Death, Illness and the Good Hostess

The year that my mother went back to work was a difficult one.  I was just starting fourth grade; my sister was in second. We still had our hair braided or pony-tailed in front of the pink bathroom’s large mirror every morning; our lunches were still made the night before and stored in the fridge in colorful paper sacks that sometimes had love notes tucked between the waxed-papered tuna sandwiches, cherry tomatoes and much welcomed the new invention of “Cheese n Crackers.” We still had a sit-down breakfast at the dining table that, too, was set the night before.  I had no idea at the time how stressful this must have been for my mother. She wanted to be the perfect music teacher for the Burbank School District, perfect cook, perfect homemaker, perfect wife and perfect mother.  People didn’t talk about stress in the 1950’s.

These were not the days of driving with your kids to a McDonald’s drive-thru and ordering a McMuffin with processed cheese or grabbing a Jamba Juice.  These were the days of wheat germ, oatmeal with raisins and that cereal that made me feel like puking: Cream of Wheat.  On weekends it got more elaborate.

In mid September, my mother’s beloved father passed away in his sleep. On the morning of Dr. Cleveland Kleihauer’s death, the phone rang as we were eating breakfast in the dining room. My father was reading the sports section of the LA TIMES.  With naive excitement, I ran into the hall to answer the phone.  My step-grandmother said in a flat and unfriendly tone: “Get your mother.”

For the first time in my life I went to school without my hair being done by my mother. And since then, I never answer an early phone call.

My mother blamed her father’s death on “having to carry too much luggage” on a recent tour of Europe, did not allow us to attend the funeral and very soon became very ill.

PART TWO

I don’t remember how much after my grandfather’s death that the doctor came to our home…maybe several months.  Because I do remember taking our somber grandmother on a tour of the “Apple Country” which was an annual day outing in the fall for the Smithson’s.  Day tripping with Ione was well out of the ordinary, and it seemed “forced.” She had always been the Grand Dame—head of the Kleihauer household, putter-on of dinners with silver candleholders, director of the housekeeper, wearer of fur stoles and mistress of the domain.  She had social status and let it show.  She was not used to sitting in the back seat of a station wagon with an eight year old.

I sat next to her, feeling uncomfortable at the proximity to a woman who was not, in today’s parlance “warm and fuzzy.”  It did not feel right.  Perhaps it was the proximity to death, as well, that made me feel odd.  I had never known anyone who had died before my grandfather.  Maybe I thought it was catching.  We ate fresh Red Delicious apples, visited my father’s friend named Blackie, who owned an orchard and got Smokey the Bear comics from a ranger.  I was glad to get home.  I’ll bet Ione was too.

PART THREE

When the doctor arrived at our door on Angus Street, I was oblivious as to how very ill my mother was.  She had been passing blood, all the while passing as the great mother that she was.  My father made the call and later the doctor told him that if he hadn’t my mother would have died.  When she arrived at the house, she immediately went into my parents’ bedroom.  My sister and I stayed out of the way.

But my sister inherited a super gene for hostess-ness.  She went into the freezer and dug out a frost-covered can of concentrated lemonade.  She would serve the doctor a cool drink.  Being little, she may not have been able to manipulate a can opener.  This was before the lids just could be lifted off.  So, with goodness in her heart, she got an ice pick out of the drawer and started stabbing.  She stabbed right into her finger.  The ice pick was stuck and dangling, blood was flowing and the doctor did not end up drinking lemonade.

When the ambulance took away my mother and my father followed in the car, a neighbor at the top of Angus Street swept us up and included us in her dinner.  Mrs. Clifton had raised three sons and was good in a crisis.  She told us that she was making macaroni and cheese.  I told her it was my favorite.  When we sat down at the table, I saw that she included stewed tomatoes in her version of the dish. While my sister ate gingerly with her bandaged hand, I tried to hide that this was nothing like my mother’s macaroni and cheese.