A Tuna Fish Singing Like a Monster

I happen to be a very fast reader and recently realized that’s because I skip any words that look boring. But for those really on the go, I recommend this: Hold the book up near your head and riffle through the pages. This will spray any important facts directly into your head. I do this with my Perl book.

I let my mother in on this and she emailed back, “I'm going to try this riffling thing. One thing I'm certain of is that standing the books on a dusty shelf does not work.”

She is starting to feel tempted to start her own blog, which would be good, as she is extremely funny. She wrote me, “I have much to say about hair growth in old age, and I feel I should get it down before you STEAL it all and put it in your blog.” She’ll have to move fast.

I also think my father should have a blog, as he is an amazing source of household hints, health tips, and fabulous vegetarian recipes. Between the two of them, my parents know absolutely everything. They’re both engineers.

When I was very young, my mother cooked dinner, but about 30 or so years ago, my father took over for the most part and now has an extensive repertoire of recipes. He likes to experiment and make up new things. My mother is very lucky because she gets to sit in her comfortable chair reading and/or listening to NPR and then the dinner bell rings and she goes to the dining room to find that a fabulous vegetarian feast has appeared. Of course, the exact same thing happens in my house except that I have to do both parts. (After I get my fabulous vegetarian feast cooked, I run and sit in my comfortable chair for a few minutes, and then I walk to the table and try to act surprised.)

My mother likes to bake. She makes yummy desserts and bread, and lately she has been cranking out bagels by the gross.

One of the written communiqués I received from my father in my childhood was a note saying I had hurt his feelings by refusing to try the asparagus he had labored to make palatable (which was harder in the 1960s when it came frozen in a box). He used to send us children memos as if we were his work colleagues (or, perhaps, his employees, now that I think about it). Our work-style names would be listed at the top:

L. W. Atkins
J. M. Atkins
C. D. Atkins

The recipient’s name would have a checkmark by it, and then would be the subject line, maybe “Allowances.” My allowance was the square of my age, rounded to the nearest nickel. When I was five, I got a quarter per week. At six, I got 35 cents.

I warned my parents some years ago that I was planning to write a memoir about my wretched childhood. My father said, “That’s absolutely fine. You have our support. I’m sorry that you had some hard times. I wish I had it to do over again.” My mother said, “There wasn’t anything wrong with your childhood.”

So I feel confident telling anecdotes about my father; I have his permission. But after I post this, I guess I’ll go stand by the mailbox and wait for certified mail from my mother’s attorney.

Fortunately, she doesn’t actually have an attorney. When her own mother died, she executed the will without legal assistance, but pooh-poohed any expressions of admiration. She said, “It’s not like I’m trying to merge AOL and Time Warner.”

When I was last home, my parents asked me to go through my childhood artwork and take whatever I wanted so they could get rid of the rest, which seemed very reasonable, as they’d been storing piles and piles of our masterworks for 40+ years. At the bottom of many pictures, my mother had lovingly written down whatever the child said the picture was: “A rabbit eating a mean, nasty, selfish pig,” or “A tuna fish singing like a monster,” or, identifying a picture of a solid-colored four-legged animal, “A zebra long ago in England; they have them with stripes now.”

It was fun to go through the piles. It appears that I spent most of my first 10 years trying to get someone to put the Herb Alpert record Whipped Cream and Other Delights on for me. I wrote notes asking sternly, “Will you play the [sic] Herp Albert record for me? Check one box. If the answer is yes, I will be down at 8 p.m. to listen to it.” Will you or will you not put on that record?! If I'd had an attorney, they would have heard from him or her.

We came upon one note written when I was six or eight that said something like, “If I’m not back by dinnertime, you can divide up my stuff, because I have run away from home and I’m never coming back. I would like my mother to have this shoelace.” My mother and I almost fell on the floor laughing, while my father looked genuinely distressed. He’s extremely nice.

And there was a picture explaining what I wanted for Christmas: GUM. But that was a typo. I crossed it out and tried again: GUN. And, sure enough, the accompanying illustration is of a little girl with a long rifle. I did get a gun, too, from my feminist mother, an air gun.

Ha. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad childhood after all.