Forever, Erma

by Erma Bombeck

  Grandfather’s Solitude—December 25, 1979

  I have always directed my Christmas column toward families who are caught up in a tinsel marathon of tree trimming, stocking stuffing, music making, dog barking and children squealing.

  They’re so busy that sometimes I get only a glance before the garbage is wrapped in me. Occasionally, someone puts me on the back porch to catch the slush from boots. If I’m lucky I escape the licking flames when I get thrown into the fireplace with discarded wrappings and warranties.

  So I’ve decided to write to all of you today who have the time to read me: those who have just moved to an area and haven’t made new friends...those who are alone because they can’t afford the trip home...those whose families have been splintered by distance or disinterest. And you are alone.

  Let me tell you about my grandfather. He lived by himself in a little trailer in southwest Ohio until he died a few years ago. I always felt sorry for him when I visited at Christmas because he only had about five cards on top of the TV set, two or three packages at the most to open, and a pitiful artificial tree with a single strand of lights that bubbled like they were going to boil over.

  You would have thought those pathetic trappings were straight from the Sistine Chapel.

  He’d pick up each card, trace the scene with his fingers and marvel, “This is pretty enough to put in a frame.” Then he’d recite the message inside, which he had memorized.

  The boxes were another delight. He’d shake them and make a guess as to what they held and place them gently under the tree. Then he’d prime you for that big moment when he said, “I’m going to light the tree for you!” My sewing machine had a bigger light.

  The year before he died, when he spent Christmas in the hospital, he raved the entire visiting period over a favor on his dinner tray: a Styrofoam Santa Claus with a red gumdrop hat held on by a toothpick.

  Every Christmas since then, I have had to ask myself: Can I quote a single line from the stack of cards I receive? Can I visit without keeping an eye on my watch? Can I become childlike with excitement over a box that obviously holds a handkerchief? Can I live with my solitude without self-pity?

  God help me. I think my grandfather felt sorry for me.

  No One Diets on Thanksgiving—November 26, 1981

  Sometimes I feel the real meaning of Thanksgiving is lost in a flurry of turkey, prayers and homecomings.

  What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?

  It’s pig-out time throughout the land. No sauces made from blue milk. No pies constructed with sugar substitutes. No potatoes baked with the nutritional value still in the skins. No tradeoffs for the next five weeks for a spoonful of dressing. It’s elastic waistband time, when you not only plan on eating everything in sight but usually exceed your own expectations.

  I have come to await Thanksgiving Day like a child with her nose pressed against the cold window awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus. It’s the only day of the year I set my alarm. This morning, I will get up at dawn and have my turkey-preparation breakfast. This is followed by my turkey-in-the-oven formal breakfast with the family.

  The third breakfast I will combine with snacks and tasting sessions with the cranberries, carrot-cabbage salad, pumpkin chiffon pies, relish plate, vegetable casserole and dressing.

  By three or four in the afternoon, my fourth breakfast will consist of crackers and cheese, canapés and hors d’oeuvres of varying sizes and consistencies, as I certainly do not want to ruin my dinner.

  Around five or six, dinner will be served, at which time I will announce that I have had nothing to eat since breakfast. (Dieters are always managing the truth. It’s their way.)

  After dinner, I will offer to clean out the roaster, only to chip the turkey skin out of the grease and pop it in my mouth before anyone notices. Every bowl I return to the refrigerator as leftovers will also be sampled.

  Around 11 tonight, I will sneak out and put together a dressing sandwich, my last official sin before saying goodbye to the day. As a dieter, I have had my day of liberation.

  If the president ever put Thanksgiving on a Monday, I don’t like to think what dieters would do to him.

  “Love Is” List for a Gusto Husband—February 14, 1982

  Some women married sentimentality.

  Every Valentine’s Day these women get a $1.50 card at their plate with a heart on it and a present expensive enough to be called in on the charge card.

  I married gusto.

  At the birth of our first child, my husband leaned over, punched me on the arm and said, “Way to go, kid.”

  If you’re going to live with gusto, you have to look for the little expressions of love that come each day. The following is a Valentine’s Day message for such a man. If you are a gusto husband, clip it out, mount it on a lacy doily and kiss your wife when you give it to her. It might save your marriage for another 15 minutes.

  LOVE

  Love is climbing out of a warm bed at night and checking to see if all the doors are locked when you think you hear something.

  Love is giving you the pizza with the two slices of pepperoni on it when I love pepperoni.

  Love is acting excited over a $72 needlepoint canvas you bought when we both know you haven’t finished the quilt, the pillow top, the kitchen curtains and the latch-hook rug.

  Love is being mad at the kids at the same time you’re mad at them.

  Love is moving the car seat up as far as it will go when I get out, so you don’t have to do it.

  Love is painting a room together and letting you have the roller once in a while while I do the windowpanes.

  Love is never remembering what birthday you’re celebrating.

  Love is learning how to make coffee and where the cups are.

  Love is pretending to be jealous of your old boyfriend who became a priest.

  Love is never going on a diet when you’re fat.

  Love is giving you the women’s section of the paper to read first when the sports news is in the same section.

  Love is refraining from telling you how the thermostat works.

  Love is a lot of little things that add up to caring. It doesn’t always add up to three little words. Sometimes, it adds up to six: I got your tank filled today.

  Happy Valentine’s Day!

  Thanksgiving and Families—November 25, 1982

  This is the day of families.

  The patriarch who smokes big black cigars that stink up the house for three months.

  The kids who don’t even say hello but start pounding on the piano with their fists until conversation is no longer possible.

  The couple who always pull up in a new car, even though you know they have only about $2 in their pockets and are afraid to answer their own phone.

  The dominant in-law who arrives just when you sit down to eat and leaves right after dessert is served.

  The one who works like a field hand from the moment she arrives until the last dish is put away.

  The uncle who teases the dog.

  The one who never forgets to say grace.

  The short one who volunteers to sit on the piano bench and whose head is three inches above the table.

  The son who always comes in with a buzz on, keeps on drinking and tells everyone he was “overserved.”

  The kid who refuses to eat in the kitchen with the other children and ends up sitting on Mama’s lap at the table.

  What has brought all of them together? Does anyone remember anymore?

  When you think of it, what is a family? A psychological study that got out of hand? A genetic blind date? A group of people related by bad debts? The results of a steering committee that didn’t meet regularly?

  Actually, family members are mirrors of every facet of your life. They know you better than anyone in the world and are willing to overlook and forget. They’ve seen you at your best and
your worst. Often, they’re colossal bores. They’ve told the same stories a hundred times, but sometimes the familiarity is like an old bathrobe, too old to brag about in public, but too good to discard yet.

  Like it or not, you’re bound to them by your history.

  I think about families a lot at Thanksgiving, even more so than at Christmas. Maybe it’s because Thanksgiving offers no incentive for being together except that elusive, mysterious tie that binds us together.

  All I know is, I would kill to see my grandfather smoking those stinking cigars, my uncle teasing that poor dog, my mom bustling around the kitchen helping Grandma, and me banging that piano with my fists just one more time.

  Memory Tree—December 22, 1983

  We call our Christmas tree a memory tree. Each and every ornament on it has a special meaning to someone in our family, and every year we unwrap them one by one and together gather these precious moments around us like spirited fireflies.

  As we lovingly placed each bauble on the tree recently, we could again remember.

  “Look at this,” I said, holding a miniature pie tin with a picture of the Christ child done in crayons with the message OH, COME HOLY SPIT on it. “How old was Andy when he did this? Three? Four?”

  “He was fifteen years old, Mom. He didn’t spell spirit until the year he learned how to drive.”

  “And look at this dear little snowman with the crocheted hat and scarf. I made that when I was in the hospital with Matt.”

  “You bought that at a half-price sale at Penney’s after Christmas. I was with you. Besides, you don’t crochet.”

  “No matter,” I said. “Oh, and look at this little Mexican hat with Feliz Navidad. Call your father. This will stir up a lot of memories for him.”

  My husband appeared.

  “I won’t say anything,” I teased. “Just tell me what this reminds you of.”

  He looked blank.

  “Mazatlan, 1976. Remember, I wanted something for my memory tree?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “And you had the green apple two-step so bad you couldn’t get out of bed.”

  “I got that Mexican hat at a restaurant in LA,” my son said. “It used to have a swizzle stick on it.”

  As I rummaged through the tissue, I carefully unwrapped a little rag doll. “Get Betsy,” I shouted. “She’ll never believe this.”

  “That’s cute,” she said. “Where did you get it?”

  “Surely you jest,” I said. “Why, that’s one of the first dolls I bought you.”

  “Couldn’t be. It has all the eyes, and there’s no fear on its face. All of mine ran away from home.”

  It took me a couple of hours to put on the little sleds, the mice dressed in red, the bread-dough figures and the wreaths made of leaves and berries and to recall the stories behind each and every one.

  Memories: They can’t take that away from me.

  Or can they?

  Christmas Newsletter Winner—December 12, 1985

  Twenty years ago I publicly passed sentence on Christmas newsletters. It was a terrible way to enter the joyous season of Christmas to learn that other people’s children were “sleeping dry” at age three months and that Ed and Margaret got 18 miles to the gallon out of their camper on the way to Raw Sewage Lake. I found these photocopied diaries impersonal and boring, and if their poodle was depressed following her hysterectomy, I really didn’t care.

  Most letter writers would begin with January and stop off at every month to share some accomplishment. Some of them would include pictures of the family so dark and blotched they looked like Rorschach tests. Some of them set down their achievements in poetry form.

  Every year I get hundreds of newsletters from people who want to convert me or prove to me that people enjoy hearing what their family has done in the past year. Every year I save one to run on the following year in observance of this joyous holiday. The following newsletter, in its original form, ran for two and a half pages. It is trimmed (and the names changed) in the name of mercy and mental health.

  WISHING YOU GOD’S RICHEST BLESSINGS THIS CHRISTMAS

  Dear Friends and Relatives:

  On June 15, Madge went home to be with the Lord. As we were eating supper, she began to shake, and I put my arms around her. She stiffened out and I believe she died in my arms, but the hospital said no, it was a few hours later.

  In July, Aunt Ceil somewhat reluctantly left her home on Grimes Avenue to live in an apartment with my folks. However, it was short-lived as Mom passed away two weeks later.

  The week Dad moved out she had a bad spell and a stroke. I might mention that Margaret had a heart attack just prior to Aunt Ceil’s stroke.

  Stuart and Sarah were married in September and Dad decided he’d move into Stuart’s room. We have lost several relatives and friends this year. During the summer it seemed like every week someone close passed away. Martin said he spent his whole vacation going to funerals and was glad to go back to work.

  Wishing you all a blessed Christmas and a glorious New Year.

  That is the winner of last year’s competition for “Joy to the World.” It tops the one the year before where there was a picture of an elderly family member with breathing tubes in his nose.

  I beg all of you newsletter writers. Don’t try to cheer me up this year. I can’t stand it.

  Undecorating the Christmas Tree—January 1, 1987

  You say you’ve had enough people around to last you a lifetime?

  You say if you don’t get some time to yourself you may start braiding your hair and humming?

  You’d like to clear everyone out of the house and be able to have some quiet time alone?

  Read my lips and slowly repeat after me: “I am going to take the Christmas tree down.” You will only have to say it once and feet will scurry doors will slam, car motors will turn over. In 30 seconds you’ll feel like the last person on Earth.

  No one loves a Christmas tree on January 1. The wonderful, soft branches that the family couldn’t wait to get inside to smell have turned into rapiers that jab you. The wonderful blinking lights that Daddy arranged by branch and color have knotted themselves hopelessly around crumbling brownery and have to be severed with a bread knife. The stockings that hung by the chimney with care are hanging out of sofa cushions, and they smell like clam dip. And the angel that everyone fought to put on top of the tree can only be removed with an extension ladder that is in the garage, and no one can remember how to fit it through the door.

  Next to the presidency, detrimming a tree has to be the loneliest job in the world. It has fallen to women for centuries and is considered a skill only they can do, like replacing the roll on the toilet tissue spindle, painting baseboards, holding a wet washcloth for a child who is throwing up or taking out a splinter with a needle.

  How to undecorate the tree is my business. There’s no one around to give advice, so I do it my way. I take the end of a rope of gold tinsel and give it a jerk. The tree spins around, and I clean the whole thing off in eight seconds. I eat the candy canes as I go along. Better me than the mice. I never bother with sheets to catch all the dry needles. I just vacuum them up until the sweeper smokes. Then I empty it and start all over again. The balls near the bottom I catch in a box, and the ones near the top I shake off and sometimes catch in midair.

  If this creates wear and tear on the ornaments, tough. Next time around, my husband can marry a tall girl who plays basketball.

  Any gift left under the tree legally reverts to the person who untrims the tree. This includes money left on branches and magazine subscriptions.

  In nearly 3 8 years, you’d think someone would be curious enough to ask what happened to that large tree that was in the living room last week. No one ever does. Somewhere between Arizona’s first down on Michigan’s 15-yard line, Christmas ’86 passed into history.

  “Equal” Christmas Gifts—December 22, 1994

  I tallied up the price of my gifts to the children the other da
y and realized one is $2 short of the amount I spent on the other two.

  There are those who will say, Christmas isn’t about money. It’s about little tokens of love and giving and sharing.

  I say to you, You’ve been reading too many Hallmark cards.

  It’s a stupid thing I’m doing. I know that. Ask me why I look both ways before I cross a one-way street. I don’t know. I just do it.

  But I know for a fact that children are born with microchips in their brains that record and store the exact day their brothers and sisters got their first bicycle/watch/car. If you miss doing the same for one child within that time frame, that can mean only one thing: You love his brother better than you love him.

  Every child in the family vies for the attention of his parents. Some will get it by sticking two carrots in their nostrils at the table. Others will make all A’s. Another will speak only two words to you a year. But they’re all in the race.

  My husband says the kids have outgrown the Christmas tabulating routine. I don’t want to take the chance. “It’s just going to be stocking sniffers,” I said.

  When I went to buy a $2 gift for the one on the short end, I found I had to pay $10 for an address book. That made the other two $8 short. In buying a fanny pack for my daughter, I had to pay $12 for it. That meant my first son was now $12 short and his brother $4 light.

  That wasn’t right. So I charged the malls again.

  I’m at the stage now that if I buy a candy cane for one, a postage stamp for the other and a stick of gum for the third, I’m paid up on my affection for another year.

  I know in my heart they’re all grown-up adults and don’t even think about such things at Christmas, but years ago when they were small, I told my son the poignant story of a town’s quest to make the chimes ring in the old church.

  The townspeople were told that when someone put a gift of value and sacrifice on the altar, it would happen. One by one they offered gold and valuables. The church bells remained silent. Then a little waif took off his coat, which was his only protection against the cold, and placed it on the altar. It was the only thing he had. The chimes rang gloriously.