My mother said those words to me the day that I was too sick to go to first grade. I threw up a few times in the middle of the night and my dad, who used to wake his three children up by opening bedroom doors and pulling up shades, let me sleep in.
I woke up as my brother and sister were leaving for school and my mother was about to drive my father to the Long Island Rail Road. She walked me into her bedroom which had a television, turned on Captain Kangaroo, told me to lay down in their bed and as soon as she got back, we were going to the doctor.
I felt fine. I threw up because I ate too much fried-chicken the night before, but, in those days, nobody asked their kids how they felt. You either took your child to the doctor or waited for him (who knew a woman could become a doctor?) to come to you. (I am old enough to remember when the AMA had not yet frowned on doctors making house calls).
In the short time that I was alone, I discovered a pair of scissors in my father’s night-table and gave myself a haircut. I am not sure what was worse, my mother yelling at me about my new look or her disappointment when the doctor told her I was fine and probably overate the previous night.
I thought about her words early in my marriage the day I strapped both of our sons, eight and six, into their respected car seats in the back of my wife’s Lexus ready to drive them to summer camp.
My wife walked into the garage and waved goodbye. I interrupted the waving and laughing and asked for the car key. She told me she thought I had it and I assumed it was hiding in her purse.
After ten minutes of frantic searching and a good deal of yelling at me, we determined the mission had changed. My car, which had only one car seat, became the car of choice. As we scrambled to unhook the boys from the back of her car, I grabbed my keys from the laundry room, started the engine, and watched as my wife removed one of the car seats from her car trying her best to lock it into my car.
I wanted to laugh at this maniacal scene of screams of my incompetence because she misplaced her keys. The reason I did not was because I witnessed the most horrific scene that a neat freak like myself could ever imagine. Potato chips, pretzels, and gummy bears in the now freed back seat of her car which was, until now, hidden by the car seat. I wanted to grab the vacuum cleaner but knew we were already late for camp and I had to focus on the task at hand. Besides, giving her more ammunition at such a moment would only lead to my demise.
I took the boys to camp with no trouble because my wife was always ten minutes early. The precious moments lost in our frenzy put us right on time for the car line drop off. My mother’s words had not yet come into my head, I didn’t hear her voice until about twelve o’clock when my wife and I had accomplished nothing because all we had done was to search for her two sets of car keys.
Asking how both sets were missing was like closing the stable door after the horse bolted. Although if it were the other way around, and I had caused this situation, she would have had me committing hari-kari by this point.
We spent the rest of the day tearing apart our house. This activity, while not on my calendar, was not terrible as I found things that had disappeared when one goes from bachelorhood and living in an apartment by himself, to buying a house and living with a wife and two sons in an eight-year period.
I was unable to admit I was happy I had come across two shirts and my Montblanc pen during our key search. It was when she yelled at me that it was time for me to pick up the boys at camp how I realized I had lost a day of work productivity and we both needed to take a shower.
Upon returning to the house I informed the boys it looked like my car, the one without the DVD player, would be the transportation of choice until I made it to the dealership to have a new $250 key made. Those Lexus dealers get you coming and going.
“No TV again tomorrow?” our younger son asked.
“Your father will go to the dealership. NOW!” my wife subtly explained. “But it might take them a day to replace our key.”
With that, number two son ran inside the house, up the stairs, and into his bedroom. I assumed to cry.
He returned thirty seconds later asking if the object in his hand was what we were in search of. When I told him it was, he said he liked the keyring and had hung it on his trophy he received a few weeks earlier from his basketball league.
No more yelling. My wife, for one of the few times in our marriage, had nothing to say. The house was a mess. The back seat of the car looked like a movie theater floor at the end of the night. We were both soaking wet.
No apologies. No “I love you.” Just my mother’s words in my head while my wife explained she was exhausted and then told the boys to change so the three of them could go swimming while “Daddy cleans up.”
I said nothing after her comments. I said nothing after my mother instructed me, we were going to the barbershop to fix what I had started.
Just the voices in my head saying, “One day they will appreciate you” and “Steven, I hope you have kids just like you.”
But you know what? A smile came to my face the other day. I am not sure they appreciate me but I do know I had kids just like me.