Old Ideas by Judy Fowler

 

          

We are at the dinner table, circa 1959.

My brother Steve, tired of fielding criticism from Dad, joins him in that pecking order project: father, mother, son, and three younger sisters. He turns to me. "Go on, chubby. Why don't you eat the whole bowl?"

He snorts like a pig. I'd just taken another spoonful of mashed potatoes from the bowl on the lazy Susan.

He caught me doing what I usually do at the table: pretend to be invisible when taking seconds. I'm also hoping not to be the one sent to my room for some minor infraction, such as seeking the private territory that having my elbows on the table provided. Compared with elbow placement—always grounds for dismissal at Dad's tense table—my brother's rude barb about my size slides by in the conversation like the gravy on the mashed potatoes going down my esophagus.

I pretend not to hear him, though I sit back from my plate. That was only his opening gambit. He finds a synonym for 'chubby' to toss in my direction while Dad is occupied with shaming our dog for begging near the table.

I can't get support from my older sister, my grandfather, or the baby. I look to my mother. Surely, she'll censor Steve's conduct, as she has impeccable manners—the best I'd observed in my eight years of life. Eighty years later, they remained so.

But my mother ignores my brother's remarks. My discomfort doesn't even register on her face—a beautifully made-up face, devoid of any sign of pain unless it's her drive to see things done properly. By the age of four, she'd taught me how  to answer a rotary phone: "This is the Fowler residence. Judy Fowler speaking. How may I help you?"

That very week, as she drove me to school, I'd heard the tear of fabric. I'd been sitting on my foot, and pulled out my skirt hem with the heel of a clunky Buster Brown. "Oh, no!"

"What?"

"My hem came out!"

I imagined the ridicule I'd endure from countless children during the day. The scornful eyes of teachers. I thought Mom would choose to turn around and go home rather than let me present myself like that. 

But she hadn't turned back. 

I assumed she had a remedy in her purse. "Do you have a safety pin? Scotch tape? A needle and thread?" 

She didn't. "Just smile," she said as she pulled the car into the drop-off area. "If you smile, no one will notice."

How I'd manage to smile while infinitely self-conscious, she didn't explain. I picked at the hanging fabric all day. I asked everyone if they had a safety pin. No one did. During a quiz, my the troubling hem drew away my attention like a cuticle hanging off my finger. I couldn't smile. When I got home, I removed the skirt and handed it to my mother to deal with.

She hadn't taught me to use a needle and thread because of her fear of knives and needles in the hands of children. She was also afraid of stovetops, bowls near the edges of counters, letting us dive into murky  water, and ovens opened without supervision.  You'd never know she'd spent two years during World War Two stalwartly facing the possibility that any day a telegram might make her a widow. Maybe raising four kids who were fifteen years apart in age, housing a father-in-law without help, and pleasing an ambitious husband and a new baby had temporarily overwhelmed her. Mom was not, for some reason, afraid to hand children a hot iron. From the age of six, I helped her iron my father's handkerchiefs. I'd lean over the ironing board from a tipsy chair and shift the squares of dampened white cloth around with my left hand while lifting and lowering a steam-spitting iron with my right.

The theme that emerged at that board re-emerged when I was twenty-six. I'd just announced I'd be living with my boyfriend, an indigent dreamer I hoped to help make a career in acting in New York. My mother wrote me a lengthy letter, the gist of which was that I would miss out on the joy of ironing my husband's shirts if I lived with him unmarried. It was 1976, when everyone was beginning to live with everyone.

I married him. For 25 years I followed her example, though my husband mostly wore wash and wear clothes. I helped him where I could. On my 52nd birthday, I admitted I'd over-reacted: "I made it to menopause," I told my spouse, "but I'm not going to make it till death."

Then I started my own life. It's been fun. I don't even iron my own shirts. The old ideas —self-consciousness, my mother's good opinion, and the urge to protect men—still hang around. I guess they're starched in.