Domestic affairs : enduring the pleasures of motherhood and family life

304 Pages·2012·2.54 MB·English

by  Maynard

Domestic Affairs
Enduring the Pleasures of Motherhood and Family
Life
Joyce Maynard
For my mother, Fredelle Maynard, who inspired me with a longing to raise
children, because it was so clear she loved doing it
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH
A Visit with My Grandmother Pie Crust
Thinking about My Father The Yellow Door House OTHER CALLINGS
Babysitter Problems Tuning in to Ozzie and Harriet Getting Off the Plane Death
of the Full-Time Mother Mother of Nine
BABY LOVE
The Ninth Month
Baby Longing
The Six A.M. Report The End of Diapers
DAY IN, DAY OUT
Mess
The La-Z-Boy Lounger Counting Heads
Swamped
FAMILY EXPANSION
Audrey Gets a Brother The Third Child
Willy Walks
Night at the Ramada Inn UPWARD MOBILITY
My Kids and Money
The Going-Out-of-Business Sale The Ice Show Comes to Town Chance of a
Lifetime Buying the Tent
TALK OF THE TOWN
Softball Season
Ursula Leaves Town
Marlon Brando’s Phone Number The Norton Fund
School Play
Travelers Pass Through More Babysitter Problems CELEBRATIONS
Cutting Down the Tree Shopping at Three in the Morning Barbie’s Shoe
Charlie’s Birthday
YEARNINGS
Oklahoma Friend
Visitor at the Mental Hospital The Lure of the Roller Rink Greg and Kate’s
Wedding The Love Boat
On the Sidelines
Stranger in the Night END OF ENDURANCE
Dressed for Snow
Tomato Sauce
Mom’s Problems
Flipping Out
Five-Mile Road Race TERRORS
Car Pool
Reported for Child Neglect Perilous Journey
Christa
CUTTING THE CORD
Audrey Turns One
I Want You
Lost Purse
My Daughter Gets Dressed The Dollhouse
My Children Move On Sailing Boats
GROWING OLDER
Sixteen
Joan Baez Concert
The Baby Stroller
Selling Our Land
Greg and Kate Have a Baby MARRIAGE—MINE AND OTHERS
How I Married Steve AJ’s Divorce
Argument at the Muffler Shop Christian Marriage
House Hunting
The Knives
POSTSCRIPT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A BIOGRAPHY OF JOYCE MAYNARD
INTRODUCTION
SOMETIMES THE SUN RISES first. More often, it’s my two-year-old, Willy, who
does. And that’s when my day begins.
I roll out of bed and put on water for coffee, and Willy opens the cupboard
to choose his cereal. (Maybe a combination of Kix, Honey Nut Cheerios, and
Rice Krispies. Maybe oat flakes, Shredded Wheat, and Raisin Bran, with sliced
banana, because that’s what they show on the front of the cereal box. Or he
wants the toy pictured on the back, that you have to send away for. Or he may
put in a bid for his Halloween candy, in which case, when I tell him no, he’ll cry
and swear that if he can have just one, he’ll be good forever.)
He wants to pour the milk, and I always let him, and he always spills it. We
turn on Sesame Street. He wants to carry his bowl into the living room himself.
He spills cereal on his pajamas and demands a fresh pair. I say, reasonably, that
once we’re changing him anyway, we might as well put on his shirt and overalls.
But my son is two years old: This kind of logic does not apply. He wants
different pajamas—for the ten minutes that remain before daybreak. He wants
his Superman pair that are in the wash. And he wants to put them on himself.
Which (after I retrieve them from the dirty clothes) he does, with two feet in one
leg hole, and inside out.
Now my son is angry, indignant. And because just about everything in his
life right now is involved with me, his current problem is all my fault. He cries.
He says he doesn’t like me anymore. He hates this cereal. He wants to put the
peel back on the banana. He wants cartoons, and the fact that this isn’t Saturday
is immaterial, because (once again) I should be able to conjure up a few Smurfs
if I really try. “No cartoons today,” I say, in a calm, level voice—though I am in
fact nearing the breaking point. And now Willy’s wailing has roused my son
Charlie, who thumps down the stairs, with his bear in his hand and his thumb in
his mouth, requesting oatmeal with maple syrup and raisins to look like a face,
while from her bed my daughter Audrey is weeping that I let her sleep in too late
and now she’s missed everything.
It’s five minutes to seven. The coffee water has just come to a boil.
I make the peanut butter sandwiches for Audrey’s lunch and get to work
braiding Audrey’s hair while my husband Steve attempts to round up the right
number of shoes, socks, hair clips, mittens, and little boxes of juice. Steve warms
up the car, Audrey searches frantically for her piano book. Willy insists on
putting his own boots on. Charlie wants help with his. Mr. Rogers is just placing
his suit coat on a hanger and lacing up his sneakers as I zip up the last pair of
snow pants. My coffee sits on the counter, cold.
At times, in the middle of the chaotic morning rites of getting everybody up
and dressed (some out the door, some not) my mind flashes to an image of the
old Donna Reed Show that I used to watch when I was my daughter’s age:
Donna Reed, in her immaculate starched apron and her perfect hairdo, standing
at the door of her tidy home, handing out the lunch bags and kissing her husband
and children goodbye as they head out to face the day. Her husband forgets to
kiss her, and Donna looks vaguely distressed, but in the end he always comes
back and gives her a peck on the cheek. Then she smiles contentedly and gets on
with her day. Which is what I try to do also, although sometimes, by eight A.M. I
feel more like taking a two-hour nap. I might have been climbing a mountain or
competing in a triathlon, but in fact all I’ve been doing is arbitrating disputes
over mittens, pouring out cereal, and sponging off counters. Some adventure.
I was a newspaper reporter in New York City once, and I wrote about fires and
elevator operators’ strikes and dog shows and murders. It was a pretty exciting
line of work for a young single woman who’d grown up in a small New
Hampshire town. I loved having a job that allowed me to earn my living doing
what I like best anyway, which is observing life and asking questions. But I
knew from the first that it was no life for a married woman with young children,
and so when I met the man I wanted to marry and with whom I wanted to raise
children, I quit my job and left the city. We moved back to my home state of
New Hampshire, to this two-hundred-year-old farmhouse at the end of a dirt
road with no neighbors in sight, five miles outside of a small town with no stop
light or movie theater, no elevator operators’ strikes or, for that matter, elevators.
Steve, my husband, is a painter, who sometimes paints canvases and sometimes
houses. He built himself a studio; I got pregnant. At first it was enough simply to
be together in our new home, and having a baby.
But when, after the first idyllic months up here, the reality began to hit us
that we’d both have to do something about earning a living, I fell into despair.
Truthfully, I guess I also missed the excitement and adventure of my former
career in this new life of mine, in which the big news of the day might be the
ripening of our first tomato or a trip to the town dump. I was a reporter without a
story—and where once I could always hop on the subway and find one, now I
was seven months pregnant, with the snow piled so high I couldn’t see out my
kitchen windows and our only car buried deep in the drifts.
I made bold plans that as soon as our baby was born I’d get right back to
business as usual, and from a tip I’d picked up I even got myself an assignment
to do a story about houses of prostitution in midtown Manhattan. Six weeks after
her birth, I strapped Audrey into the infant seat beside me and drove to New
York to conduct my research. I made phone calls to an underworld character
who could be reached only between three and four A.M. I even made it to one
East Side town house, whose shades were all drawn—where, I was told, there
was a woman who would talk to me round about the same hour of night, if I’d
meet her at a certain corner.
Only Audrey didn’t cooperate: She needed to be nursed when I was
supposed to be taking notes. She cried in the background while I attempted to
carry on my interview with the underworld character. The problem wasn’t
confined to Audrey, either. I realized, once I left my hearth and home, that by
my hearth, in my home, was really where I wanted to be with this new child of