CBN.com – No one’s
ever accused me of being balanced. If childhood maps our future
beliefs and actions, it’s no wonder I veer to the right
when walking down the sidewalk. If I spin, I twirl right. If I
dance, my right foot leads. Perhaps my left-handedness dictates
this bent, but I know better. I even look like a conservative
with my understated pageboy, my Keds, and my sundresses. Now if
I chose orthopedic sandals, I’d look like a member of PETA.
And dreadlocks on this stark white woman? That might land me a
delegate position to the Democratic National Convention.
My kitchen could well serve as a stopping point for Captain America
between missions. Years ago, when I began collecting flagthemed
items, my friends and family latched on to it like suckers to
wool socks. The Schneider house now holds 179 flags and flag knickknacks.
After eighty items, I told them I had enough. Apparently they
hadn’t. And who can blame them? Finding the right gift for
someone proves enough of a chore. Collections narrow the field.
Well, it could be worse. I might have launched an endless parade
of pigs or roosters. Or cows. At least flags don’t contract
crazy diseases or curly parasites. Sometimes they attract the
matches of malcontents. But not in my kitchen.
My most vivid childhood memories still frighten me. I entered
life in the thick of the cold war. Nineteen sixty-four. JFK’s
assassination found me curled safely within my mother’s
womb. Had nature’s resolve not eclipsed my mother’s,
I might still reside there, “the way things are going these
days,” as she always said. Does the unborn child assume
its mother’s emotions? If so, fear began to embroider a
repeating pattern upon my heart well before the day I emerged
with one fist clamped onto my own ear and ripping it halfway off.
The uterus in which I grew from two cells to four to eight “and
so on and so on and so on” nested inside a card-carrying
member of the John Birch Society and the Towson Republican Club.
Conservatism entwined with my DNA, enriched my blood cells, oxygenated
my brain and—God bless the USA—the flag, the Constitution,
and the death penalty. And all God’s people said, “Amen!”
Leavened by Mom’s Christian fundamentalism, my fear rose
like a sourdough sponge in a greenhouse. Fear joggled and popped
about our congregation like Mexican jumping beans and escorted
us just about as far. In Mom’s circles, the cold war forever
remained a hot topic. And the Soviet Union? “Let’s
face the truth now, Sister Starling, the USSR has probably infiltrated
even our own congregation with a ‘change agent’ we’ve
been duped into thinking really loves the Lord!”
Yes, we believed in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywherepresent
God, but we acted like He’d totally lost control over the
good old US of A, and if we failed to win it back, He’d
be up a creek. Poor God. Imagine His thankfulness for churches
like ours, willing to fight His political battles for Him, to
“contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the
saints.” Somehow, I doubt battling Communism entered the
apostle Jude’s mind the day he penned that phrase.
In 1973, a film I viewed at church informed me that in less than
two years the Communists would assume complete control of the
US government. Graphic depictions of torture, designed to light
a fire of terror beneath the derri`eres of God-fearing, law-abiding
citizens, bloodied the screen. A sandy-haired, freckle-faced boy
regurgitated as a soldier burst his eardrums with a bamboo stick.
Other soldiers tied ropes around the four limbs of a father and
repeatedly lowered him onto pitchforks while his children watched,
screaming. Even now, the nationality of these people eludes me,
but Asian faces flicker across my memory.
I believed it real footage of a real event, spots and spatters
and lines marring the celluloid like an old newsreel. Yet today
I wonder whether actors performed a macabre script. Either way,
I guess the purveyors of the film deemed “snuff in the name
of freedom” acceptable. “Violence porn” they
call it these days.
I’ll never forget standing at the back of the church afterward,
shaking uncontrollably from a fear that, having crawled inside
of me, proceeded to gnaw away at my innocence, upon which no real
value had been placed. The fear tinted my soul the clear red of
blood mixed with water and dug sharp roots into the lining of
my spirit. Should a nine-year-old possess a working knowledge
of the Trilateral Commission and the Illuminati?
“This is a John Birch church,” Betty Christopher
said when the pastor suggested maybe congregants advanced matters
toward the extreme. And believe me, if my pastor, who considered
left a fourletter word, supposed things went too far,
they really had slid right off the edge of the rational world.
We resided in suburban Baltimore, for heaven’s sake, in
a blue-collar neighborhood of people who worked hard and merely
wanted to abide in peace. Well, Betty eventually left the church,
taking others with her, because that unknown change agent had
worked his magic on our ideology. She dubbed us members of the
vast left-wing conspiracy, members of
the aforementioned Trilateral Commission who also secreted pink
cards in our wallets and pocketbooks.
Mom didn’t cry about it. “Good riddance. She was
nothing but a troublemaker anyway. What a paranoid.”
I can happily report Mom calmed down eventually. In fact, she’s
perfectly lovely and serene and rests in a much stronger, more
normal faith these days. My personal theory? The whole thing tired
her out, and she believes she paid her dues in full. She’s
right. I paid mine by the time I was fifteen, when I picketed
an abortion clinic out on Bel Air Road and was declared a particularly
foul name for a female dog by a passerby. On that freezing cold
Saturday morning, the wind swung down the street with such force
it immediately froze my hands to the picket-sign post. Hardly
a great reward after giving myself a stiletto-sized splinter while
making my sign. The only consolation any of us has on the matter
is that at least the babies live with Jesus now. I guess in heaven
nobody’s considered an inconvenience.
I have to give my pastor credit, though. He loved us kids. In
fact, during church picnics at Muddy Run Park, it was my pastor
who swam with us, let us dunk him, and threw us high in the air
so we could flip, dive, and cannonball ourselves into exhaustion.
Okay, time to stop the mental rumination before the snooze alarm
goes off again. I slide the lever of the clock before it bleeps,
pick up the bedside phone, and call Mom.
“Hello, dear!”
Her voice comforts more than a down quilt.
“Hi Mom. Have a good night?”
“Fine. Your brother brought me up some dinner, some kind
of baked flounder. I always sleep well after fish.”
She’s always so happy to hear from me. I’m one of
the few weird women who actually like being with her mom. I extend
all the credit to her. I was a mouthy brat between ages thirteen
and sixteen. She persevered. That’s Mom, though.
“Good. Can I drop Trixie off a little early this morning?”
“Of course, dear. Why?”
“Persy cut his hair last night, and I want to get him to
the barber before school.”
“How bad is it?”
“Let’s just put it this way: his bangs look like
Milton Berle took a bite out of them.”
I wanted to say Steven Tyler, but Mom’s no Aerosmith fan.
“Oh my. I think every little boy does it at least once.”
“This is the eighth time, Mom.”
“Eighth? Are you sure?”
“That isn’t something a mother forgets.”
“My goodness. You’ll have to start hiding the scissors.”
“I’ve been hiding the scissors. He did it with his
bowie knife.”
“Oh my!” She laughs. Low and a bit scratchy. Mom
had thyroid cancer at the untested age of twenty-one. They scraped
her vocal cords to make sure theyd removed it all.
“Better go wake them up. Love you, dear.”
I love you too. Oh wait—bring Trixie in her pajamas.
I bought the cutest little outfit for her the other day at the
Hecht Company.”
Of course, they started calling it plain-old Hecht’s
years ago. Mom takes a while to align her vernacular with the
times.
***
I possess a fantasy. Ad gurus love to think they know about a
woman’s fantasies. Of course, theirs involve strawberries,
silk scarves, and sweat. I fantasize about marriage to a man who
says bedtime prayers with the kids so I can take a nice hot bath.
That’s about it.
***
The day I walked in the March for Victory, my Easter outfit hugged
my skinny body. Well, it was the seventies. While millions (or
so they say) of students protested the Vietnam War, our church
group marched down the streets of Philadelphia in support of the
troops. I held one end of a banner for WTOW, a religious AM radio
station, feeling pretty darned important, not to mention stylish,
in my navy polyester-knit dress and coat with white buttons and
a patentleather belt. The white vinyl knee-high go-go boots positively
puffed me proud.
I don’’t
care for. But I was realistic enough to know the general population
frowned on our cause. And to this day, other than my best friend,
Lou, and the kids I churched around with, I know no other children
who participate in marches, then or now. I still support the troops,
by the way.
So here: if you’re looking for a story about someone who
grew up in extreme conservatism and ended up a liberal or, God
help me, a moderate, shut the book now. I am who I am, and if
you can’re not the liberal you think. Conversely, if you’re
reading this for affirmation, go read something by Dave Eggers
or Gore Vidal, then think for yourself. But by all means, finish
this book, then go tell your friends to buy a copy because, as
you’ll see, I need the cash more than ever.
Money is why I still write a column for our local paper, a strip
of rhetoric dedicated to the proposition that there isn’t
a person alive I cannot anger or offend. It lets me do the blabbering
for a change, instead of those annoying Hollywood types who live
in mansions and have garages full of Bentleys, closets full of
Prada originals, boxes full of Harry Winston jewels, and noses
full of high-grade cocaine. Who are they to talk about social
justice because they gave ten grand to the Democratic gubernatorial
candidate? (Which, in truth, would be the same as me sending in
a check for ten bucks.)
The newspaper columnist in me explains my verbose asides. Believe
it or not, I don’t always write about national and local
politics in my column. Sometimes I write about domestic—as
in behind the front door of your house—
’re married to a man who’s
gone eighty percent of the time and you’re still together,
that’s lemonade. That might even qualify as hard lemonade.
Oh sure, the activists tell me we’ve advanced miles and
miles. But nobody’s gained more from our liberation than
men. Now, not only do they have less responsibility for the household
budget, they can get sex more easily before a household even exists.
And even most of the married ones don’t lift a finger at
home. Who packs the lunches, helps with homework, makes sure somebody’s
home for the cable man? We do, that’s who.
Let me tell you, there’s not a man alive, other than single
or stay-at-home dads, who have a clue whether there’s enough
clean underwear in the kids’ drawers for tomorrow. If I’m
wrong, I’ll be the first one to applaud.
Now, I may be mistaken, but I don’t expect even the Jesus
my old church worshiped would leave all the vacuuming to one person,
or that He’d push back from the supper table and hop right
on His computer.
It’s not that I don’t like men. I love men. I just
think we women have created monsters and then blamed the monsters.
It’s time now to liberate the men, to teach them not to
merely view us as equals, but to raise us up on the pedestals
we deserve, to adore us, to admire us, and at the very least do
fifty percent of the housework without our having to ask. Shoot,
even dishes three nights a week would be nice. Straightening the
den now and again? Putting a new roll on the toilet paper holder?
Okay, putting the cap back on the toothpaste! How about that?
I’m a little mad right now. I haven’t heard from
my husband, Rusty, in three days. Granted he’s busy singing
tenor for a traveling gospel barbershop quartet, Heavenly Harmonies,
but would it be so hard to turn on the blinkin’ cell phone
before the concert begins and just say hi?
Frankly, I’ll take anger over fear any day. At least anger
buffs you up.
Lemons out of lemonade. Hmm. Well, let’s see now. Three
days incommunicado may just equal that new light fixture I want
for the front porch. Oh yeah. Drink up, Rusty. I just won this
one.
God, I’d hate myself to really think of that as a victory.
I never for a moment imagined this life. Just bedtime prayers
and a bath.
It’s 5:00 a.m. I fire up my computer, Old Barbara by name,
and set out to write my column. We women must learn the art of
the deal and utilize it whenever possible. Especially with our
kids. I’m doing all I can to spread the word.
Don’t let me fool you. Yeah, I sound like I’m all
that, but if any of them saw how my son’s hair turned out
at the barber’s yesterday, they’d see me for the freak
I really am! Trixie, in her smart new Hecht’s romper, did
nothing but point and laugh at her brother all the way home, and
soft-hearted me decided to show her, and I let Persy eat chocolate-chip
cookies for dinner while she ate spinach and dried-out chicken
breast.
She kicked up such a fuss I swear fresh vocal nodules accompanied
her to bed.
Excerpted from Club
Sandwich by Lisa Samson, Copyright © 2005, published
by WaterBrook Press. Used
by permission. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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