Learning experience

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

 

I was happy all the time, well, maybe not ALL the time, as I had to be The Great Pretender. The Grandmothers' Club was an idea I had and had to make it work. Being the chief, the instigator, the planner, fell easily on my back. Daddy always said, 'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree,' but he also lectured, 'Lie down with dogs and get fleas.' He was such a hard person, outwardly cold. Personally, I called him The Last Angry Man, and yet he was my paragon, my devil on a pedestal.

 

Mama must have loved him once, but most of her feelings evaporated as Daddy's tyrannical foot kept her nailed in a world of cooking, mending, obeying his stern commands. Sometimes, as my childish mind matured, I seemed to hear her sighs, saw her thinking with a tear in her eye. 'Oh, Sadie, what went wrong? This Is Your Life.'  Once she got the nerve to join a small democratic club which was nothing more than a social gathering of ladies who met at the butcher shop on Thursdays and the corner A & P whenever they had an excursion from the house. Mama came pretty close to breaking her bonds when she was nominated to be Sergeant-at-Arms but Daddy ridiculed her and she resigned herself to being an eternal nebbish.

 

Instead of resenting all of Daddy's negatives, I chose to see, to emulate, his determination, his wisdom, his interest in living, not for, but in spite of Mama. Going back to when he was a young admirer of the prettiest girl in the neighborhood whose older sister let him and Sadie sneak away from a party for their first kiss, their marriage was ordained. Even then she had no character,  no strength to say, 'I'm too young. I'm not ready.' Instead she acquiesced and the dastardly deed was done.

 

Children came. Mama reaped rich rewards, trips to where Daddy wanted to go, a fur coat he liked, a 3 times a week maid who spent almost all of that time cleaning his office. Eventually Mama got a driver's license.  Yet she couldn't drive without him in the passenger's seat, constantly pushing his foot to the floor. 'Quick, open your window! Signal, signal! He commanded.  With hardly a wince Mama took his badgering but eventually gave up and he drove or they stayed home.

 

One thing Mama never realized, her little girl was smart, learning from her example how not to be like her. As my father, my dead father, began to molder in the grave he dug for himself, my spine grew straighter, my firmness more resolved. My eyes seemed to mirror his image. If I wanted something done, I did it myself. Ask little, do more, take no guff, let no deadwood pile around my feet. These things were branded into my mind, my soul. 'Come on, Ceil,' 'Join us Elly.' 'You HAVE to come.' 'Harriet, we'll reminisce, play Canasta. Eat some chocolate cheese cake. Friday night, my house. I won't take NO for an answer.'

 

So the apple did NOT fall far from the tree. It was my turn to be a leader and I smiled.