenade!” I wouldn’t mind.

  But it’s not like that.

  There’s my husband penciling buttons on his T-shirt because I forgot to pick up his dress shirts at the laundry.

  There’s my child in a cafeteria with a dampened blouse for lunch because I gave him the wrong bag.

  And in some little lunchroom, somewhere in the city, my very best friend, what’s-her-name, is throwing down breadsticks waiting for me to join her for lunch, unaware that I wrapped my gum in her memo and discarded the same.

  There are other evidences of forgetfulness.

  Friends have noted a fantastic increase in the number of miles I walked to school as a child, the number of bridesmaids at my wedding, my take-home pay on my first job and the number of hours I labored with my first child. (My husband says, given a few more years, I will enrich the story to the point where I excused myself from a campfire and delivered the baby myself in a barren field using only a few leeches, fig leaves and strips of buffalo hide.)

  Lord knows I’ve tried to be a list maker. It is all very executivish. There is a pad of paper at my bedside. At the top is printed the day of the week, followed by the day’s schedule: Get up. Put the dog out. Get the kids up. Bring the dog in. Get the husband up. Put the kids out. Bring the milk in. Put the husband out.

  Before the schedule, I was getting the milk and the dog confused. It certainly made an interesting cereal bowl.

  Those who have preceded me down forgotten-memory lane are hard-put to explain why you forget simple daily routine things, yet remember explicitly things that aren’t worth a hill of beans.

  For example, I can still remember the New York phone number of the “Major Bowes Amateur Hour” (Murray Hill 8-7933). I can’t remember who carries our automobile insurance.

  I know the verses and chorus of the “Beer Barrel Polka.” I can never remember my brother-in-law’s birthday.

  Do you know before I went to the hospital I bought birth announcements and put them away so I’d have them and have been looking for them ever since?

  Oh, well, the kid’s eight years old now, so what does it matter?

  Subversive Window Washer—September 29, 1967

  A wonderful thing happened in our neighborhood last week. Wanda the window washer moved.

  Wanda wasn’t a bad sort. It’s just when you get a woman of her kind who washes windows every 10 days the neighborhood gets a bad name.

  I remember the day she moved in. We were all poking our heads through the cracks on our doors (our windows distort bodies), when right off we saw her unpack this big stepladder.

  “Don’t panic!” I told the group. “It’s probably a garage prop. Undoubtedly got it for a wedding present and doesn’t know what it’s for.”

  Within minutes, she was shinnying up the rungs with a bucket in her hand and polishing the panes until we were nearly struck blind by the glare.

  After that performance, homemade FOR SALE signs sprang up like crabgrass. We tried to reason with some of the homeowners, but they stood firm.

  “We’re selling before property values decrease,” they insisted. “Sure, now it’s only a window washer, but tomorrow it’ll be a grass trimmer, a porch scrubber, a garbage can cleaner or even some nut who waxes the driveway.”

  Those of us who stood firm got it from all directions, especially our husbands.

  “Hey,” said my husband one evening, “is that woman across the street washing her windows again?”

  “What windows?” I said, trying to divert his attention.

  “You told me our windows weren’t washable, that you had to send them out to be cleaned.”

  “Our windows aren’t that dirty or I’d wash them.”

  “Aren’t that dirty?” he shouted. “We’re the only house in the block growing mushrooms for houseplants!”

  “Can’t you see what Wanda the window washer really is?” I asked. “She’s a subversive. She was sent to this good upper-middle-class neighborhood of slobs to cause unrest, discontent and hostility. In time, she’ll cause us to fight with our husbands, argue with our neighbors. The next thing you know, we’ll divide politically and the country will be taken over by Communists.”

  The new neighbor moved in yesterday.

  “How do you feel about washing windows?” we asked cautiously.

  “The same way I feel about biting fingernails,” she said. “It’s a filthy habit. Besides, it’s un-American.”

  Now, there’s the kind of woman you’d like your son to marry.

  Sewing-Basket Blues—Nove
mber 21, 1969

  You show me a woman who likes to mend and I’ll show you a real weirdo. I know. I met a woman once who liked to mend and she was weird.

  She ran around with a threaded needle stuck in her collar and a pair of scissors hanging on a piece of bias tape around her neck. She’d sneak up behind you and clip off ravelings from your seams and whip a threaded eye for your hook sooner than you could say, “Keep your cold clammy hands to yourself.”

  There is an old saying around our house: “When you say goodbye to a button, you say hello to drafts.” As soon as a Bombeck child reaches the age of reason I sit down and explain to him how it is at our house.

  “Some mommies have sewing baskets. Sewing baskets are round little boxes, sometimes square, that hold a needle and thread, a tape measure, chalk, scissors, bobbins and button box. This is Mommy’s sewing basket. It is an old shoe box that I keep in the stove drawer. You’ll notice it is different. It holds a box of paper clips, a roll of masking tape, a package of home permanent papers, a razor blade, a burnt-out bug bulb, a bookmarker with a prayer to St. Anthony and an iced tea spoon. Put your hand down; I answer questions at the end. Now, you must hang on to your buttons or you will have (a) a cold winter, (b) a hot summer, (c) an embarrassment for all seasons.

  “If your sleeve rips, wear a sweater. If your hem falls out, turn your waistband up. If your pants rip, crouch. Anything you can’t clip, paste, pin or tape, start praying you’ll outgrow it. That’s all. And good luck!”

  I don’t know why I have such an attitude toward mending except I regard it with the same excitement as hosing out the garbage can. It’s menial, tedious, unimaginative and beneath me. There are parts of housekeeping that are quite creative. Mending is not one of them.

  My husband finds my theory impossible to live with.

  “The button fell off my coat.”

  “You know the rules of the house.”

  “I know the rules. I can’t clip it, paste it, pin it or tape it, and I’ve grown as big as I’m going to get.”

  “Where’s the button? Thank goodness there’s a hole in it.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for the weather report for tomorrow. Maybe you won’t even need the coat.”

  “Give me a simple reason why you cannot sew on a simple button.”

  “I can’t find my glasses. The House Needle is missing. If I did it for you, I’d have to do it for everybody. The thread doesn’t match. I hurt myself when I sew. Take your pick.”

  “Forget it,” he snarled.

  “Have you thought of a belt?” I said brightly.

  “Many times,” he sighed.

  Ironing—June 10, 1971

  An ad in a Midwest newspaper read WANTED: Woman to do ironing for housewife 10 years behind in everything. Must have strong courage and sense of humor.

  Now there’s a woman I could live next door to in perfect harmony. I iron by appointment only. I learned long ago that if I ironed and hung three dresses in my daughter’s closet, she would change three times during dinner.

  The other day my son wanted me to iron his jeans for a class play. “Which leg faces the audience?” I asked with my iron poised in midair.

  “Boy,” he said, “you’re sure not like Mrs. Breck.”

  I hadn’t thought about Mrs. Breck in years. She was an antiseptic old broad who used to live two houses down from me. She had an annoying habit of putting her ironing board up on Tuesdays and putting it away again at the end of the day. (What can you expect from a woman who ironed belt buckles?)

  One afternoon I dropped in on her as she was pressing the tongues in her son’s tennis shoes.

  “You know what you are, Mrs. Breck?” I said. “A drudge.”

  “Oh, I enjoy ironing,” she said.

  “You keep talking like that, and someone is going to put you in a home.”

  “What’s so bad about ironing?” She grinned.

  “No one does it,” I snapped. “Did you ever see the women on soap operas iron? They’re just normal American housewives. But do you ever see them in front of an ironing board? No! They’re out having abortions, committing murder, blackmailing their boss, undergoing surgery, having fun! If you weren’t chained to this ironing board you too could be out doing all sorts of exciting things.”

  “Like what?” She chuckled, pressing the wrinkles out of a pair of sweat socks and folding them neatly.

  “You could give Tupperware parties, learn to scuba dive, learn hotel management while sitting under a hair dryer, have an affair with the Avon lady’s unemployed brother-in-law, sing along with Jack LaLanne, collect antique barbed wire, take a course in Hebrew flower arranging, start chain letters....I don’t know, woman, use your imagination!”

  I read the newspaper ad again. It intrigued me, so I dialed the number and waited.

  “Hello, Mrs. Breck speaking.”

  Son of a gun. It sure makes you feel good when you had a part in someone’s success, doesn’t it?

  The Mother Who Drives—June 11, 1972

  When I am reincarnated, I want to come back in this world as a mother who doesn’t drive.

  I have noted with some bitterness that mothers who do not drive have time to paint sunsets, knit coats, bake bread and write symphonies.

  Not only that, they are fully dressed by nine in the morning, have a deep bronze tan by May 20 and somehow seem taller.

  Fifteen years of car pools does something to a woman. It makes her a little strange. For example, I cannot sit in a chair and delicately cross my legs at the ankles like other women. Instinctively, my right foot extends in an accelerator position and remains there until I stand up.

  Also, I mumble a lot. That comes from spending years on the telephone trying to figure out that if Mary Jane’s husband goes to the doctor’s office on Wednesday, she will have to bundle the baby up and take him to work and trade with Martha, who is having a cyst removed. On the other hand, if Peter was really exposed to measles that means he will have them by Wednesday and Ada, who has already exchanged with Charlotte because Charlotte has trouble starting (the car, not Charlotte), would have to trade with Muriel because she has the convertible with the top that is stuck and it is her hair appointment day (she also cannot drive on rainy days).

  Probably the most disconcerting hazard of being a “listed parent” in a car pool is that intellectually I have become stagnant. My vocabulary at the moment is down to four basic sentences. “Fill it up with regular,” “Lock the door,” “Keep your feet on the floor” and “Didn’t you go before you left home?”

  The other night at a party I was standing alone, holding my handbag in front of me like a steering wheel, when a handsome man approached me and said, “You look like you could use a drink. What’ll it be?”

  I handed him my Shell card and said, “Fill it up with regular.” He laughed and steered me toward the kitchen where the bar was set up.

  “Lock the door,” I said mechanically. “And keep your feet on the floor.”

  He looked around nervously. “Listen,” he said, “I just remembered I have some unfinished business to attend to. Would you excuse me, please?”

  “Didn’t you go before you left home?” I snapped.

  If Ralph Nader doesn’t recall me soon, it may be too late.

  Making Paycheck Stretch—October 1972

  I read some pretty incredible things in the newspaper, but the story I can’t get over is the one about the woman from Michigan who grocery shops for staples once a year.

  She makes up a grocery list 13 pages long, fills up 14 shopping carts, transfers it to 56 paper bags, coughs up $571.88 to pay for it, loads it in two cars and shouts gaily over her shoulder, “See you next year!”

  I once bought eight boxes of cake mix on sale, four for a dollar, and by the end of the week we had a cake every day and two on Sunday. I can’t save a thing around the house. When my husband taught school we used to get paid the fifteenth of every month. On the sixteenth, we ate like a
Weight Watcher who has just fallen into a vat of baked potatoes and sour cream. For 15 days, we had three meats at every meal, five vegetables and a choice of four desserts.

  The first of the month, we began to panic. By the time the last week rolled around, I was dyeing the rice brown trying to palm it off as ground beef and sucking on dental floss.

  One night (the thirteenth of some month), my husband picked at a mound of cocktail onions and Spam and said, “If you can’t manage the food any better than this throughout the month, why don’t you plan your menus ahead and I’ll hide the stuff so you won’t use it all up the first couple of weeks.”

  As I contemplated our dessert for the evening (Kool-Aid over crushed ice), I had to agree it might work.

  The first night he came through the door, I grabbed him by the shirt and said, “Where are they?”

  “Where are what?” he asked.

  “The bananas. I’ve been looking all day for the bananas.”

  “They’re scheduled for salad tomorrow night.”

  “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow night,” I said testily. “I’d kill for bananas, and you know it!”

  Our domestic bliss didn’t end with bananas. I tore the attic up one day looking for the canned Boston brown bread to go with the cream cheese. And to ration a woman’s coffee is dehumanizing.

  I got to thinking about that doggone woman in Michigan. Could a person really stock up once a year or did she get home, unload her 56 shopping bags and tell her youngest, “There’s nothing for lunch. Pedal down and get some lunchmeat and potato chips.”

  Anyway, I decided to try it. I went to the supermarket, made a grocery list 18 pages long, filled up 20 shopping carts, transferred 58 paper bags, coughed up $602.19 to pay for it, and then loaded it into two cars and shouted over my shoulder, “See you next year!”