Confessions of an Upstate New York Mother 1996
CONFESSIONS OF AN UPSTATE NEW YORK MOTHER
1996
HEATHER MENZIES JONES
The Unforgiven
There is one person who did me a wrong so dire, so earth and soul shattering that I have never been able to feel it in my heart to forgive her. This person, like me, is a mother, and in every other situation in which I had seen her, acted with the best judgment and most considered charm. However, the blot on her character occurred when she casually mentioned to my husband, who, like she, had suffered through the rigors of a bout with kidney stones, that PASSING A KIDNEY STONE WAS WORSE THAN HAVING A BABY. She uttered these miserable words before I had a chance to tackle her and slap a hand over her mouth. My husband's response was immediate and breathtaking in its sheer, unalloyed glee. Up until this very moment he had looked upon me, the mother who had triumphantly given birth to his three heirs, with a kind of primal veneration and atavistic awe which I had come to not only enjoy but rely upon. He was now perched up on top of the pain pinnacle and seemed to take immediately to the cat bird seat.
After receiving this revelatory information, my husband felt even more at liberty to tell all and sundry about every horrific detail regarding the passing of his stone. I must admit that when I saw his kidney stone and considered its point of exit, I even felt a momentary pang of compassion and warmth. Bill and his doctor were intensely fascinated by the really very tiny thing and gave it the attention moon rocks must have received. They even sent it away (to NASA for all I know) for it to be analyzed.
You may wonder where this leaves me. I now reserve my most graphic depictions of labor and delivery for the duller moments at baby showers, preferably at those showers where the guest of honor is only days away from giving birth to her first child. I like to see how her face drains of color as she contemplates lurid portrayals of labors lasting entire weeks, transition periods so wrenching that seismic action is registered, and where blood loss is so great the local paper must advertise for emergency donors. I don't care what anyone says, a baby beats out a kidney stone any day of the week. Real women know this!
Advice for labor coaches
This advice is more subtle than the obvious cautionary bit about the wisdom of inviting immediate and extended family in for the birth of the newest member of the clan. It goes beyond the sheer wimpiness of fainting. My husband did something which was such a breach of labor coach etiquette that I am amazed he was never given any prior warning against committing this heinous act. Even now I shudder at the memory. My husband consumed a bean and cheese burrito purchased from the vending machine in Highland Hospital moments before he felt compelled to breathe along with me, EVERY SINGLE HOOT, HOUT, HOOT, during the hour after hour it took to give birth to our first child.
I have told every expectant father about this situation, but something more should be done. There should be a distinct warning label on the offending vending machine indicating the grim consequences to occur if a woman in active labor gets one fetid, putrefying, nauseating, galling, whiff of a bean and cheese burrito purchased from any vending machine on hospital grounds. During labor I was monitored for everything else, so why didn't the hospital staff note the evident distress caused by my husband emitting noisy, gassy gusts of repellant respiration over my helplessly supine body?
When it was all over, Bill (now on the other side of the delivery room) noticed my tears and sweetly assumed I was crying those fabled tears of maternal joy. He was right about one thing; they were tears of joy.
The Spoiled Child Olympics
Nasty things have a way of happening even though intentions may have been the very best. Think of the Chinese government. They thought their one-child-per-couple scheme was going to take care of over-population. What they didn't count on was the creation of a mind-boggling number of Chinese only-children all being spoiled beyond measure by their own parents and extended family. Chinese mommies and daddies are in a real lather, because having lots of kids used to mean having lots of people around to help the family and eventually take care of the older crowd. They don't have skilled nursing facilities or the Chinese equivalent of Leisure World. In this year of the Atlanta Summer Olympic Games, when the Chinese people are poised to give the world a run for its money, there is one area where American children will win hands down. The Chinese still have a lot to learn before their kids can even begin to compete with ours in the SPOILED CHILD OLYMPICS.
You may think your child is already very spoiled and would qualify easily, but read the following to see if your son or daughter is ready for the supermarket sectionals and mall major leagues. Scoping out the competition should take you to the nearest grocery store. With any luck you will hear the petulant whine which is the preamble to the full-blown, red-faced, writhing, down on-the linoleum-floor temper tantrum. Points are awarded for stamina and the number of heads which turn in alarm or pity. More points are awarded if the child is throwing a tantrum in the NO CANDY check-out lane. My son once lost it in this supposedly 'parent-friendly' space and screamed for what seemed like hours for me to buy him nail clippers and a package of plant food stakes. A child like that deserves points for cunning and ingenuity. Hollering for Skittles and M&M's is so obvious.
The supermarket grand prize is awarded to those children who can make their parents lower their standards to horrifying new depths. A truly spoiled child knows this can best be done in the cereal aisle. Long gone are the days when I would buy cereal coming only in various shades of brown. I used to announce with pride, "I shall never, ever, buy a cereal that turns the milk a color not found in nature!" Like a rock, I've been chipped, chipped away. Deep shame convulses me as I allow a person currently attending kindergarten to dictate our family's breakfast choices. In my shopping cart can now be found cereals created to resemble little waffles, little ice-cream cones, little pieces of cinnamon toast, and little super heroes. In order to be in the running for this prize, the child has to be able to convince a parent to buy a box of LUCKY CHARMS and a jar of marshmallow FLUFF during the SAME SHOPPING TRIP.
Once the supermarket has been mastered, it is time for the child to move on to the bigger ticket items at the mall. For this child, a piece of gum or a free cookie piece from the bulk food section becomes small potatoes. The mall offers a seemingly endless array of desirable and glittering objects beckoning the most vulnerable members of our society. For the mall events, a child has to have the lung capacity for a scream loud enough to draw a crowd of between 20 - 30 people. The screaming should be of such vibrant intensity that mall workers are compelled to leave their various kiosks, armed with cellular phones and the assumption they'll soon be calling the Department of Social Services. The parent should be no more than three feet away from the child and reminded to keep a strict accounting of the tantrum's duration.
Major points are awarded when the gathered crowd divides according to clear, demographic lines. The over-sixty, grandparent crowd, should be induced to chants of "DON'T GIVE IN, YOU'LL SPOIL HIM, DON'T GIVE IN YOU'LL SPOIL HIM!!!" The Gap, Baby Gap, and jogger/stroller crowd should counter with, "GIVE HIM SOME ALTERNATIVES," "FOCUS ON HIS POSITIVES!!!" Extra points are always given for turning blue in the face or throwing up.
Qualifying for the Spoiled Child Olympics takes energy, grit, and determination. These are the very qualities that have made our country great. Creating the next generation of spoiled children is not an easy task and must not be treated lightly. We, not the Chinese, must take a great leap forward.
Welcome!
I must admit it, I enjoy Martha Stewart. You have to admire a person who wants us all to do better, to look better, and to clean up our domestic messes. At a time when dressing for church means putting on a pair of shorts, tank top, and rubber flip flops, it is comforting to know there is someone out there, firm in her convictions that everyone here in America would be better if we all did a few clever things with eucalyptus leaves. I do realize, however, as a woman who habitually takes her glasses off before entering her bathroom, I have no business reading Martha Stewart's Living magazine. Yet, I am a curious person and I like to know what people who have taste, money, and major chunks of time are able to do with their lives and homes.
There is an article in Living I particularly like. It is about Martha Stewart's idea of the perfect guest room. In the article, she extols the virtues of having a room so thoughtfully decorated that it will woo your overnight visitor with promises of luxurious comfort found only in the finest hotels. Besides being luxurious, Stewart believes a guest room should be equipped with those personal touches designed to whisper to your guest, "You are important to me, please come again!" I am acutely aware that people do take the "message" a guest room sends seriously. My mother, for instance, took my brother and sister-in-law's purchase of a futon quite seriously. Recuperation after her last visit with them required only time, heating pads, and a few visits to the chiropractor. She tearfully told me, "I simply will not go back; not until they get rid of that FUTON."
Preparing my guest room begins by the forcible eviction of my six-year-old son from his bedroom. It ends by my praying that the guest never drop anything on the floor near the bed necessitating a glimpse at Simon's 'storage system.' In the spirit of thoughtfulness advocated by Martha Stewart, I have prepared the following table outlining the things a future visitor will find in the guest room in our house.
In Martha Stewart's Guest Room
Finest, 300 thread count sheets, sun-dried
On the bedside table, a Waterford crystal decanter filled with distilled water next to matching lead crystal tumbler
Latest selection of books from NY Times best seller list, selected with guest's personal taste in mind
Empty closet filled with padded silk hangers
Foil-wrapped piece of Belgian chocolate left on antique lace pillow
In Heather's Guest Room
No-iron percale, Barney motif
On the floor next to bed, red Tupperware cup with sticky residue on bottom
Complete set of Little Golden and Berenstain Bears Books
Closet filled with 10 years worth of unsorted, hand-me-down children's clothes
Slightly crushed Froot Loops on large stuffed bear son uses as pillow
As a quality control measure, Stewart advises that the hostess spend a night in her own guest room in order to make the room even a tad more comfortable or to discover any potential problem. NO WAY!!!
T.V. Writhings
As a mother, my emotions run the gamut between guilt and obsessive, unhealthy regard for the well-being of my children. I habitually immerse myself in detailed conversations with other mothers about the minutiae of child rearing. Topics range from the best tasting children's vitamins, toothpaste, and acetaminophen to the pedagogic issues regarding the lack of complex syntax in the Babysitter's Club and Goosebump books. One issue which remains perennially central is the amount of T.V. time one allows one's child. Nothing separates the careful and deliberate parent from the deficient and incompetent one like habits surrounding T.V. viewing. At the very pinnacle are those families who don't own televisions, slightly below are those whose sets only get PBS, and definitely below are the shameful rest of us who watch on the sly and execute a complicated dance around this issue with our children.
"I only allow Brittany to watch Barney when she has a fever and the weather is lousy."
"I only allow Justin twenty minutes of Sesame Street, unless his fever is over l00 and the snow is up to the shutters on the house."
"My Caitlyn doesn't even like T.V."
"I won't ever let our family get cable."
"Brianna has only ever seen Mr. Rogers once and that was on the day of his bubble opera."
"Meredith has too many nightmares after Nova."
"The animal shows on the Discovery Channel are even too violent for my McKenzie."
When the stakes of guerrilla motherhood are this high, you have two choices. You could be honest. You could say that your son and your husband sit together on a reclining chair, assume a catatonic, slack-jawed appearance and don't even seem to respire while their eyes are glued upon Hercules and Xena, Warrior Princess. You could say that you try to mitigate the schlock effect of this by reading later to your son from Edith Hamilton's Mythology about the twelve labors of Hercules and then have him draw pictures of Cerberus. Or you could lie and say with great sanctimoniousness that you don't have chrome on your car, or allow mirrors to be in the house, and that your family is Amish.
Disney World
This will happen. Someday, an enterprising graduate student in a film studies department will propose to a faculty advisor that the miles and miles of video tape taken by regular American families for the last two decades will be a great subject for a Ph.D. thesis. The video tapes will depict, with uncanny accuracy, our American obsession with two things which seem to be the birthright of every American child: astonishingly straight teeth and hajj-like visits to our own cultural Mecca, Disney World.
What is it with Disney World? I have a painful confession to make, something akin to announcing one's status as an atheist at a Welcome Wagon Newcomer's Tea. I hate Disney World. I hate what happens to me at Disney World. I hate it that every latent snobby, elitist, and Marxist leaning gruesomely emerges there. I hate it when I feel compelled to announce in the Pirates of the Caribbean gift shop that we are really all capitalist tools supporting a media saturated culture where we cannot buy anything without having it tied in with the latest cartoon movie having Michael Eisner's imprimatur. I hate it how nothing is left to chance in Disney World. I hate it that there are even signs telling the tourist where to take a picture. I hate spending any part of my vacation marveling with complete strangers about the genius of Disney crowd-control. I hate the squeaky clean staff with their professional smiles. Most of all, I hate it that my husband is forced to take me in hand and threaten dire punishment if I ruin the day for the rest of the family.
My husband is right. I hate becoming a kill-joy. I make the conscious decision to straighten up, making a mental note that if the sad (and I hope unlikely) day comes and we divorce, the kids will trip over themselves trying to get to Dad's new rental townhouse and beg him to become their sole custodial parent. Mostly, I look forward to the next day when we will visit Epcot Center acknowledging their more liberal rules governing the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Gimme
I fear my children are turning into moronic consumers, and as repugnant as that situation is, I find I too am caught up with the sheer amassing of things. My six year old is amazed when he is not given some kind of tangible inducement for doing anything. He is given prizes for eating junk food. He is given a plaque from the Y for dressing up like Freddie Krueger to play goalie in a floor hockey game. While it is true he endured the terrifyingly vigorous cheering of other parents and proved undauntable by the audible sighs of the crowd when he could not be induced to ever look at the puck, I ask you, were these even worthy of remark, much less reward? My son expects to be given praise for simply being there; for merely showing up. More alarmingly, I find I am increasingly cranky when my grocery shopping is not rewarded by the supermarket staff offering delicious tidbits for me to sample.
Years ago, right after having my second child, when I was still in that twilight zone comprised of general sleeplessness, feeding someone the precious fluids from my maternal breast, and toilet training an older child, I was given a free sandwich piece at Wegmans. The moment when I tasted that bit of sandwich was piercingly delectable. I realized I had regressed to an infantile state and I too became nothing more than an orifice awaiting nurture. Gone were the days when intellectual ruminations would flit through my mind and I was moved to sheer doggerel by those seconds of epiphany:
Wordsworth's heart leaps up when he
beholds a rainbow in the sky.
My heart leaps up
when I behold
a ham and cheese on rye.
Boredom
Why is it that so many otherwise sensible parents feel so obligated to entertain their children? Why are we so compelled to orchestrate such 'child-friendly' outings, trips, and vacations? Why don't the kids do some of the things we like to do and fake their enjoyment? I can understand when the parents are divorced and the one parent not with the children all the time feels the pressure to come up with things to do which are memorable and fun for the kids. This parent may feel an acute time crunch and literally not able to stand the emotional pressure of suggesting something which has not been prepackaged, predigested, and pronounced "awesome" by the rest of preteen America. My advice to parents everywhere is under no circumstances should you be afraid to bore your children. Bore them to tears. Stop along the highway, read every single historical marker, visit antique shops, tour museums, and make the kids hike the whole way. It is useful to note that no matter how much we may try to please our children they still will have their jaded and sullen moments (maybe years). Remember, we are not cruise directors on the S.S. Childhood.
I told my own kids early on that there was one word they were not to use around me, the 'B' word, the 'bored' word. Depending upon the age of the child, my responses to this dread word range from the succinct to rhetorical exercises of notable length. To my youngest, who has whined about being bored, I tell him, "I'm glad you are, then you'll know when you're excited." To my older children (who have grown more careful about mentioning their boredom) I have a list of chores designed to alleviate that painful condition and a lengthy lecture about the necessity of boredom as a spur to the performing of great deeds. The eye rolling, sarcastic sighing, and looks of acute pain tell me my strategy is wonderfully effective. I don't think parents should hit kids, call them names, or do anything else that tears them down emotionally. On the other hand, a good measure of supervised boredom is fairly benign and I've found, even character-building!
Film Noir
I marvel at the couples I see at the movies, all apparently delighted with their mutual movie choice and munching from a single bag of popcorn. My husband has not trusted in my movie suggestions since sometime during the early 80's. He lost confidence in my movie-picking ability when I insisted that we see together a wonderful film called, My Dinner With Andre. After the first hour, he turned to look at me with incredulity. He couldn't believe he was going to sit through yet another hour of watching two men eat dinner and talk. I couldn't believe that I was going to have to sit next to a husband in the process of melting down into a petulant toddler. I have strict rules about behavior exhibited by those who attend movies with me: no talking, coordinate breathing to match mine, and no obstreperous eating. These rules are difficult for him. My husband also has no feel for literary or film convention, (he went to a famous technological institute where a course entitled, The Physics of Music, was accepted as a humanities credit) so to him two cigarettes in an ashtray symbolize the peril of second-hand smoke and a train going through a tunnel signifies mass transit. If an actress changes an article of clothing or hairstyle between scenes, he cannot seem to recognize her as the same character, will poke me in the ribs, and whisper loudly, "where'd this one come from?"
I realize some wonderful men sat through Sense and Sensibility with the women in their lives. Some men even watched all six episodes of A&E's Pride and Prejudice. I expect nothing of the sort from my husband because I realized early in my marriage that unless Jane Austen had included some explosions, wet t-shirts, or gruesome battle scenes, Bill would writhe in acute dramatic distress. It is sad to admit this, but I have been the one to compromise. I've even caught myself snickering at Wayne's World and Dumb and Dumber. Even I knew when I was licked and realized some battles are not worth waging!
The $3,950.00 BMW
We needed a second car and I saw this shining red object in the front yard of someone's house. I thought to myself, maybe this could be the one. I called the car's owner and was told the price which was, unbelievably, in our range. Bill, ever thrifty, refuses to make car payments, so the transaction was made and in cash. Little did I know that BMW drivers are a neurotic and obsessive group of people. What looked like a simple mode of transportation to me became a totem of iconic significance to my husband. It provoked conversation among the men in the neighborhood (true, largely monosyllabic conversation - "nice car" "BMW, great car.") In order to work on the car, Bill decided to join the BMW club (A CLUB?!!) so that he could get their little catalogue and order stuff. He began staying up nights to look at all the things he could buy, giving this activity the attention monks once devoted to their illuminated manuscripts. He began ordering and was delighted when packages were at our house within two days. German precision knows no bounds!
I knew Bill was getting in more and more over his head when he announced one night that we should consider buying a third car so he wouldn't have to drive the twenty-year-old BMW during the winter months. Evidently, the salt on our roads would literally "eat it up alive." He found a second-hand Oldsmobile which makes a weird grinding sound whenever the car is in motion and about which we were assured by the salesman was normal for this make and model. The car needed some body work which Bill did by himself. On foggy, low-lit days it looks almost professional.
My husband's obsessions now extend to his inordinate interest in keeping up with the latest developments on the Weather Channel. He must know, with painstaking accuracy, whether or not he will be able to drive the BMW to work the next day. If there is a hint of moisture in the air, the barest fleck of fluffy cloud, the red car remains ensconced in the garage. I know when spring arrives in Rochester, because on that day, Bill tells me it's time, time to make The Call. "Heather, call Vince Leonardi at State Farm, tell him to reactivate the insurance on the BMW!" That done, he rolls the car ceremonially out of the garage. Neighbors emerge from their homes cheering, the sun is always shining, doves fly overhead, children link hands and dance with delight.
Chemistry 101
This piece is written for all the women out there who may have wondered even casually during the last ten years: "Gee, could my husband be the Unabomber?" After the Washington Post printed the Unabomber's gazillion-word manifesto, I read a detailed profile of who the Unabomber probably was. Gleaned from years of circumstantial evidence, the Unabomber was smart, knew a great deal about electrical circuitry, had a real affinity for explosive devices, knew his chemistry, and had links to some major American universities.
My heart started thumping wildly. My husband's bright, he can rewire anything, he grew up very familiar with all the things kids in the late 50's and early 60's were legally allowed to order from the back pages of Boy's Life and Popular Mechanics, he adores anything that blows up, he knows a lot about chemistry, and he went to college. My hand trembled as it reached to dial the number for the show, America's Most Wanted. I then stopped to think more rationally about what I was all too ready to do…
It's true. Bill loves explosions and knowing this about himself he could have gone down a very different path. He could have become a terrorist and without doubt would have been an excellent one. Instead, he chose the only other career option offering almost unlimited access to materials necessary for powerful pyrotechnics and extraordinary explosives – he is a chemistry professor at the University of Rochester. You should read the heart-warming course evaluations written about him by the first year chemistry students after they've completed Bill's course. "Professor Jones changed my life. I never knew chemistry could be so exciting. His demonstrations were awesome!" "I was thinking about becoming a psych. major until I took Professor Jones' course and saw his explosions!" "Great explosions!" "Loved the explosions!" "Professor Jones makes chemistry FUN. Incredible explosions!" I could literally go on and on, because his freshman chemistry class had over 200 kids in it.
Bill is also well known in our neighborhood for his large collection of fireworks. These are purchased bi-annually during our vacations which, as embarrassing as this is to admit, include a day-long stop at the famous line of demarcation between North and South Carolina, oh-so-wittily called, South of the Border. I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and throughout my childhood, my brother, sister, and I would literally whine until we were blue in the face for our parents to let us take one quick look at that glorious tourist trap with its gigantic statue of a man wearing an enormous sombrero. My parents would huffily explain that the only things they sold there were tacky souvenirs and fireworks, and we already had all the sparklers a family could ever need. Case closed.
As an adult, when I no longer have any possible reason to do anything but smirk in amusement at the ridiculous billboards indicating the tourist's proximity to our nation's biggest emporiums for the purchase of fireworks, I don't even want to get out of the car. My attitude is in marked contrast to that of my husband and children. By the time we've reached South of the Border, the pupils in their eyes have dilated, their hearts are pumping furiously, and they literally spring out of our '87 Chevrolet Celebrity station-wagon. The four of them run into the nearest store after grabbing a shopping cart along the way. If my husband would only look at me the way he looks at those packages of bottle rockets, roman candles, ground flowers, and torches, I wouldn't need the diamond anniversary ring telling me he'd marry me all over again.
Now that the Unabomber's densely worded manifesto proved to be his undoing, it occurred to me that Bill was never really a plausible suspect. Bill is a person who will not willingly write anything. A man who won't even sign his own name on a birthday card, purchased by his wife, for his own mother, is not going to sit down and compose hundreds and hundreds of pages describing our doomed society. Nonetheless, the FBI's apparently successful cracking of this case has left me enormously relieved.
Guilt
We are members of a very liberal religious denomination, the Unitarian Universalists. For us, the ultimate dirty words are 'guilt' and 'obligation.' According to studies done by the Unitarian Universalist Association, our denomination ranks among the top in terms of income levels of its members and dead last in our contributions to the church. It has been suggested that we are so avid in our donations to every other worthy and liberal cause that church pledging becomes only one more line item in an ever-growing list of charitable enterprises. To this, I say, well, I can't write what I say to this.
Guilt. What's wrong with a little of it? I'm not advocating guilt levels in the stratosphere, just let the level be high enough so things get done. Often, I must make telephone calls to members of my church to request assistance for a variety of evidently loathsome tasks. I have grown used to hearing the sharp intake of breath and the wary, hedging tone of voice on the other end of the line. The words I have come to dread are these: "You know Heather, I've really been doing a lot of emotional work on this issue. I've been going to an Assertiveness Training group trying to get over feeling really guilty about saying 'no' to things." At this point, I've been known to ask, "Do you feel any residual guilt whatsoever, just enough to bring six or seven dozen pre-cut bagels to church this Sunday?"
Please, I know all about guilt. I was born in 1955 when guilt was still part of a parent's arsenal for keeping children in line. I was a neurotic, highly strung child and felt enormous responsibility for things I never even did. Now that I am a mother of three children, I am constantly trying to figure out ways to keep my kids on the straight and narrow without damaging their tender, emerging psyches. For my two older daughters, a stern look and a sharp, "THAT'S ENOUGH," seems to work as if by magic. Unfortunately, for my six-year-old son Simon, a stern face, timid time-outs, limp lectures, and urgent appeals to reason are simply not enough.
The following is not a pretty thing to admit, especially for a person of liberal sensibilities and one proud to have a rational frame of mind. As if on automatic pilot one day, I heard myself saying to my child, "Do you know, Simon, what happens to little boys who say things that aren't true? Do you? Well, all the lies a person ever tells are written down, IN REALLY BIG LETTERS in a BIG BOOK and if there are too many, he is thrown into a pit of fire that never burns out. He will stay there for all eternity, writhing in agony, screaming for relief, and crying to be allowed to undo all the wrongs he's done." Simon took this in for a second or two, then very calmly asked, "Mom, is that really true?" What could I say? "Well, maybe not, but I certainly hope it gives you something to think about, young man!" Weak, weak, weak!
A little bit of guilt, a pinch of obligation; maybe they're not such awful things. Without that nagging sense of obligation I would never get out of bed in the morning. Think of all the thank you notes, birthday, get-well, and sympathy cards we would never send if guilt evaporated like the ozone layer. Obligatory guilt keeps us connected with one another. It keeps volunteer organizations running, meals-on-wheels delivered, and makes us call our mothers. Finally, never forget the sheer joy of complaining about all the things we've grudgingly committed ourselves to doing. Martyr mileage is nothing to sneeze at and who knows, maybe our good deeds are being noted in some book in a higher place.
Hypochondria
I wrote this piece in the late 90’s after living in the north of England for six months while my husband was on sabbatical. References to Mad Cow Disease and its human equivalent seemed to be everywhere at the time and provided me with a rich source of stomach-lurching terror.
I am a hypochondriac. I am not proud of this fact but I think it is part of my genetic make-up, for it is a trait I share with my father. I write for other hypochondriacs and the people who struggle valiantly to live with them.
If, dear reader, you are also a fellow-sufferer, I know only too well what you have been obsessively worrying about for the last month and a half. You have been turning the pages of your memory, back, back, back and you have been trying to figure out just how much British beef you could have possibly consumed during the last decade. I know you have been doing this, because it is what I too have been doing. My worry has been fueled, no doubt, because my family and I did spend six months in England in 1989 and I have tried to piece together every meal I cooked in that six month period. That bit of ground beef; it all seemed so innocuous at the time. While we were in England the only food items they were worried about were salmonella eggs and listeria-laden cheeses, not the beef. I think of those meat pasties and sausage rolls, so many consumed and all of dubious origin. Why, why, why?? Could we have eaten the flesh of a mad cow? Could our family be stricken sometime in the future with Creuzfeldt Jakob disease? Even now, when I forget a name or a telephone number, I feel that panicked realization that my brain is already sponging up and will soon have the consistency of a nerf ball.
My hypochondria took a significant upward spiral three years ago when I actually did come up with something that could have been serious, and fatally so. If you are also a hypochondriac, you will know the answer to the following question immediately. If you are not a fellow sufferer, think carefully about your answer because it should be obvious. Just what one disease or condition would give the average, garden-variety hypochondriac the daily wobblies and nightly sweats? What one organ does everyone have miles and miles of? Skin of course. On that skin what does the average person have plenty of? Moles. These moles are at the crux; they are the matrix for much hypochondriacal musing. Has that one changed? Does this look irregular to you? Is that one darker?
My hypochondriac's nightmare assumed reality when a mole on my leg turned out to be melanoma. I couldn't believe it. Hypochondriacs worry so much and yet usually nothing ever turns out to be anything; I was dumbfounded. That wore off quickly enough and I wish I could report to you that I reacted to my doctor's news with calm equanimity. I truly wish I had accepted his diagnosis with magnanimous grace and had not grabbed his white coat lapels and demanded that I be allowed to live to see my precious babies graduate from high school.
The dermatologist told me that I would have to have my entire birthmark removed and he looked at me kind of peculiarly when I asked if he would be doing that procedure himself in his office. After I had the surgery done at the hospital I know why he looked at me as though I were nuts. The surgeon must have used an ice-cream scoop to get at that birthmark. The stitches were these big, thick, black affairs and there were many of them. The bandage was huge and I realized a career as a leg model, while never in the cards before, was definitely out now. Some months later my trendy sister-in-law saw my leg and said, "cool scar." I shot her a withering glance and realized that I, as an uptight, prissy, PTA mother did not want a 'cool' scar. What I wanted were long, lean, tan, suburban legs.
I spent the week after the surgery worrying about the biopsy report. To divert myself a bit, I decided to plan the readings for my funeral. My family and I attend a Unitarian Universalist church and if left up to someone there, I would be eulogized by having our parish minister read "Goodnight Moon" or something dreadful like that. I decided to write some 'extemporaneous' words my husband could memorize beforehand and thereby rouse the congregation to weeping levels found in African American churches. I abandoned this effort when the thought of Bill saying things like, "she was the beacon of light shining in my life," or "I will never, ever, love another woman as I have loved Heather and will spend the rest of my days as a celibate father immersed in the raising of our three children" simply didn't ring true. I spent the rest of the week thinking about all the women who would make great future wives for Bill and wonderfully superb mothers to the kids. I know there are women in our acquaintance now who think Bill is poorly served by his present companion. To boost my flagging spirits, I decided to turn my trauma into art and wrote a short story about a woman who sees malignancy in everything around her: the brown spot on the apple, the eye on the potato, and the little red dot on the top of her electric curlers turning to black when heated. The biopsy report came back and it appears that I'll be able to see my children in cap and gown unless, in the poetic words of my dermatologist, I'm "hit by a bus first."
Americans adore the silver lining and there was one exquisite moment during this ordeal. It occurred when I called to tell my father that I had melanoma. I absolutely love it when people close to me behave in completely predictable ways. My father, true to form, spent perhaps thirty seconds making soothing parental noises about how everything will be okay and how much he and my step-mother would be thinking of me. I had my watch out and had to stifle a laugh because I had been eerily accurate about just how long it would take for him to begin to muse aloud about whether or not he should be checked out at the dermatologist's and about the mole he had been worried about recently. We ended the conversation by my giving him words of bucking up and encouragement. I happened to call him on a Friday at his place in the mountains in North Carolina, far, far away from his retinue of doctors in Charlotte and virtually not able to make any medical appointments until after the long week-end. It was immensely cheering to think of someone else whom I love writhing in obsessive panic about the possibility of having skin cancer. Hallmark should come up with a card for this.
Now that I have inched my way back a bit from the yawning abyss, I have a word of advice for those suffering from something serious. I had heard people can be unwittingly undiplomatic when responding to bad news from another, but like so much else, you don't believe essentially well-meaning people can say such numbingly stupid things until the horrible happens to you. Be judicious upon whom you spring crummy news. There were some people, who upon hearing about my melanoma, gave me detailed lists of people who had died from the same thing I had. I have one friend who grew up in Southern California and let me tell you, her list was prodigiously long! One friend grilled me about past sun exposure and whether or not I had ever used sun block. My gynecologist, to cheer me up, said, "Well, Heather, statistically speaking, you're much more likely to die of breast cancer." Someone else breezily said, "They must have caught yours early, because otherwise you'd be dead." No matter how tempting it is to fill someone in with grisly stories you've heard of their recently diagnosed illness, resist the temptation, literally hold your tongue if you have to, strangle out a "That's too bad," and leave it at that.
We hypochondriacs are a quirky group. I know I don't read many women's magazines and it's not because so many adopt such an irredeemably inconsequential tone about anything truly mattering in life. I don't read them because they all seem to feature an account written in breathless first-person about a "disease of the month." These stories all employ the familiar trope of using hyper-normal beginning gambits like: "It was just a regular, sunny day here in Pasadena when I heard the piercing shouts from the guests around our pool," "Nothing really was wrong, little Angelica just didn't seem to be herself, I thought she was only teething. Little did I know the diagnosis would be leukemia," etc. etc. I can't stand them; they are too similar to my own pulp fiction turn of mind.
Finally, I shall leave my fellow hypochondriacs with this: remember, if you are a woman, your primary care physician's level of respect for you will plummet dramatically if you ask him about the advisability of having a P.S.A. test done because you are experiencing all the symptoms of an enlarged prostate. Sometimes it is helpful to learn from the mistakes of others.
Non-Traditional Student
In every paper written for my graduate courses in English, I used the following words: synecdoche, metonymy, and eponymous. I used these words even though they impeded the clarity of my work, sounded pretentious, and caused me to reroute entirely the carefully worked out arguments in support of my thesis statements. At some point during every semester, I would also casually mention how something the professor said reminded me of Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Theory or wave/particle duality. The momentary sweat of being asked to elaborate further never turned into a full-blown embarrassing moment because the professor always looked delighted, quickly agreed, and moved on. I always used Heisenberg's full name and looked pious.
Now that I have finished my graduate work, I am trying to figure out ways to mention Ludwig Wittgenstein in regular conversation. I have never let gross ignorance or etiquette stand in my way before, so I imagine I'll be soon springing on the unsuspecting, cryptic allusions to Tractatus and his Norwegian period.
Foreign Exchange
When I am concerned about sounding intelligent I put on a phony British accent. One of the things which delighted me most about being in England during my husband's sabbatical was that I could speak in a clipped and proper way without sounding as completely ridiculous as I do here in upstate New York. My darkest confession about these six months is that my speech caused genuine English people to ask if I were Canadian. This delighted me. I didn't want to sound completely British and thereby risk being asked pointed questions concerning my provenance, nor did I want to be mistaken for my boorish fellow countrymen. Sounding vaguely Canadian was perfect!
Suburban Angst
Moving to the suburbs was not a transition I made easily. In the city neighborhood where we had lived for eight years, I bustled about, smugly convinced that my smiling, middle-class presence elevated the entire tone of my street. What finally broke me were the barking dogs, the breaking glass, the conjugal mayhem expressed in excrutiating decibel levels, and stereo speakers as big as Buicks. The noise from my street transformed me, already seven months pregnant, into a pajama-clad, wild-haired, frothing, madwoman. When we moved to our suburban house from our place in the city, it was the middle of winter and I was in the last month of my third and final pregnancy. The sheer and joyous convenience of being able to barely touch a button in one's car and have the garage door open, almost moved me to sobs. This relatively simple thing caused me to muse about the general air of satisfaction I found during those first months among the denizens of the suburbs. I have more recently come to the conclusion that living with so much green grass, mature trees, and general tidiness causes a certain blindness to the suffering of others. I have also discovered that when bundled up in winter clothing, all white kids look the same.
Arc of Transcendence: Camille Paglia's Guide to Toilet Training Your Son
After bringing up two daughters, I was grossly unaware of the tactics employed by parents to impart to their young male offspring the necessity of tinkling into the potty. One friend suggested the Cheerio Method. This approach entails throwing Cheerios into the toilet, calling them nuclear subs and telling your little boy to sink them with his powerful stream. My four-year-old son's trips to the bathroom began to take on the festive nature of Mardi Gras. The Cheerio Method was fun, effective, and sadly abandoned when it became clear that Simon was spending more time alone in the bathroom than the average fourteen-year-old. Other plans went into effect. One day in desperation I placed a masking tape 'X' on the floor in front of the toilet and told Simon to "stand right there and go." This was only partially effective. I then took to standing in the doorway of the bathroom in order to give him the necessary coaching. "Stand there, don't wait too long before you go, look at what you're doing, concentrate, don't dribble, put the seat down, flush, wash (with soap), not that towel, remember the light..."
Somehow, nothing I said; nothing I did, prevented those pesky puddles on our bathroom floor.
Something had to give; something had to change. Then, something did. I realized with sudden force I was going about things ALL WRONG. My son didn't need to change, however my perception of the situation did. Thinking about the problem, if indeed it was a problem, had to become more enlightened and thereby broadened by compassionate understanding. Enter Camille Paglia.
If you haven't heard of her, you will. She is an outspoken literary and cultural critic. Camille Paglia has a tremendously big mouth and the things that pop out of it make everyone on any side of an issue lividly angry. The people she makes angriest are the feminists, yet she is referred to as a member of that group. She sometimes appears on t.v. (CNN or Comedy Central) especially when something weirdly awful and newsworthy happens. For example, when asked about the goings on between America's cutest couple, the Bobbits, let's just say that Camille didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for poor little Lorena. Paglia's book, fetchingly called, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, contains a laugh on every page and it has CHANGED the way I go about BRINGING UP MY CHILD!!
In the beginning of the book, Paglia takes pages and pages to describe her praise of Male Achievement. She froths on about great swaths of earth being moved, roads being built, paintings being painted, math problems being solved, and civilization being brought under human sway by the male members of our society. Paglia believes this tremendous energy is the result of baby boys coming into this world equipped with a primal urge to separate themselves from anything smacking of the female, the earthy, and maternal. She thinks everything about the male becomes a projection outward, to the beyond and that it is they who are the creators and doers in our world. Paglia gives proper kudos to Freud and then makes a remark which will forever alter the course of toilet training the young boys of our nation. On page twenty-one she writes: "Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendence." I looked up 'transcend' in the dictionary and it means to rise above, go beyond the limits of, to outdo, surpass, excel... And just think, ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING RIGHT IN OUR OWN BATHROOMS!!!
I am a changed woman. No longer do I sink to my knees with sponge and Lysol muttering to myself in seething resentment about the inability of my son (or husband for that matter) to go in the toilet bowl. Because of Camille Paglia, I realize now that when my little boy is going to the bathroom, he is actually entering a spiritually transcendent zone where great ideas are formed, new inventions are being created, and the 1997 car models are being conceived. Thanks to Camille Paglia, I am satisfied in my role as hand maiden to history and serenely mop up my son's moist 'messages' to the planet. She has even brought a sort of harmony to the life my husband and I share. No longer do I lash out in sudden fury when my middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom include a jolting descent into the toilet bowl because he has neglected to put the seat down. I now chuckle benignantly to myself while musing, "The sweetheart, he must have had another great idea tonight!"
As a final note, Paglia writes (right there on page 38) something that should make her the poster girl for the men's movement: "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts." Now, now, Camille, at least they'd be clean, dry huts!