At the start of high school we had only four channels, and by graduation there were cable channels, VCRs, and satellite dishes. Without those and the as-yet-in-the-future DVDs, TiVo, and pay-per-view, we had to watch the Christmas specials—Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and A Charlie Brown Christmas—the one night a year that they came on, or wait another twelve months. The news was on the three network channels four times a day, and we either saw it or we missed it.
This was also the time when remote controls arrived. Prior to that we had to drag ourselves up off the couch and crouch in front of the set while clicking around to decide what to watch. The knobs were mostly broken, so we left pliers on top of the set. The TV remote control appeared around the same time as electric car windows and garage-door openers. They are the main reasons people had to start joining gyms and using Nautilus machines, although the automatic garage opener did provide one quick wind sprint to the car before the eighty-pound wooden door squashed them like a bug.
The advent of increased home technology brought with it the beginning of a major power shift from adults to teens, and even children. With ATMs, microwave ovens, security-alarm systems, VCRs, and PCs, kids had increasing supremacy over their adult handlers. Need the stereo set up? Talk to a twelve-year-old. Want to stop the clock from blinking on the new VCR and tape your favorite shows? Hope your teenager isn’t away for the weekend.
Our parents were the last of a lot of things. Even if they’d grown up in low-income households, they possessed good manners and used proper grammar. The women had almost all learned how to cook, sew, and lay a proper table when they were young. Many of our mothers had walked with books on their heads as teenagers to develop good posture, and they practiced penmanship until theirs was first-rate. Fathers held doors for ladies and knew how to fix things around the house, including the family car.
Corporal punishment was still acceptable when our parents went to school. They didn’t dare tell their parents that a teacher had hit them, because their fathers would hit them even harder, especially if they’d crossed rulers with a nun; parents were not very interested in the child’s side of a story. Our parents were raised to respect their elders and not ask questions. There was no such thing as quality time with their parents, just chore time.
In the fifties and sixties, parochial schools required a girl’s skirt to hang to the knee (a yardstick would be used for surprise checks the way random drug testing is sprung on workers and athletes today). Our fathers were expected to keep clean handkerchiefs in their pockets, not wear caps indoors, and carry packages for women.
This was bc: Before Cablevision. It all went out the window with my generation. As for not training the girls to be perfect young ladies, it’s safe to say that many of the mothers were in on it. They started taking jobs outside the home, though usually only after we were launched into junior high school, and most did not bother teaching us homemaking skills. My mother and I are a good example of this divide. When Mom married, she had only a public-school education from Lafayette High in Buffalo. But from her mother and grandmother she’d learned how to do needlework and cook from scratch without measuring cups. For the most part, my girlfriends and I aren’t proficient at these things.
My mother did make a feeble attempt at teaching me to knit, but I’m a lefty and she’s a righty, and so one of us always had to stand on her head. And quite frankly, neither of us was as interested in domesticity as we were in playing poker, so we ended up doing that instead.
Twenty-Five
Will Work for AC…Mom Turns Pro…
The Mosquito Coast
While working outdoors all day as a camp counselor, I assumed it was my lot in life to forever shower with Solarcain and suffer itchy bug bites. It quickly became apparent that I was not only allergic to grass, leaves, pollen, and insect bites, particularly bee stings, but also to animal hair, flowers, ragweed, barn dust, and hay. Summer was a constant carnival of itchy eyes, coughing, sneezing, and nosebleeds. About thirty minutes of direct sunlight produced second-degree burns. Jumping into a pool or lake was a radiation accident in the making. Scandinavian Creed: Outdoors from ten ’til two is not for you!
We didn’t have air-conditioning in my school or house, so I wasn’t aware that sitting inside a climate-controlled building could remedy most of these complaints. It wasn’t until I was fifteen and went from sneezing and scratching and scorching outside into the centrally air-conditioned home of the Kohnstamms that I discovered there was a cure. Having finally found my drug (Freon), I promptly quit camp and took a job at my godmother’s Mexican restaurant.
I loved being a short-order cook. The fast action, multitasking, and making change for both Canadian and American money was akin to playing fifteen hands of blackjack at once. The manager was more often than not knee-walking drunk from Dos Equis beer, on the phone sobbing and fighting with her boyfriend throughout the entire shift. So I’d race between the cash register, enchilada steamer, deep fryer, and soda machine, and then perform a quick mop job out front and in the bathrooms. During breaks I was also allowed to eat my fill of Mexican food, which I did with alacrity. When the midnight movie at the Wehrle Drive-in across the street let out at 2:00 am, we had our rush hour. Afterward was the long but sunless bike ride home. One particular month, the distributor for our ground chuck had a recall and it turned out I’d been serving kangaroo meat. Did I just imagine feeling that extra spring in my step as I bounced from freezer to fryer? No matter, that ended beef burritos for me, but I still enjoyed the beans, rice, and vegetables.
Eventually I decided to show off my talent for making Mexican food. At the church auction, Mom offered a party at our place with a south-of-the-border theme. We allowed for twenty people, but an enthusiastic auctioneer signed up sixty amigos. The night before the soiree, I went skiing at Holiday Valley, followed by dancing and a diner breakfast, and arrived home at seven in the morning. At three in the afternoon I awoke to my mother hollering, “The guests will be here in two hours, and there’s no food!” I roused myself and began chopping, slicing, and sautéing. The food came out a bit late, but all went well.
A few years later, after my parents divorced, a Mexican dinner I prepared at the home of my father’s girlfriend was not as successful. Without a deep fryer on hand, I thought it would be fine to fill a saucepan with oil and boil that. Shortly thereafter, the fire department arrived. Betty graciously said that she’d been planning to repaint the kitchen anyway.
The Mexican restaurant was a lengthy bike ride away, especially in the rain. As soon as I turned fifteen and could get my working papers, I took a job closer to home, at a truck stop near the entrance to the 641-mile-long New York State Thruway. There wasn’t a hot grill, just several coffeemakers and racks of fresh baked goods, mostly doughnuts, delivered daily from a large Buffalo bakery that operated several satellite locations.
Having already worked in a restaurant, I found some of the business practices at the new establishment to be highly unusual. For instance, I was instructed to put the money in a brown paper bag and stow it in the freezer at the end of each day. About six o’clock every evening, a short man with an Italian last name came by to collect it. (At the time, the only place with a bigger Mafia influence over local business than Buffalo was probably Youngstown, Ohio.) When I asked where to put the register tape in order to save it for the accountant, I was told to throw it away. And when I questioned how they’d like me to keep track of what was sold so inventory could be regulated, I was informed that there was no need to keep track of anything. When I asked what to do with the leftover baked goods, and some days there were a lot, they said to throw them away. Well, I wasn’t about to follow that procedure. Neither of my parents ever threw away food. After closing up shop I disbursed the remaining stock on my way home. It was fun going down the street like Robin Hood on a bicycle, piled high with bags of fresh bread and boxes of doughnuts, stopping at houses with large fami
lies to feed.
In that particular job I met a lot of truck drivers. They were very kind, always tipped big, and regularly invited me out to see their cabs. A couple of them called me Girlie Girl, which was funny and made me want to tease my hair and apply lots of frosted blue eye shadow. Many years later, when I had to hitchhike from Dallas to New York after September 11, 2001, I headed out to the highway, confident that my old friends would get me home. Of course, that didn’t stop me from taking the hotel room Bible just in case it was necessary to read some scripture as a way of sidestepping the topic of dating. Truckers can be very friendly folk indeed.
***
Over the years, no matter where my mother took an entry-level nursing job, she ended up in charge of the floor, wing, or department within a few weeks, and then the entire place inside of six months.
On one evaluation a coworker went so far as to write that my mom was “intimidating.” She was actually shocked by this and asked me if I thought she was intimidating. I said that it was surely meant as a compliment. After all, there was the time when her office building caught fire, the furniture was moved onto the front lawn, and two athletic-looking local citizens tried to steal the couches. My five-foot-six, sixty-something mother came out of the building, which happens to be in an economically challenged section of Buffalo, and with no one else in sight she formally addressed the two sturdy neighbors performing the removal: “Excuse me, gentlemen, but those couches are the property of New York State, and I’m going to have to ask you to put them down.” They were stunned. They obliged. In fact, they hauled them back into the building for her.
Mom’s job held many dangers: working in the inner city, driving on streets that were rarely plowed, and embarking on home visits where nearby drug dealers operated freely. I knew she was in an unusual line of work when I received an insurance policy from Albany detailing what I should do in the event she was taken hostage. She never was, that I know of (or else they decided to give her back in a hurry), but Mom had a few of her own safety guidelines: always sit in a wooden chair (who knows what’s in the upholstery), don’t drive a state-issued vehicle (good way to get shot at), and never enter a home where there’s a pit bull or a boa constrictor in the window (used in urban debt-
collection proceedings).
The only time I’ve found my mother unenthusiastic about plying her trade as a nurse is in winter by the roadside. If we’re driving together and she spots an accident she murmurs, “Oh please, let someone be there.” Apparently there is a law or code stating that a medical professional must stop if there’s been an injury. She slows the car and when she sees the flashing lights of an ambulance says, “Oh, thank God. I’m off duty.”
The rest of the time she’s ready and eager for a crisis. Mom particularly embraces an opportunity to brush up on her Heimlich maneuver. This is because it’s one of those procedures someone can’t really practice unless a person is actually choking, for fear of sending their spleen up into their nostrils. And to my mother, a first-aid dummy just isn’t the same as getting her hands on a real chest cavity.
My family lives in fear of the Heimlich maneuver. This is an area where we take precautionary measures—cutting meat into small bites, chewing food carefully—because, quite frankly, having one’s guts smashed in is not a particularly pleasant way to conclude Thanksgiving dinner. Once, as I started to cough and sputter at the table when some water went down the wrong way, I immediately became alarmed after I saw my mother put on her Heimlich face, equal parts concern and delight.
“Can you speak?” she shouted across the table. (Inability to speak is the first sign of a choking victim, according to the first-aid books.) Yet I could have spoken if I’d only had a second to swallow and relax. Instead, I saw her rising from her chair, eyes gleaming, drawing her hands together. Then I went into a full panic. I definitely did not want my ribs jacked up into my throat, and so I tried to talk but, amidst the growing dread, just couldn’t manage to catch my breath. By then she was moving fast, a predator closing in on its prey. In the nick of time I managed to push my chair back and flee from the table. (Second sign of a choking victim: running from the table.) She chased me into the living room. The rest of the family froze as if watching the final few minutes of a tied Super Bowl. They were probably alarmed by the thought that it could just as easily have been one of them.
By the time I took flight, I was not only convulsed with terror, but also with laughter, and my face was turning purple (third sign of a choking victim) from simultaneously coughing and gagging. My mother threw her arms around my chest. “No!” I finally managed to yell out. I was released onto the floor in a heap of gasps and giggles.
“Why didn’t you speak up in the first place?” she asked in her no-nonsense tone, though I sensed a distinct note of disappointment in her voice. “I thought you were choking to death.”
To Mom, the light at the end of the tunnel is usually an oncoming train. Or as she prefers to say, “It’s just that I know too much.”
Fortunately everyone in the family rotates being the target of the matriarchal medical reactionary. One Easter, my uncle passed my mother the potatoes and she noticed a dark spot on his arm. “Have you had a doctor look at that?” Nurse Doom inquired with more than a slight hint that there was a dramatic revelation to follow. He said no. She announced that it looked like a malignant melanoma and should be removed and sent for a biopsy as soon as possible. And if it was indeed a melanoma, then he’d be dead within six to eight weeks and there wasn’t anything that anyone could do about it. Then she passed him the roast beef. He was no longer hungry. Instead he asked me, “How come every time we invite your mother to dinner we end up wanting to land a medevac chopper on the roof?”
The only real problem with her diagnoses is that she’s usually right. My uncle did have a form of treatable skin cancer.
My aunt has found a novel use for my mother’s nursing skills. She’s very intelligent and knows that there are times that she should go to a doctor, but, like many of us, she needs that extra push. So she calls my mother. The phone calls are pretty much the same:
Nurse Ellen: Hi Susie, how are you?
Aunt Sue (in the midst of an embolism, but completely calm): Fine, thanks. What a gorgeous day we’re having.
Nurse Ellen: Yes, I thought I’d go for a walk later. Perhaps you’d like to join me.
Aunt Sue: No, thanks. I’ve been feeling a bit tired.
Nurse Ellen (radar goes on alert): Oh, really? Have you been getting enough rest? Is it allergies? Are you taking any meds?
Aunt Sue: No, no, it’s just that I passed out a little while ago.
Nurse Ellen: You passed out?! You have to see a doctor immediately! How’s your pulse?
Aunt Sue: It’s hard to tell because I’m experiencing shortness of breath and have these shooting pains down my right arm…
Nurse Ellen: I’M CALLING AN AMBULANCE NOW!
Aunt Sue loves to call with dizziness, gaping wounds from kitchen accidents, and chest pains and act as if nothing is wrong. She knows she should go to the hospital, but for some reason she requires the additional impetus of my mother screaming into the receiver: “Call 9-1-1 because you’re going to die!”
My mom can pretty much tell what’s wrong with a single glance. As a kid, I’d arrive home from school and she’d take one look at me and instantly declare scarlet fever, bronchitis, or walking pneumonia. A few hours later, the doctor would confirm and prescribe.
More recently, a neighbor was ailing with cancer, and as my mother and I were bringing in some groceries, we saw the woman from about thirty yards away and my mother leaned in and whispered, “Looks like pneumonia.” A week later the woman died. My mother asked a relative the cause of death and was told an autopsy was being performed. The following week she reported back to my mother: pneumonia.
In her own emergencies, my mother is equally efficient and not known for depending on the kindness of strangers, or even family members, for that matter.
Healthcare isn’t a two-way stretcher. It’s no secret that she views the rest of us as medical incompetents. When I was thirteen, my father and I arrived in the kitchen one morning to find my mother with ten stitches above her right eye. She’d risen in the middle of the night and accidentally hit the corner of her dresser, driven herself to the emergency room and then back home again.
“Why the heck didn’t you wake us up?” My father asked in
astonishment.
“Because you’re both useless,” my mother calmly replied. “You,” she pointed at my father, “pass out at the sight of blood, and you,” she turned to me, “can’t drive anyway.” Okay, she had a point. Two points, actually.
Once we were in high school, my friends and I had fewer bumps and bruises that needed treatment. Our teeth had come and gone and come in again for good. However, we developed a new appreciation for my mother’s bathroom operating room. It was the only place in town a teenager could really examine his or her skin for pimples. It also came in handy for applying makeup. My friend Mary quite accurately dubbed the full-wall mirror under the blazing lights the Truth Mirror. Mary was in the habit of fixing her hair and face at her house and then stopping by our bathroom for the finishing touches before heading out on a date. She insisted she just couldn’t be sure of how she really looked until she consulted the Truth Mirror. She said it was easy to think that you looked pretty good and then glance at it and be completely horrified. The Truth Mirror could make a teenager feel so zit faced, frizzy haired, and plug ugly that they didn’t want to go out again until they were twenty-one. Some friends wouldn’t even enter my mom’s bathroom, or if they did, they’d strike a match rather than switch on the high-powered searchlights.
Buffalo Gal Page 25
