A Goose and Her Gosling

Over the years, my mother and I discussed the whats, the hows, and the whys of my upbringing. As a matter of principle, from the moment I was born until her death, she habitually ignored all parenting practices that made no sense to her. When I was an infant, she simply could not understand the commonly accepted dress code for babies. On the steamiest days of summer, mothers taking their babies for carriage rides would be wearing loose fitting cotton dresses, while the babies would be bundled up in layers of clothes and blankets. Why, they could barely move. To Mother that made no sense whatsoever. She'd say, "I never bundled you up in hot weather. When I wore loose fitting cotton dresses to keep cool, you never wore any clothes at all except for your diapers. You stayed cooler, and you could move around." What's good for the mother goose really is good for the gosling.



When older, I wiped dishes. Like all children, I had my share of accidents. When my friends broke a dish, their mothers would often ask, "Why did you do that?" When I broke the gravy boat that went with our good, matching set of china, did my mother ask, "Why did you do that?" No, she did not. It seems that when she was a child and broke something accidentally, her mother would ask, "Why did you do that?" Mother thought then that that was a stupid question. If she knew why she'd done what she did, she wouldn't have done it. She vowed she'd never ask a child of hers, "Why did you do that?" She kept her vow. Instead, she'd say, "X is broken. Let's talk about it." That I could deal with. Goslings are lucky when the mother goose remembers what is was like to be a gosling herself.

As a teen, I loved everything about the theater, particularly the acting. My parents shocked their friends by taking me to see plays that were "inappropriate for my age." That's a euphemism for "too sexually explicit." My parents had noticed that I "got" what I was old enough to "get" and didn't "get" what I wasn't old enough to "get." As a result, they had no qualms about taking me to anything and everything. Then, along came "Streetcar Named Desire," a Theater Guild Production. As season ticket holders, Mother and I had tickets for Streetcar. The protests, "You aren't going to take her to see that!," were so overwhelming that for the first time ever, Mother bowed to public opinion. She left me at home. The play was so wonderful, the acting so marvelous, that Mother regretted caving in to the pressure. During the intermission, she went to the box office and bought me a ticket. I wasn't taken to see "Streetcar Named Desire." I went by myself. I was fourteen, and Mother was right. I loved the play, the acting. As usual, I "got" what I was old enough to "get" and didn't "get" what I wasn't old enough to "get." No harm had been done. My mother goose never again let the cackling of other geese interfere with her common sense -- or her principles.