Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo?

by Jancee Dunn

  JANCEE: When I was younger I was bullied by a couple of girls, but my mother would never have dreamed of going to the teacher or a kid’s mom. They just didn’t do that stuff then. It was before the awareness of bullying and all the 20/20 specials about it. It was a more oblivious time in general. I used to sit in the front seat of the car when my mother would drive, and she’d smoke with her left hand so her right arm would be free to reach over and hold me back if we made a sudden stop. Anyway, I vividly remember that when I got bullied I wanted her to step in somehow, but I wonder now if that would have made things worse for me.

  JULIE: I think there has got to be a way that parents can get in there. There is a way. I do believe that children can’t rule the world, and sometimes it takes a parent stepping in and asking their kid how they would feel if they were treated that way.

  (Disembodied voice) Can somebody take me across the street?

  I have to hang up. (A minute later) Okay, me again. I had to help a blind man across the street. (Julie regularly helps blind people across the street.) Of course, as I did that, the light was about to turn and we had to really run. I practically dragged him. He was probably safer without me.

  Anyway, what were we talking about?

  JANCEE: Being harassed in school. I would imagine it’s hard as a parent to find those magic words of comfort. When I would get upset after getting pushed around, my mom would say, “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but someday when you’re older, none of this will matter.” But when you’re a kid, you can’t think beyond next week. At that age, the future is this alien concept where you’re driving around in an aerocar like George Jetson.

  JULIE: My mother probably said similar things to me, but I was so sure that no one anywhere could possibly understand or help me with those problems. So I’m always aware of that, I’m always asking Violet, “What’s going on?” Really, with this situation, what I have to say is, “You don’t need everybody to be your friend. You already have friends. Focus on them and not those other people.”

  JANCEE: That’s perfect.

  JULIE: But you’re right, those feelings can come right back to you. When I first went to Violet’s new school, and I felt as though the parents were a little “Oh, hi” I was like, “Don’t you fuck with me! I am better than any of you! I’m Clint Eastwood and Tina Turner!” It makes me so angry when anybody acts exclusive to me. Anyway, I’m going to crack this nut, and I’m not sure how yet.

  JANCEE: Hm. What could you do?

  JULIE: A couple of playdates are a good thing. Maybe bring our two puppies in to school. In Violet’s old school when I brought our dog Beatrice, the kids would go crazy.

  JANCEE: You can’t go wrong with puppies.

  JULIE: Anyway, like you I remember that awful feeling so clearly that for the briefest moment, it made me hesitate about having kids. Because you know they’re going to experience what you experienced. Kids are so unbelievably cruel.

  JANCEE: And I’ve been on the other side of that, too. I’ve been nasty plenty of times myself, just flat-out mean in the most scarily creative, subversive way. But I didn’t know you ever hesitated about having kids. I, on the other hand, just fell into yet another conversation with someone who tried to convert me to motherhood.

  JULIE: Again with that?

  JANCEE: (sighs) Remember that dinner party I went to on Saturday? For the entire night, Beth’s husband harangued me about it. For whatever reason, I get a lot of men who try to talk me into it. I know people mean well, but I’m so tired of feeling like a sociopath when I tell them I’m on the fence.

  JULIE: What’s your percentage these days of being for it versus against?

  JANCEE: I’m fifty-fifty. I swear to God. Not even fifty-one–forty-nine. And so is Tom. We spend so much time talking about it we could both scream. Like last weekend, aside from the dinner party, which started at eight—

  JULIE: Eight P.M.? What are we, in Spain? (Julie and I, as I have mentioned, enjoy a distinctly senior-citizen lifestyle that includes eating early and going to bed soon after that.)

  JANCEE: Tom and I just had the best time. We pick up and just go. We went out to breakfast, to the Met, to the park. I read three books.

  JULIE: Now, that is a luxury, I will say.

  JANCEE: On Sunday we made a big dinner and planned a trip to Budapest. I just keep thinking, Why mess with this? But then again, I suppose I can take a kid to breakfast and the park.

  JULIE: Well, you’re off birth control. Maybe something will happen, still.

  JANCEE: But you know what, Jul? Forty has come and gone. I just don’t think it’s in the cards for me. And I’m okay with it. It just seems like no one else is okay with it.

  JULIE: So quit worrying about what everyone else thinks.

  JANCEE: And the thing is that—(disembodied voice) Oh, thank you.

  That was Tom, bringing me a cup of tea with lemon. That’s another thing: It’s not just the freedom we have to do what we like. It’s that I finally found this person, after decades of searching. You and I have talked about that. We both got married in our thirties.

  JULIE: Which I think was smart.

  JANCEE: And I’m so relieved to have met him that we really treat each other well. I’m right where I want to be, and I’m fulfilled. (Getting a little teary) And I see couples who have a baby and they’re exhausted and snap at each other and I just don’t know if I want to strain my marriage. You know? In a way, I feel like I just met him.

  JULIE: What is making you so upset? Beth’s husband? He’s an idiot. Listen, I know people who are very happy about the fact that they didn’t end up having kids, and their lives are perfectly complete. For sure it’s not for everybody. And it’s something that so many people do automatically because it’s what you do, and the idea of being thoughtful about it, thinking about it, deciding if it’s the right thing to do, is such an incredibly conscious move that most people don’t make. And there is not enough affirmation of that choice. I really do believe that. And there are people about whom I say, “It’s great that they didn’t have kids.” And I mean that not in a condemning way, but in a supportive way.

  JANCEE: (sniffling) Thank you. I believe it.

  JULIE: You know I’ve told you that you’d be a great mother, but I don’t think it’s for everybody. And listen, I even feel the pressure of having only one kid! I was actually looking through the directory of Violet’s school and trying to see how many only children there were. Not many. Most of the kids have “sibs,” as they call them.

  JANCEE: They call them “sibs”?

  JULIE: That’s the lingo. I also hate the term “only child.” It just isn’t a very nice way to put it. (Sad, whispery voice) I’m the only one. I’m all by myself.

  JANCEE: (whispery voice) Won’t someone play with me in my secret garden? I’m ever so alone. Whenever you hear that term, you picture some kid sitting on the floor, throwing a ball over and over against the wall, with no one to throw it back. Or quietly talking to a finger puppet and pretending it’s a little brother.

  JULIE: And there are only children who liked it and others who hated it. And then there’s my dad, who had a sister when he was fifteen, so for all intents and purposes, he was an only child. And she died when he was fifty, so the idea of them being there forever for each other—well, that didn’t happen. Did Tom like being an only child?

  JANCEE: Yes. He liked reading alone in his room in peace—although this has continued through adulthood. He’s very private, even with me sometimes.

  JULIE: You should be glad about that.

  JANCEE: Everybody else in my life shares everything, so it’s okay by me.

  JULIE: You don’t need to hear every thought that ever went through his head. Although I like to hear every thought that goes through your head.

  JANCEE: Oh, me too. Nothing is too trivial! I expect a full report later after you go to Costco with your Aunt Mattie, by the way.

  JULIE: What’s good is that I don’t need anythin
g this time. I can just get things for fun.

  JANCEE: Like a sixty-ounce jar of pistachios. Let me tell you, you’re such a relief to Tom. When I’m obsessing about something, he’ll say, “Why don’t you call Julie?” And he tries to say it in a light, friendly voice, but what he’s really saying is, “Sweet Jesus, please let me finish the newspaper while you go examine every facet of your tiny problem with Julie for an hour and fifteen minutes on the phone.” But to get back to kids, I know you love Violet and having her changed your life. And I know that it has actually brought you and Paul closer. Yet you’ve never, ever, given me the hard sell.

  JULIE: I really think that a person who’s happy with the decisions that they make, and is a good, conscious sort of person, should be able to let others do what they have to do without putting their own agendas on them. You know, one of the things that I tend to do when I’m feeling insecure about Violet being an only child is look around and think, Other people with more kids seem to have a more normal life. And then you come to find that no two people’s experiences of the same thing are the least bit alike.

  JANCEE: I do something similar when I find childless people. I always scan obituaries to see who didn’t have kids, and then I try and figure out if they seemed to have had a happy and fulfilled life without them. Which is ultimately futile.

  JULIE: It’s hard to choose things that are so major in your life. I mean, I still get these nudgy feelings about having another child. Paul will say, “What if my mom had only had three kids? Then there would be no me.” I mean, eventually you’ve got to stop! Someone’s not going to be born.

  JANCEE: I’m still trying to wrap my head around Paul’s argument. I don’t know how to even process that.

  JULIE: I say to him, “You know what? Then the one your mother didn’t have was the one who was scheduled to do the mass killing in Times Square.” But I always thought my second kid was going to be a boy, who looked like me and had my personality. And it doesn’t appear that I’m going to have that kid. And I do think, Where’s that soul? And all of that kind of stuff.

  JANCEE: I never knew that.

  JULIE: I really do. Because I know that kid. But I can’t do it. I keep asking the question and I can’t. I don’t think my body’s up to it.

  JANCEE: Well, then, maybe we’re both done. (Blows nose.) Ugh, I have the worst cold. You still have yours, right? My nose is coming off in chunks. I keep putting Vaseline on it.

  JULIE: I’ll use my ChapStick and then quickly swipe it on my nose. If I’m not in public.

  JANCEE: Yesterday I broke down and bought a neti pot—you know, the thing that you pour through your nasal cavity to irrigate it that yogis use? It felt like I was undergoing waterboard torture. I was struggling and choking.

  JULIE: It’s like you’re drowning. But everyone I know loves them.

  JANCEE: Not me. I whipped that thing into the trash in a rage.

  JULIE: Well, I’m here at the gym.

  JANCEE: Okay, then. Have a good workout. Talk to you after Costco.

  Mister Soft E. Coli

  When I first started dating a shy Chicago-born writer named Tom nine years ago, I knew within a month that I had to marry him. He went so far beyond my three core requirements (kind, funny, and intelligent) that I could hardly believe my good fortune. He was the rarest of men, the sort who truly had no idea he was classically handsome—six foot three, blue-eyed, cleft chin, fit from years of soccer, the works—and thus missing the arrogance I had grown wearily accustomed to in the New York City dating world. He was happiest with his nose buried in New Scientist magazine, or absorbed in researching an article on nineteenth-century iron-and-glass architecture.

  I kept waiting for a hidden police report to surface, or evidence of a tiny conjoined twin that he had absorbed into his own body. But nothing untoward ever turned up. Kids and animals followed him around. He was a gourmet cook. Perhaps best of all, he was almost absurdly good-natured.

  But as the years have rolled on, I’ve noticed that a change has come over my husband. I can deny no longer that the easygoing fellow I married has grown a bit more … what’s the phrase? Ah, yes: incredibly rigid. His life is now governed by an ever-multiplying set of personal rules. They started cropping up in his late thirties. At the time, they seemed whimsically eccentric, like his refusal to enter a restaurant with the words fun, factory, or eatery in its name, or anything with a subtitle (“A Pan-Asian Fusion Bistro and Wine Bar”).

  But now that he has hit forty, I find I’m living in an iron cage of spousal predilection as he lists for me the things, as Winston Churchill once grammatically quipped, “up with which I will not put.” So many, many rules: No whimsical boutique hotels (“Minibars are for bottles of Glenlivet, not condoms and Pez”). No Sunday brunches, which he terms “giving up the New York Times to wait in line for eggs in an enforced exercise in couple-hood.” Brands of jeans must have one name, or two at most (Levi’s is acceptable, 7 for All Mankind is not). And he’ll only see a film in the first five rows (“I can’t lose myself in the story if I’m looking at rows of heads”).

  His inflexibility has even ruined the most carefree of summer traditions—buying an ice cream cone from a soft-serve truck on a hot day and idly eating it as you walk along. First of all, he will not eat ice cream in public; as he puts it, “walking while eating in general is weird.” Ah. Second, he has product-cleanliness issues and calls our local Mister Softee truck “Mister Soft E. Coli.” I used to put up a fight, but now I sigh in defeat and join him in eating ice cream from a reputable distributor, safely inside our apartment and away from the prying eyes of passersby.

  Most of Tom’s rules seem to center on order, quiet (if a television is blaring at our airport gate, he storms off to a TV-free gate nearby, so that we have to strain to listen for our flight announcement), and what he views as simple logic. I’ve heard similar complaints from dozens of women about their thirtyish and fortyish mates—men who, it should be noted, are otherwise reasonable, gentle, bookish types. It’s just that certain situations seem to bring out a strain of stubbornness in them that borders on maniacal.

  I know a woman who has lost friends because her husband will not attend any wedding with more than 150 guests (he has worked out some sort of complicated math involving seconds spent with the bride and groom versus his cost and time). My friend Jill has a husband who balks at clothing or accessories with logos (making gift shopping a particular challenge) and will not even consider seeing any movie that can be described as “life-affirming.” Charlotte, another friend, must deal with a spouse who has decreed that no one in the family can speak loudly at breakfast. “Also, no newspapers can be delivered to the house, because it depresses him,” she says. “If the temperature is between fifty and eighty degrees, the kids must play outside because when they play inside it depresses him. And I’m not allowed to tell him my dreams when I wake up.”

  Okay, I agree with him on that one. I have yet to hear a dream that’s compelling. But is there not a thin line between being a little peculiar and being a tyrant? No younger man wants to be thought of as turning into his father, of being described by the dreaded term “set in his ways.” Tom and I both chuckled, for instance, when we once took my parents on a driving tour of Scandinavia and my father brought along a Ziploc bag of Chex Mix the size of a throw pillow, as if Denmark was bereft of snacking opportunities, and a Thermos of his favorite Scotch, as if Sweden was a dry country. My father is the sort of man who ate Raisin Bran for breakfast for a full quarter-century until my mother persuaded him to made the radical switch to Kashi Good Friends (okay, Costco’s bulk-purchase version). His loyalty to Consort for Men hair spray has stretched back decades and will continue until he is spraying the one remaining hair on his head.

  But wasn’t my father’s unwillingness to vary his routine just part of a continuum of hidebound male ritual that stretched to my husband’s list of daily requirements, which is starting to resemble Kanye West’s concert rider? What’s the di
fference between a “young fogy” as he describes himself, and a standard-issue crotchety old fogy?

  Tom maintains that because the men of his generation aren’t the household autocrats of the fifties who demanded a silent martini after work, but rather the sort of evolved guys who use the word parent as a verb, his rules are annoying but ultimately harmless. His more romantic view is that they enclose him in a protective haven of civility, like Victorian-era British explorers who clung to their afternoon tea and biscuits, their phonographs and dusty book collections, even amid the most inhospitable foreign climes.

  It’s true that he actually does have tea at three o’clock every afternoon, no matter what country he happens to be in. And yes, I do understand why he won’t use any product with the word extreme or turbo in it. But what, exactly, is “civilized” about “no movie sequels, ever, with the exception of The Godfather and Star Wars”? And can he really fight against patronizing stores with tip jars? He huffs that employers should pay their employees well instead of making them beg for tips, plus the sight of the jar “gives me general tip anxiety. Why stop at coffee shop employees? Why not tip the gas station attendant or the UPS man?”

  Tom’s rules have taken a toll on our relationship more than once. During a recent trip to Tokyo, the two of us got into a shouting match after dozens of restaurants failed to meet his criteria and we trudged for hours through the slate-colored rain. After he rejected one place for having fluorescent lights (“they make me nauseous and I can’t enjoy my food”) and another for its loud background music, I felt like I was trapped in an endless loop of Rain Man. I lost it. “I just want to eat dinner,” I hollered miserably, as passersby gave us a wide berth. He wouldn’t budge. Finally we found a ramen place that was to his liking.