Forever, Erma

by Erma Bombeck

  Mother Earned Her Wrinkles—February 8, 1976

  According to her height and weight on the insurance charts, she should be a guard for the Lakers.

  She has iron-starved blood, one shoulder is lower than the other, and she bites her fingernails.

  She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She should be. She’s worked on that body and face for more than 60 years. The process for that kind of beauty can’t be rushed.

  The wrinkles in the face have been earned...one at a time. The stubborn one around the lips that deepened with every “No!” The thin ones on the forehead that mysteriously appeared when the first child was born.

  The eyes are protected by glass now, but you can still see the perma-crinkles around them. Young eyes are darting and fleeting. These are mature eyes that reflect a lifetime. Eyes that have glistened with pride, filled with tears of sorrow, snapped in anger and burned from loss of sleep. They are now direct and penetrating and look at you when you speak.

  The bulges are classics. They developed slowly from babies too sleepy to walk who had to be carried home from Grandma’s, grocery bags lugged from the car, ashes carried out of the basement while her husband was at war. Now they are fed by a minimum of activity, a full refrigerator and TV bends.

  The extra chin is custom-grown and takes years to perfect. Sometimes you can only see it from the side, but it’s there. Pampered women don’t have an extra chin. They cream them away or pat the muscles until they become firm. But this chin has always been there, supporting a nodding head that has slept in a chair all night...bent over knitting...praying.

  The legs are still shapely, but the step is slower. They ran too often for the bus, stood a little too long when she clerked in a department store, got beat up while teaching her daughter how to ride a two-wheeler. They’re purple at the back of the knees.

  The hands? They’re small and veined and have been dunked, dipped, shook, patted, wrung, caught in doors, splintered, dyed, bitten and blistered, but you can’t help but be impressed when you see the ring finger that has shrunk from years of wearing the same wedding ring. It takes time—and much more—to diminish a finger.

  I looked at Mother long and hard the other day and said, “Mom, I have never seen you so beautiful.”

  “I work at it,” she snapped.

  The Listener—February 26, 1977

  It was one of those days when I wanted my own apartment—unlisted.

  My son was telling me in complete detail about a movie he had just seen, punctuated by 3,000 You knows. My teeth were falling asleep.

  There were three phone calls—strike that, three monologues that could have been answered by a recording. I fought the urge to say, “It’s been nice listening to you.”

  In the cab from home to the airport, I got another assault on my ear, this time by a cabdriver who was rambling on about his son whom he supported in college and who was in his last year. He had put a P.S. on his letter. I got married. Her name is Diane. He asked me, “What do you think of that?” and proceeded to answer the question himself.

  There were 30 whole beautiful minutes before my plane took off, time for me to be alone with my own thoughts, to open a book and let my mind wander. A voice next to me belonging to an elderly woman said, “I’ll bet it’s cold in Chicago.”

  Stone-faced, I answered, “It’s likely.”

  “I haven’t been to Chicago in nearly three years,” she persisted. “My son lives there.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, my eyes intent on the book.

  “My husband’s body is on this plane. We’ve been married for fifty-three years. I don’t drive, you know, and when he died a nun drove me from the hospital. We aren’t even Catholic. The funeral director let me come to the airport with him.”

  I don’t think I have ever detested myself more than I did at that moment. Another human being was screaming to be heard and in desperation had turned to a cold stranger who was more interested in a novel than the real-life drama at her elbow.

  All she needed was a listener. No advice, wisdom, experience, money, assistance, expertise or even compassion, but just a minute or two to listen.

  It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.

  She talked steadily until we boarded the plane, then found her seat in another section. As I hung up my coat, I heard her plaintive voice say to her seat companion, “I’ll bet it’s cold in Chicago.”

  I prayed, “Please, God, let her listen.”

  Why am I telling you this? To make me feel better. It won’t help, though.

  Mothers of Disabled Children—May 11, 1980

  Most women become mothers by accident, some by choice, a few by social pressures and a couple by habit.

  This year, nearly 100,000 women will become mothers of handicapped children. Did you ever wonder how these mothers of handicapped children are chosen?

  Somehow I visualize God hovering over Earth selecting His instruments for propagation with great care and deliberation. As He observes, He instructs His angels to make notes in a giant ledger.

  “Armstrong, Beth: son; patron saint, Matthew. Forest, Marjorie: daughter; patron saint, Cecilia.

  “Rudledge, Carrie: twins; patron saint...give her Gerard. He’s used to profanity.”

  Finally, He passes a name to an angel and smiles. “Give her a blind child.”

  The angel is curious. “Why this one, God? She’s so happy.”

  “Exactly,” says God. “Could I give a child with a handicap to a mother who does not know laughter? That would be cruel.”

  “But has she patience?” asks the angel.

  “I don’t want to her to have too much patience, or she will drown in a sea of self-pity and despair. Once the shock and resentment wear off, she’ll handle it.”

  “But, Lord, I don’t think she even believes in you.”

  God smiles. “No matter. I can fix that. This one is perfect. She has just enough selfishness.”

  The angel gasps. “Selfishness? Is that a virtue?”

  God nods. “If she can’t separate herself from the child occasionally, she’ll never survive. Yes, here is a woman whom I will bless with a child less than perfect. She doesn’t realize it yet, but she is to be envied. She will never take for granted a spoken word. She will never consider a step ordinary. When her child says ‘Momma’ for the first time, she will be present at a miracle and know it! When she describes a tree or a sunset to her blind child, she will see it as few people ever see my creations.

  “I will permit her to see clearly the things I see—ignorance, cruelty, prejudice—and allow her to rise above them. She will never be alone. I will be at her side every minute of every day of her life, because she is doing my work as surely as she is here by my side.”

  “And what about her patron saint?” asks the angel, pen poised in midair.

  God smiles. “A mirror will suffice.”

  Heroes—August 2, 1981

  Ironically, the two events happened within a day of one another.

  On the first Saturday of last month, a 22-year-old U.S. tennis player hoisted a silver bowl over his head at Centre Court at Wimbledon.

  The day before, five blind mountain climbers, a man with an artificial leg, an epileptic and two deaf adventurers stood atop the snowcapped summit of Mount Rainier.

  It was a noisy victory for the tennis player, who shared it with thousands of fans, some of whom had slept on the sidewalks outside the club for six nights waiting for standing-room-only tickets.

  It was a quiet victory for the climbers, who led their own cheering, punctuated by a shout from one of them that echoed on the winds: “There’s one for the epileptics!”

  The controversy that surrounded the tennis player’s frequent outbursts of temper was justified by pressure. “It’s not easy when it’s a one-on-one situation. You have to prove yourself.”

  One man who climbed the mountain took 20 minut
es to tie his own shoe.

  There was a lot of rhetoric exchanged at Wimbledon regarding “bad calls.”

  At Mount Rainier they learned to live with life’s bad calls a long time ago. The first man to reach the mountaintop tore up his artificial leg to get there.

  Somehow, I see a parallel here that all Americans are going to have to come to grips with. In our search for heroes and heroines, we often lose our perspective.

  We applaud beauty pageant winners; we ignore the woman without arms who paints pictures with a brush in her teeth. We extol the courage of a man who will sail over 10 cars on a motorcycle; we give no thought (or parking place) to the man who threads his way through life in a world of darkness or silence.

  The care and feeding of heroes is solely in the hands of the public. Not all winners are heroes. Not all people with disabilities are heroes. “Hero” is a term that should be awarded to those who, given a set of circumstances, react with courage, dignity, decency and compassion—people who make us feel better for having seen or touched them.

  I think the crowds went to the wrong summit and cheered the wrong champion.

  Caregivers—November 26, 1991

  Recently in a column I lamented the death of heroes. I was wrong. There isn’t a scarcity of heroes. I was just looking for them in the wrong places.

  I thought they hung out in sports arenas, great halls, battlefields or between the pages of adventure books.

  I should have been looking for them in pharmacies, where they are waiting to have prescriptions filled; in hospital corridors, keeping vigil or collapsing wheelchairs and storing them in the trunks of cars. They are called nurturers—the well one in the family who takes care of the one with needs.

  How many times have we passed by without seeing these nameless, faceless people who roll out of bed each day to serve? Most of them live in the shadow of those who are ill. They are not used to someone asking how they feel. If it should miraculously happen, they would probably feel guilty answering, “Fine.”

  Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain. Nurturers face each day without benefit of numbing painkillers or anesthetics. They live in a world where personal feelings and duty clash. Those who have assumed the mantle of responsibility for another human being hate the word hero. They are doing what they want to do, must do and wouldn’t want anyone else to do.

  I have observed women who pay the bills, have the oil changed in the car, change furnace filters, negotiate for a new roof, turn over CDs and go crazy trying to keep pace with Medicare and Medicaid forms when their husbands are unable to do so.

  I have seen men who bake pies, do the marketing, address Christmas cards, keep track of birthdays, water plants, scrub floors and go crazy trying to keep pace with Medicare and Medicaid forms when their wives are unable to do so.

  And daily I watch grown children who run errands, make a million phone calls, take parents to appointments, drop off food, make sure their license plates are current, their lawns are cut and their walks cleared of snow and go crazy trying to keep pace with Medicare and Medicaid forms.

  Today would be a good time to think about them. And when you see a nurturer, ask, “How you doin’?”

  Mothers Who Have Lost a Child—May 14, 1995

  If you’re looking for an answer this Mother’s Day on why God reclaimed your child, I don’t know. I only know that thousands of mothers out there today desperately need an answer as to why they were permitted to go through the elation of carrying a child and then lose it to miscarriage, accident, violence, disease or drugs.

  Motherhood isn’t just a series of contractions, it’s a state of mind. From the moment we know life is inside us, we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human being. It’s a promise we can’t keep.

  We beat ourselves to death over that pledge. “If I hadn’t worked through the eighth month.” “If I had taken him to the doctor when he had a fever.” “If I hadn’t let him use the car that night.” “If I hadn’t been so naive, I’d have noticed he was on drugs.”

  The longer I live, the more convinced I become that surviving changes us. After the bitterness, the anger, the guilt and the despair are tempered by time, we look at life differently.

  While I was writing my book I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise, I talked with mothers who had lost a child to cancer. Every single one said death gave their lives new meaning and purpose. And who do you think prepared them for the rough, lonely road they had to travel? Their dying child. They pointed their mothers toward the future and told them to keep going. The children had already accepted what their mothers were fighting to reject.

  The children in the bombed-out nursery in Oklahoma City have touched more lives than they will ever know. Workers who had probably given their kids a mechanical pat on the head without thinking that morning are making calls home during the day to their children to say, “I love you.”

  This may seem like a strange Mother’s Day column on a day when joy and life abound for the millions of mothers throughout the country. But it’s also a day of appreciation and respect. I can think of no mothers who deserve it more than those who had to give a child back.

  In the face of adversity, we are not permitted to ask, “Why me?” You can ask, but you won’t get an answer. Maybe you are the instrument who is left behind to perpetuate the life that was lost and appreciate the time you had with it.

  The late Gilda Radner summed it up well: “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned the hard way that some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what is going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”

  Wish You Were Here (Instead of Me)

  Help Thy Neighbor—August 25, 1968

  ONE OF THE FINEST traditions in America today is the camaraderie of neighbors who pitch in when one of them goes on vacation. These are the good Samaritans who take in animals, tend gardens, gather the mail and literally house sit while the family vacations in peace.

  That’s why I can’t understand our neighbors Bob and Helen taking off the way they did in the middle of the night without so much as a simple goodbye, here’s my door key or kiss my foot.

  Heaven knows we’ve always tried to be good neighbors to Bob and Helen. We even kept their bird for them when they went to Florida. No one was more upset than we were when it died.

  And the summer they asked us to pick their tomatoes and dispose of them. No one could have been more conscientious. We plucked them before they fell on the ground to rot and put them on their windowsills to ripen. I’m not Orville Freeman. How was I to know they were yellow tomatoes and were ripe when we picked them?

  I don’t understand it. I’ve always gathered their mail and saved it for them. Lucky I’m not a gossipy woman. I could not care less that the County Sanitary Department sent them a second billing or that Helen’s brother, Stan, is trying to find work in St. Louis and will send for his family when he finds a place. Like I told Helen, “We at the card club contend if you get a bill from your gynecologist, that’s your business...not ours.”

  One of the things we’ll miss this year is straightening up little Ralphie’s paper route. It’s like I told him, “There’s only one way to deal with deadbeats. Sure you’ll lose eight or nine customers by making them feel cheap, but in the long run you should be glad to be rid of them.”

  I can’t believe Helen would leave without making some arrangements for her flowers. Like I told her the first year, “I’m no garden clubber, but I know about sunlight and water.” I did the best I could. The year they went to Michigan, I lugged that rubber plant of theirs out on the patio every morning. The more water and sun I gave it, the more it drooped. Very frankly, I think it was Helen’s fault for not telling me it was plastic.

  It sure is strange not going over and turning on every light in the house at dusk or feeding
leftovers to the tropical fish. They probably thought it would be too much for me. My goodness. What are neighbors for?

  Men Never Ask Directions—August 24, 1969

  An obstetrician once made the observation that male babies take longer to deliver. This bears out an old theory I have long held that, even at birth, men are reluctant to ask directions anywhere.

  I can always tell when my husband is lost. At a crossroad he will take out a coin and mumble, “Heads right, tails left.” Or he will snap on the car radio and yell, “Hold it down until I see where this station is originating from.”

  The way I figure it is it’s a simple attack on male superiority.

  “Are we lost?” I inquire.

  “Certainly not,” he says. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because we are in a field of timothy, and a cow is nibbling away on the radio antenna.”

  “Give me the road map.”

  “Are you going to accuse me of moving the Mississippi River again?”

  “Of course not. Ha! Those fools obviously just let 143 dangle out here in a cornfield. If you can’t trust Triple A, I always say, who can you trust?”

  “Here comes a farmer. Why don’t you ask directions?”

  “Because I am not lost. All I do is go back to where that hound dog was asleep in the road, pick up 17, and that will take us right back to the interstate.”

  “We’ve passed that hound dog so often now he thinks we’re family.”

  “Look, don’t worry about driving the car. You just keep the baby quiet and dry, see to it that little Charlie doesn’t bleed all over the seat covers and Eloise doesn’t get sick again and the two boys don’t fall out of the car fighting over who sits next to the window, and entertain them with some kind of a fun game. In other words, sit back and enjoy yourself.”