by Peggy Rowe
By the time Dad and John had finished building a stable and fencing in a pasture, Jet, too, had passed away of old age at the Humane Society. Our sons ranged in age from three to eight and, though they didn’t share my passion for horses, they did humor me from time to time and join me on a trail ride. Mom was usually on hand with a camera on those occasions, especially when the pony cart appeared on her lawn. Bragging about your family is one thing, but, as everyone knows, a picture is worth a thousand words.
There was mutual respect between my husband and mother. Not that they always saw eye to eye. I was an observer on one such ulcer-producing occasion. Mom was having a bad day and probably expecting company that evening when she confronted John in a dramatic fashion.
“There are tractor parts and a pile of wood in the back of the shop! It’s the first thing people see when they drive up the lane, and I want it picked up now! The place looks like a junkyard!” she said, sniffing and throwing her head back.
If Dad had been there, he’d have said, “Hon, we’re in the middle of a project. We’ll pick it up as soon as we’re finished.”
But John looked at my mother and said calmly, “I beg your pardon. Who do you think you’re talking to, Nana? This is John. I don’t talk to you like that, and I’ll thank you not to take that tone with me.”
My immediate coronary thrombosis soon gave way to gratitude that my husband stood up to my mother, in a respectful manner. The alternative would have been to hold onto anger and harbor resentment. No one understood this more than my mother.
There were other dramas in the family compound. My mother’s sixtieth birthday party, for example.
Joining us for the evening were my aunt, uncle, and one of my cousins. Aunt Elvira was the only one of Mom’s siblings who had settled in Baltimore, and we were close, not only because she was sweet and kind, but because, from the beginning, my mother had reservations concerning my uncle’s suitability as a husband and father. It was her duty as the oldest sister to keep an eye on things. And that she did.
Aunt Elvira didn’t drive, and we had always included her and my cousins in our daytrips and church activities. For her sister’s sake, Mom tolerated my uncle for evening card games and family gatherings, though her eyebrows worked overtime on such occasions.
My house might not have been as sterile as the rancher next door, where one could literally eat off the floor, but it passed muster on this particular evening and the animals were safely sequestered in the basement. Or so I thought.
I had slaved most of the afternoon over a hot milk pound cake with boiled fudge icing, my mother’s favorite. After the gifts were opened, Mom and Aunt Elvira led the way to our newly enlarged country kitchen where the long harvest table was set with my best Blue Willow dishes. When they stopped dead in their tracks and Aunt Elvira gasped, I knew that the time I’d spent on the preparations had been worth it.
Until my mother screamed.
In the center of the table, between the cake and colorful fall arrangement, stood Caesar the cat. Sensing that time was of the essence, the nine-pound ball of gray fur was shaking boiled fudge icing from his hind foot and lapping cream from the pitcher as if the house was on fire and the flames had reached his tail. He took my mother’s scream as an ominous sign and leapt from the table, at which point our indignant dog took up the chase.
As the boys herded the animals back into the basement, and Mom scoured the cream pitcher and scraped icing from the side of the cake, seven-year-old Scott uttered the words that would live in infamy:
“Hey look, Nana! You can eat off of our floor too—if you like dog food and cat fur!”
My Aunt Elvira, who was never judgmental of my housekeeping standards, covered her mouth and laughed so hard she got a nosebleed.
Bragging Rights
My mother was to bragging what Rembrandt was to a portrait, especially when it came to her five grandsons. So much so that my sister and I worried that our relatives would resent our “exceptional” sons.
The year our first-grader played a piano duet with his music teacher at the school Christmas concert, my mother’s eyes sparkled with pride.
“Mom, it’s only ‘Chopsticks,’ ” I reminded her.
She sniffed and threw her head back. “I believe the announcer called it ‘Christmas Chopsticks!’ ” She returned her gaze to Phil, no doubt imagining his future as featured pianist with the Baltimore Symphony.
When the orchestra joined in, her smile broadened. Imagine! Her youngest grandson playing piano with a full orchestra, at the age of six. She turned to the stranger seated beside her. I couldn’t hear her, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t explaining that her grandson was banned from the chorus for not doing his classwork.
The evening my mother learned that Scott had scored the highest SAT grade in his high school, she went to her bridge game with a spring in her step. The summer day outdoorsman-Scott dove into the deep end of a pool and saved a drowning man’s life, Mom took to her bullhorn. She overlooked her grandson’s Dungeons & Dragons mania, keeping her disapproval to herself the Sunday Scott walked down the church aisle to a Bach prelude in his black jacket with a gold fire-breathing dragon on the back. It was the compromise my son and I had reached when he informed me that he didn’t have time for church and reminded me of the day I walked this very aisle in a fringed suede jacket.
Of course, I never shared my own concerns about the role-playing game with my mother. There had been tragic stories in the news about Dungeons & Dragons fanatics. Nor did I tell her how I had stalked the group of five or six self-described nerds during their meetings and games in our basement. I didn’t mention the times I had sat on the stairs listening as they lived vicariously through the exploits of their D&D characters. My presence would have been as welcome as my mother’s when she stalked me at Triangle Farm and Bill’s place.
The athletic and academic achievements of Janet’s sons in Virginia were a source of great pride and material for Mom. If there were any negatives in their lives, nobody heard about them from my mother. The day would come when she would work into conversations that Gary was a college professor over in Washington and that Stephen and Scott were structural and civil engineers. “Imagine, a college professor and two engineers in the family!” she’d say.
Constantly on the prowl for material, Mom left no stone unturned. The year Phil had the lead in his high-school production of Harvey, something as mundane as a rabbit hopping across the yard could unleash a glowing critique of his Elwood P. Dowd portrayal. When he played the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz, Mom compared his performance to that of Burt Lahr.
My mother was an equal-opportunity bragger, proud of all her offspring. But when Mike’s television career took off, she hit the lottery. Fans actually pursued the grandmother of the local TV personality.
“We saw your grandson on television this morning, Thelma. My, he has a nice voice.”
“Oh, thank you,” she’d say, giggling and waving them off, as though the subject were too embarrassing. “He and Scott sang in the church choir, and Mike sang with the Baltimore Opera, you know. I attended every performance.”
The year Mike had a brief solo in the opera Martha, my mother hosted a pre-performance dinner party like the ones written up in the Society section of The Baltimore Sun. She invited certain relatives and a few friends with an appreciation for the arts.
Six months after Mike became a host on QVC, collectable dolls stared down from Mom’s china closet, and her kitchen cabinets looked like a T-Fal warehouse.
Her QVC Diamonique pendant presented endless bragging opportunities.
When Dirty Jobs debuted, I was as happy for Mom as I was for Mike. Lord knows I had given her precious little to brag about growing up. I still remembered that Sunday morning on the church steps where a group of ladies stood talking about a school dance their daughters had attended the night before. I arrived on the scene in time to hear my mother’s jaded voice.
“Well, Peggy’s not much
when it comes to dancing, but she sure can pitch manure!” She seemed pleased by the laughter. She had one accomplished, normal daughter to her credit, so there was no danger of her parenting skills being called into question.
At ninety-one, Mom had supported every step of Mike’s TV career. His squeaky clean, wholesome reputation was a reflection of his roots. Naturally, she had told everyone she knew to tune in to the Discovery Channel that first Tuesday night at 9:00 P.M. for the show with the quirky little title, Dirty Jobs.
At 8:58, the phone rang. “Ain’t the beer cold! Are you watching? One minute to go. I’ll call you during the commercial,” she said.
Suddenly, there he was, our son—or so we thought. It was difficult to recognize him in the rubber suit and breathing apparatus. He could have been a moonwalker had he not been standing knee-deep in guano, surrounded by blackness and deadly fumes. As urine and other bodily fluids from millions of bats rained from above, a biologist warned Mike that the guano was filled with dermestid beetles committed to cleaning the flesh from his bones if given half a chance.
At the first commercial break, John and I turned to each other with a frozen look of horror—our popcorn and soda untouched. When the phone rang, I jumped, then took a deep breath.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Peggy!”
“What’s wrong? Are you having trouble breathing?” I asked, worried that her congestive heart failure had flared up.
“Peggy, Michael’s in a bat cave! He’s standing in filth, with flesh-eating beetles!”
“Mom, you spoke with him yesterday. You know he’s all right.”
“He’s on national television! Our family’s watching! My friends are watching!”
I explained the concept of the show, again. “Mike works as an apprentice for a day with people who do the jobs most people don’t want—jobs that make our lives more comfortable.”
With each episode, she called during commercials and vented.
“Did you see where his hand was?”
“Your son said holy crap on national television!”
“Michael was drinking beer. Do you think that sends a good message?”
“Peggy, the next time you talk to Michael, remind him that Regis and Kathie Lee could be watching. Good heavens, the Queen could be watching!”
Through it all, Mom’s pride remained intact, especially when a well-groomed grandson appeared on talk shows or in commercials. The Tuesday night we saw Mike standing knee-deep in steaming manure, stripped to the waist with his arm up the rear-end of a bull, I let John answer the phone.
Our Christmas Close-up
I was heading for the mall exit when a stranger approached me and shoved something in my face. A similar incident had just occurred in the cosmetics aisle of a department store when a saleslady sprayed me with a nauseating perfume.
This time, a woman said, “Here you go, ma’am, a coupon for an 8x10 family photograph—absolutely free!” She spoke fast like a carnival barker.
I hated these wretched trips to the mall! Buying a gift for my mother was an impossible task. Christmas was so much simpler back in the good old days when she bought her own gifts, along with everyone else’s.
Not again! I thought, raising my hand and turning my head away from the annoying woman. And then, as I swerved, she waved a coupon in the air and said something that got my attention.
“It would make the perfect Christmas gift, hon!”
Now, I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to angels and such, but there was an unmistakable aura around that woman’s head when she slapped the coupon in my hand.
The more I thought about the family portrait, the more excited I became. I stuck the coupon in my pocket and headed for the parking garage picturing the photograph of my sister’s family that hung on my parents’ living room wall. It was the first thing guests saw as they entered the house, and Mom regarded it with pride. Janet, wearing a classic, tailored dress and Morris and the boys in suits. The quintessential successful American family. The picture had always reminded me of the Cleavers—Ward, June, Wally, and the Beaver, though I never told my sister.
I started the car, picturing my own family photograph beside my sister’s—John and I in our Sunday best, flanked by our three handsome sons wearing tuxedoes. They had been a frightful expense at the time, but, as members of their elite high school a capella chorus and concert choir, tuxedoes were mandatory.
It would be the perfect Christmas gift for my parents! Mom would probably hang one of those gallery lights over it.
By the time I reached the main road, reality was setting in. Who was I kidding? It would take more than a coupon to get my busy family in one place long enough to pose for a portrait. I stopped at the bakery.
It was one of those rare Friday evenings in our house when everyone showed up for dinner. When the time came, I placed the platter of éclairs in front of my four men and whipped the coupon from my pocket.
“Hey, look what we won, a free family photograph! It’ll be the perfect Christmas gift for Nana and Pop.”
“They already have a picture of our family,” John said, wiping chocolate from his lips and pointing to the end table. “Like that one.”
“Oh, that was taken when the children were young. You had all your hair and I was thin. See?”
“Exactly!” he said, taking a sip of coffee. My husband resisted anything new, especially things he regarded as frivolous—a touch-tone telephone, a microwave, a clothes dryer. If he hadn’t gotten married, he’d be sitting on a crate, cooking squirrel over a bonfire.
“Did I mention it’s free? The boys could wear their tuxes. Mom and Dad would love it. Okay guys, I’m desperate!” I yelled. “I’m going to make an appointment.”
“Sorry, Mom, but I’m lifeguarding all weekend.” Scott, our nineteen-year-old college sophomore, worked part-time at the Holiday Inn at the Inner Harbor.
“And I’ll be out of town with the quartet,” said Mike. At twenty-one and out of college, he still lived at home. I knew this because his dirty clothes surfaced in the laundry from time to time.
“It won’t take long,” I pleaded.
Sixteen-year-old Phil was easy. “I’m free anytime,” he said, reaching for a second éclair.
“Come on, Mom, you have to admit that studio photographs are boring!” said Mike. To prove his point, he walked to the end table and held up our picture. “Look at us! Five mummies in the shape of a pyramid.”
Scott chuckled. “We look like bowling pins with hair.”
“I love that picture!” I said. “It was taken by a professional photographer.”
“Exactly!” spoke the voice of reason.
“Now, if we could dress in character, that would be a different story.” Suddenly Mike sounded enthused. “An expression of our personalities and interests—our aspirations.”
I looked around at my family, picturing Scott dressed as a conscientious student, Mike as a young businessman, and Phil in something casual but tasteful. John and I would dress as respectable schoolteachers, of course.
“Well, as long as we all look nice,” I said. “Nana has high standards, you know.”
Mike picked up the coupon. “Here’s a telephone number. Maybe they can take us now.”
“I just took my suit off,” John grumbled.
“Great!” I heard Mike say a minute later. “We’ll be there in an hour, and we’ll be dressed a little unconventionally.” He said goodbye and turned to us.
“Listen up, everybody. The studio has an opening in an hour. Dad, that undershirt’s perfect. The little hole’s a nice touch. Put on some suspenders and a cap. Take your pipe and the newspaper.”
“Now you’re talkin’, son!”
My mouth fell open. “Your father is not going to dress like L’il Abner for our formal portrait!”
Mike shrugged. “That’s how I see him, Mom.”
“It’s called realism,” Scott explained in his sophomoric wisdom. John headed for the bedroom whistling
.
“You’re fine, Mom. Just keep that apron on, maybe smear some flour on your nose.”
I was losing control.
“That’s how we all see you, Mom,” said Scott, mirroring his brother’s enthusiasm.
“Come on, guys, let’s get our outfits together,” said Mike. “At least shave, Scott,” I shouted up the stairs behind them.
Forty-five minutes later, we strolled through Golden Ring Mall looking like the Village People, except for John, of course, who was a hillbilly straight out of Dogpatch, USA.
The receptionist stood up and stared as we approached.
“It’s okay,” our son assured her. “I cleared it with the manager.” In a small room, he posed us before a tripod. Across the hall, a photographer was arranging a neatly dressed family in the shape of a pyramid.
“Ah, the good old days,” I reminisced. “I thought I asked you to shave, Scott,” I said.
“I did. I used Dad’s electric razor.”
“You have to plug it in!” I said.
A second later, I stared up at my son, the flasher, wearing a red bow tie, his tanned hairy chest peeking through his raincoat.
“Now, wait a minute,” I began, but he interrupted me.
“This is it, guys. Dad, give me a pensive look. Mom, a vacant smile—you know, like Edith Bunker. Scott, a rebellious, know-it-all grin. And little brother, I need a big carefree, fun-lovin’ laugh from you.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Scott’s headband and the message on his shirt: “Students of the World Unite!”
I should have felt gratitude that he wasn’t smoking a joint and John wasn’t drinking moonshine from a jug.
The photographer appeared, raised his eyebrows, and gawked. “Whoa! Is it Halloween or something?”