In the 1950’s, before my mother and father re-decorated our house, we had a wing chair that sat in the living room next to the fireplace. It was covered in a gold fabric that was embossed with a pattern. This became known as “The Gold Chair.”
When I was feeling odd or icky—that feeling where your stomach churns and you just KNOW that things aren’t right with the world—my mother would take me to The Gold Chair. I would sit in her lap and she would try to make me feel better.
One of these occasions was shortly before she and my father were to go off on a romantic weekend together—obviously, without me. Even at that young age, I appreciated that my parents needed time to be together and I secretly admired their marriage for that. My mother’s mantra was “your father was here before you were.” BUT, I never relished being left behind for a weekend with one of my mother’s unmarried friends.
That day my mother held me on her lap in The Gold Chair and told me that she was putting a special green vest on me. It would stay on me while she was gone and I was to think about the green vest whenever I felt sad or lonely. It kind of worked.
As a music teacher in the Burbank School District, my mother collected unmarried women friends like some women collect shoes. With only one exception, I think all of her female friends were without spouse or children. In some ways, that gave them an advantage over her. They had a lot more time and freedom to do whatever it was that they did. On the other hand, my mother had the advantage of my father. And that was quite an advantage.
On those getaway weekends, one of unmarried would come to tend my sister and me. And life wouldn’t return to normalcy until my parents walked through the door late Sunday afternoon. The food wouldn’t be right, bedtimes would be odd and everything was akimbo.
The worst time was when we were left during the school week. I think this was after my mother retired so she could spend more time with my father who was fifteen years her elder. They must have gone on a business trip together. My sister and I were in high school. The Gold Chair was long gone. I was far too big to sit in my mother’s lap. And the little green vest story wasn’t cutting it anymore.
The unmarried lady was adamant that we didn’t need to set the morning alarm because she “got up at the same time each day. “That theory works if you are in your own bed, subliminally listening to your own neighborhood’s predictable morning noises and awakening to your own day. This woman was not doing any of these things.
Being tardy to school was something we just didn’t do. Had never done. Nor was having a burnt breakfast that suffered from having been broiled rather than baked.
