Montpelier
It never occurred to me — much to my shame now — to be the one to get up and take care of sick kids during the night. If one of ours was croupy or congested or had an upset stomach, Mother was there with vaporizer or VapoRub, dishpan or decongestant. Only dimly aware of the intense drama being played out in the bathroom, I shook my head in half-sleep, wondering, “How does she do it?” and went back to sleep.
I was raised, during the 1930s, to believe that women were the homemakers and caregivers, and men the providers and protectors. The roles of the sexes were pretty clearly circumscribed and reinforced by radio soap operas and commercials. A look through some old magazine or newspaper ads is a real eye-opener, and even embarrassing. Like Virginia Slims, we’ve come a long way, for better or worse.
This week, with Mother’s Day in the offing, has been a good time to ask once again that question that flitted through my consciousness long ago, but this time in the past tense: How did she do it?
As many of you know, I’ve become a bit of a caregiver myself lately. Mother’s been away from the house for treatment and rehabilitation for well over a year now, so there’s been the matter of cooking, cleaning and laundering for one old man. Bill paying, too (which she always did, in contradiction of our old gender roles). That hasn’t been too tough, except that the cooking’s gotten pretty boring. But suddenly there’s this new puppy that’s become a member of the family, quite disrupting my placid and pleasing routine.
She’s in my face at first light. Pleasant as that may be, I know it means, “Come on! Come on! Get on your slippers and shirt and take me out back. Let’s go!” Once we get there, however, she slips into a sort of reverie, scanning the woods and sky and grass; and now I’m the one crying, “Come on! Come on! Let’s go!” Back inside, I have to put her into her crate because I can’t let her out of my sight for more than a few seconds. She’s a chewing fool.
Yesterday, after she walked through the woods with me without a leash and behaved beautifully, I got careless at bedtime and left her alone in the bedroom for about 30 seconds. It’s been baby-proofed: everything attractive — shoes, waste basket, reading glasses — up on a high perch, closet doors closed, a favorite toy prominently placed. But I returned to devastation. She’d discovered an old U-shaped neck pillow down behind Mother’s recliner, leaped up onto the bed with it, and chomped and shaken it, terrier-style. The insides of that pillow, sand grain-sized bits of Styrofoam, were all over both her and the room. It was back into exile for her, and off to the closet for the vacuum for me. And you know how impossible it was to get it all up.
But in the middle of my frustration I remembered the night over 50 years ago that Mother walked into the bedroom where our middle kid’s crib stood, and discovered that he’d figured out how to rock the crib from one side of the room to the other so that he could smear both walls with his finger painting. What he used for paint does not bear description. Her equanimity in that situation was so remarkable that I’ve never forgotten it.
She used to ask on Sunday mornings, “What time do you want to leave for church?” and I’d casually name a time — say quarter to 10. Somehow, while I attended to “more important” matters, she got those three kids fed, cleaned up, dressed and ready at the door by the appointed time.
Winter is the season that small-child minders really shine. With patience that few of us old-time providers could muster, they get the kids dressed in everything from underclothes to wool hats, snowsuits, tethered mittens and boots, and out the door to play in the snow. Then they watch anxiously from a window and now and then modify somebody’s behavior by rapping on the glass.
During the time that I’d normally enjoy my after-breakfast coffee, I now rinse out a water bowl and refill it, clean last night’s food bits out of another and make up a breakfast. I watch it being eaten (remember the 30-second out-of-sight rule), and then lead a trip to the back yard, where the reverie returns, rain or shine. She spotted a chipmunk in an old lumber pile the other day, so we’ve got to go there and snuffle around for a while. Then there’s the morning trip to see Mother; it’s hard to tell whether she’s more interested in snuggling than inspecting the breakfast leftovers. In the afternoon it’s a walk in the park, where she’s on probation to see if she can accompany me without a lead (she can, until today she heard some chickens).
In the evening, there’s supper and another trip into the yard. Then crate time while I write, and finally a last tour of the yard by flashlight just before bedtime. If she behaves, she gets the reward of sleeping with her aged caregiver. If she doesn’t, it’s back to the crate with her stuffed fox, who’s holding up remarkably well.
It’s got to be karma that’s reminding me so ineluctably of the responsibilities I avoided long ago under the protection of now-outdated gender roles. I notice that whenever I mention the frazzle of constant vigilance and occasional frustration, Mother smiles a knowing little smile, a sort of welcome-to-my-world expression. This Sunday, with a new child in the house, I’ll wish her a happy Mother’s Day with a fresh appreciation of how incredibly well she managed motherhood.
Willem Lange can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
