As my twins, not quite a year old, crawled under people’s chairs, onto strangers’ laps and onto the window ledges, I thought grimly, You should have five of him!
Also in the waiting room was the mother with her firstborn. She became very protective as my sons made their way toward her baby. Her mother, husband and the maid discouraged my twins from coming close. When I gave Jon and Jeremy a whack on their bottoms, this young mother looked at me with an I’ll-never-have-to-resort-to-that-sort-of-thing look.
As the twins got older, and I aged incredibly, I learned to move fast. Do I run after Jeremy as he heads for three empty bottles on my neighbor’s carport or dash for Jon as he disappears into a storm drain? Should I catch the one getting into the bathtub fully clothed or go after the one pulling the hissing cat out from under the bed?
As the twins grew larger, they eventually covered every inch of the house looking for adventure. They turned over the television and removed its parts, broke out the glass in the French door, knocked out window screens and threw their clothes and toys out, climbed up inside the chimney, pulled down curtains and curtain rods, removed the heating ducts from the wall and finally turned over an old chest with each of them shut tightly in a drawer.
Some weeks were worse than others. One Tuesday afternoon, a railing outside the public library gave way and Jon fell eleven feet. That night, Jeremy knocked a tooth loose.
Wednesday, Jeremy learned to open the car door while I was driving. Saturday night, Jeremy leaped from the mantel and required five stitches in his head. Jon cried for days because he didn’t have any stitches and finally consoled himself by drinking iodine.
Just before the boys were fifteen months old, Jeremy discovered how to get out of his bed. Then he freed Jon. This meant every day I dragged around the house like Frankenstein with a twin clinging to each leg.
The look in my eyes after a few days forced my husband to take drastic measures. He built a fence around the top of Jeremy’s bed with chicken wire. When Jeremy climbed over the top of the fence and jumped to freedom, Jerry built a top to the fence and put a lock on it.
We soon learned to ignore the looks on the faces of our friends when they saw Jeremy’s bed for the first time. Actually, Jeremy seemed relieved to be confined, which proves what I have always believed: Children want discipline.
Jeremy’s Sunday school teacher never did understand why he began placing a doll in a doll bed and then turning another bed over it, smiling with great satisfaction. I didn’t tell her about Jeremy’s bed.
Talking on the telephone was dangerous. My twins had become conditioned, and the sound of our phone ringing sent them looking for trouble.
One day as I talked on the phone (I had to communicate with people somehow), Jon came running to me looking funny, and holding his throat. We had just returned from the hospital that day. Jon’s tonsils had been removed. Suddenly, I knew what his trouble was.
Surely, God must give mothers of twins extra abilities. Jon had found a nickel on my dresser and swallowed it.
I threw the phone down and grabbed Jon by the feet, shaking him and praying. Out came the nickel and his stitches didn’t even bleed.
Friends almost stopped coming by. Our house was like a three-ring circus. I often stood by the window watching my friends going out to eat lunch together and felt an ache I thought I couldn’t bear.
That same day a dear friend came by. I was so glad to see an adult, I could hardly stop talking or grinning. Our conversation was interrupted by loud crashes coming from the direction of the bathroom. Lord, help me ignore the noise and enjoy this friend who has come to see me.
Finally, as I continued to ignore the crashes, Jeremy brought me half of the top of the back of the toilet tank. He placed it in my lap, hoping to interrupt our conversation. I kept talking calmly, wiping the blood from his cut finger on my apron and cautioning him, “Don’t bleed on the rug.”
I almost never took the boys anywhere, but in desperation (it had rained for four days) we went to get a carton of soft drinks. My twins were wild with excitement.
I dressed Jon first. By the time I got to Jeremy, Jon stood inside the toilet bowl, laughing. I dressed Jon again and looked for Jeremy, only to find him standing out in the rain looking up with his mouth open.
Some mornings I awoke and prayed even before I opened my eyes: Please, God, stay very close to me today. I don’t even want to be a mother today. I just want to listen to silence and think my own thoughts, and brush my teeth without interruption.
Going out was reduced to a jaunt to the garbage cans or a dash to the mailbox or the clothesline. One evening, however, I went to a dinner party with my husband. The children gathered around to watch me put on shoes and lipstick.
I guess the party was too much for me. I kept saying, “Look at all the big people.” And I tried to cut the meat of the startled gentleman sitting next to me.
Sometimes I wonder how many miles I must have strolled Jon and Jeremy (mostly uphill) while Julie and Jennifer followed, constantly asking questions.
Many times I had no idea how I would do it one more day, or how I would even get through supper that night.
A little old lady who lived at the end of the street asked the same question. Many of my friends did. Even strangers sometimes quizzed me, “How do you manage?”
“I pray a lot,” I told them. “I have to. I can’t make it on my own. God helps me every day.”
Marion Bond West
“Oh, wow! It’s a birth announcement from the
Fullersons! They just had twin boys!”
CLOSE TO HOME ©John McPherson. Reprinted by permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE.
So You Want to Be a Mother?
Iremember leaving the hospital . . . thinking wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies!
Anne Tyler
One of the biggest complaints about motherhood is the lack of training.
We all come to it armed only with a phone number for a diaper service, a Polaroid camera, a hotline to the pediatrician and innocence with a life span of fifteen minutes.
I have always felt that too much time was given before the birth, which is spent learning things like how to breathe in and out with your husband (I had my baby when they gave you a shot in the hip and you didn’t wake up until the kid was ready to start school), and not enough time given to how to mother after the baby is born.
Motherhood is an art. And it is naive to send a mother into an arena for twenty years with a child and expect her to come out on top. Everything is in the child’s favor. He’s little. He’s cute and he can turn tears on and off like a faucet.
There have always been schools for children. They spend anywhere from twelve to sixteen years of their lives in them, around other children who share the experience of being a child and how to combat it. They’re in an academic atmosphere where they learn how to manipulate parents and get what they want from them. They bind together to form a children’s network, where they pool ideas on how to get the car, how to get a bigger allowance and how to stay home when their parents go on a vacation. Their influence is felt throughout the world. Without contributing a dime, they have more ice cream parlors, recreation centers, playgrounds and amusement parks than any group could ever pull off.
They never pay full price for anything. How do they do it? They’re clever and they’re educated.
Some people think mothers should organize and form a union. I think education is the answer. If we only knew what to do and how to do it, we could survive.
It’s only a dream now. But one of these days there will be a School for New Mothers that will elevate the profession to an academic level. What I wouldn’t have given for a catalogue offering the following skills.
Creative Nagging 101: Learn from expert resource people how to make eye contact through a bathroom door, how to make a senior cry and how to make a child write you a check for bringing him into the world. More than 1,000
subjects guaranteed to make a child miserable for a lifetime. “Sit up straight or your spine will grow that way” and “Your aquarium just caught fire” are ordinary and boring. Creative Nagging gets you noticed! Child is furnished.
Seminar for Savers: No one dares call herself “Mother” until she has learned to save and horde. Squirreling away is not a congenital talent, as formerly believed. It can be learned. Find out where to store thirty pounds of twist ties from bread and cookie packages, old grade-school cards and boots with holes in the toe. Learn how to have a Christmas box for every occasion by snatching them from a person before they have taken the present out of it. Learn why hangers mate in dark closets and observe them as they reproduce. Mature language.
Investments and Returns from Your Children: Frank discussions on how to get your children to believe they owe you something. Each day mothers let opportunities for guilt slip through their fingers without even knowing it. The child who was ordered to “call when you get there” and doesn’t, can be made to suffer for years. Find out how. Special attention is paid to Mother’s Day and the child who once gave a forty-dollar cashmere sweater to a girl he had known only two weeks, while you, who have stomach muscles around your knees, received a set of bathroom soap in the shape of sea horses. Class size is limited.
Perfection: How to Get It and How to Convince Your Children You’ve Got It: The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a mother must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment’s anxiety and was never a child. Enrollment limited to those who have taken “The Madonna Face Mystique.”
Legal Rights for Mothers: Know the law. Are you required to transport laundry that has been in the utility room longer than sixty days? Do you have the right to open a bedroom door with a skewer, or would this be considered illegal entry? Can you abandon a child along a public highway for kicking Daddy’s seat for 600 miles? Are you liable for desertion if you move and don’t tell your grown son where you are going? A panel of legal experts will discuss how binding is the loan of $600 from a two-month-old baby to his parents when there were no witnesses.
The History of Suspicion and Its Effects on Menopause: Due to popular demand, we are again offering this course for older mothers. How to tell when your child is telling the truth even after her nose has stopped growing. The following case histories of suspicion will be discussed: Did Marlene really drop a Bible on her foot, keeping her from getting to the post office and mailing the letter to her parents? Did twenty dollars really fall out of your purse and your son found it and kept it and didn’t know how it got there? Was your son really in bed watching Masterpiece Theatre when he heard a racket and got up to discover 200 strangers having a party in the house and drinking all of Dad’s beer? Physical examination required.
Threats and Promises: Four fun-filled sessions on how to use chilling threats and empty promises to intimidate your children for the rest of their lives. Graduates have nothing but praise for this course. One mother who told her daughter she would wet the bed if she played with matches said the kid was thirty-five before she would turn on a stove. Hurry. Enrollment limited.
Note: Guilt: The Gift that keeps giving has been canceled until an instructor can be found. Dr. Volland said his mother felt he had no business teaching others when he ignored his own mother.
Erma Bombeck
Growing Up Pains
My children are small, still lap-sized with many years ahead in my care. And yet, already I know, and I feel that one day, no matter how many diapers changed, bottles fed, books read, hands washed or faces kissed, it will never be quite long enough.
Jennifer Graham Billings
“Honey,” my husband said when I was pregnant, “I promise. When the baby is born, I’ll take over every night and every weekend.” He lied.
My husband is a wonderful man. A wonderful father. He cried in the delivery room. He changes diapers without complaint. He doesn’t even mind when our son throws up on him. But he works late and travels often. He has Friday-night business dinners, Sunday-morning meetings, and black-tie events to which wives are not invited. I’m a reasonable woman; I understand how weary he is. “I’m just not in the mood to give the baby a bath tonight,” he says.
“I know what you mean,” I say sympathetically. “I’m not in the mood to give him dinner.”
In my worst moments, I feel as if I have been sold a bill of goods. I was ambivalent about having children. I knew the radical changes it would impose: the limitations on my time, my independence, my work. And what bothered me most was that these changes would affect my day-today life, not my husband’s. I’m not saying that being a father hasn’t radically altered his view of the world and his place in it; I know that our son is the center of his universe. But it’s just not the same for him. He still gets up every day, puts on grownup clothes and goes to an office where there are other reasonably mature adults making adult conversation. He goes out to lunch and doesn’t have to cut up anyone’s food. He has the luxury to stop after work for a drink, or to browse in a bookstore, knowing that it’s okay because I’ve got him covered. He knows who’s minding the store.
I have become that thing I dreaded most: a housewife. June Cleaver with an M.A., Donna Reed in running shoes. My mother. Yourmother. And there are too many moments in my day when I wonder if I have the right credentials for this job. They license you for everything else except this, the hardest job of all. No one ever told me about the sheer tedium of doing the same Playskool puzzle twenty-two times in one hour, or using a toothbrush to scrape the mashed peas and calcified oatmeal out of the grout on the kitchen floor after every meal, while behind me my son gleefully empties the box of croissant crackers and dances on them.
Okay, okay. I’d read Erma Bombeck; I had an inkling of what I was in for. But I thought it would be different for me. After all, my husband read me poetry on our first date. For six years we were culture vultures, eagerly devouring literature, movies, art galleries, craft fairs and endless cups of espresso, talking with pent-up eagerness, in perfect accord. “When we have children, we’ll read Piaget together,” he said. Now, of course, while I’m consulting Penelope Leach or Dr. Spock, he’s buried behind the Wall Street Journal. He has yet to pick up one book on child care.
This isn’t the life I expected to have. This is only slightly mitigated by the fact that other women with small children tell me the same thing. I thought I’d be living in Manhattan, writing for The New York Times, giving wonderful intimate dinner parties where my cultured guests would discourse in sparkling fashion on politics and the arts. Instead, I live in a cozy colonial in Scarsdale, debate the relative merits of Gymboree over Tumbling Tots, swap recipes for homemade Play-Doh, and sponge Teddy Grahams off the living-room couch.
I’m mourning the loss of my options. I can always quit a job, sell a house, or even refuse a medical treatment, but I can never go back to being a non-parent. And with this, I have acquired a new, responsible persona. I have finally written a will, something that seemed so remote and unnecessary in my lighthearted twenties. I have appointed legal guardians for my child, and bought zero-coupon bonds as a hedge against his college tuition. But it is the smaller things that are more telling: I no longer jaywalk. Because now I know, as you never know when you are young, that something could happen to me. This scares me, not for my sake, but for my son’s. And despite the fact that I have given up freedom, choices and the pleasure of having an uninterrupted conversation with another adult during daylight hours, the truth is that I need my child as much as he needs me. Life without him is unimaginable. Before I became a mother, there were three things that no one could have told me: how much labor would hurt; how tedious life with a toddler could be; and how passionately I would love my child.
Liane Kupferberg Carter
Love Letters to My Daughter
It was a balmy summer day in l
ate July. I had been feeling rather queasy and nauseated, so I decided to see my doctor. “Mrs. Hayes, I’m happy to tell you that you are ten weeks pregnant,” my doctor announced. I couldn’t believe my ears. It was a dream come true.
My husband and I were young and had been married for only a year. We were working hard to build a happy life together. The news that we were expecting a baby was exciting and scary.
In my youthful enthusiasm I decided to write “love letters” to our baby to express my feelings of expectancy and joy. Little did I know just how valuable those love letters would be in the years to come.
August 1971: Oh, my darling baby, can you feel the love I have for you while you are so small and living in the quiet world inside my body? Your daddy and I want the world to be perfect for you with no hate, no wars, no pollution. I can’t wait to hold you in my arms in just six months! I love you, and Daddy loves you but he can’t feel you yet.
September 1971: I am four months pregnant and am feeling better. I can tell you are growing, and I hope you are well and comfortable. I’ve been taking vitamins and eating healthy foods for you. Thank goodness my morning sickness is gone. I think about you all the time.
October 1971: Oh, these melancholy moods. I cry so often over so little. Sometimes I feel very alone, and then I remember you are growing inside of me. I feel you stirring, now tumbling and turning and pushing. It’s never the same. Your movements always bring me so much joy!
November 1971: I am feeling much better now that my fatigue and nausea have passed. The intense heat of summer is over. The weather is lovely, crisp and breezy. I feel your movements often now. Constant punching and kicking. What elation to know you are alive and well. Last week Daddy and I heard your strong heartbeat at the doctor’s office.
February 2, 1972 at 11:06 P.M.: You were born! We named you Sasha. It was a long, hard twenty-two hour labor, and your daddy helped me relax and stay calm. We are so happy to see you, to hold you, and to greet you. Welcome, our firstborn child. We love you so much!