The Letter Opener

The Letter Opener

In earlier days, hotel rooms always came equipped with a letter opener, usually with the hotel’s name stamped on the handle—The Hotel Lucerne, Hotel Monteleone, Place d’Arms. Usually found in the drawer of the spindly desk, along with a few hotel-logo envelopes and some sheets of stationery. And sometimes a postcard of the exterior of the hotel taken from its most flattering side. The pens used to be imitation fountain pens, the ones with no cap. But now the letter openers are gone, along with the fake pens. Cheap ballpoint pens, logo included, now are on every flat surface of a hotel room. But no letter opener.

What were they for, anyway? In my whole life, I’ve gotten maybe two letters while I was at a hotel, both from people staying in the same hotel and attending the same conference. And I don’t recall needing a letter opener to tear into them either. Instead of a letter opener, now the hotel bathroom is filled with amenities—shampoo and conditioner, bath gel and soap, shower cap and sewing kit. Like buggy whips and typewriter carbon paper and ditto fluid and ash trays in restaurants, the hotel letter openers have passed on into history.

And to think I was present for the demise.

Down that Road Again

Down that Road Again

I have a recurring nightmare—it’s not as frequent nowadays as it used to be. It’s always a different scenario, but always the same theme. In it, I make a poor cision and then, rather than backing up and starting over, I just keep going down that wrong road. Predictably, the situation always deteriorates. I’ve gradually come to realize that is my unconscious, but wiser self is talking to me in these nightmares.

I’ll give you an example from real life. When Jonathan was about 2 ½ years old, I enrolled him in a Montessori school. I had been a big fan of Montessori education for a long time, and had even had fantasies of one day owning my own Montessori school. Well, although Jonathan adjusted (eventually) to his new daytime activities and actually thrived (throve?) in the Montessori atmosphere, the school never was quite what I expected. For one thing, the teacher wasn’t certified as a Montessori teacher. So when just a few months after Jonathan began attending the school the teacher asked me if I’d like to be on the Parent Board that ran the school, I immediate said “sure” without any hesitation. I thought this might be a way to influence the school to hire a certified teacher.

The next step down this road was that the Board needed to elect new officers, and, somehow, I have no memory of this, I was elected President. Probably by default. Anyhow, I was now “in charge.”

After another few months, during which I attended two rather desultory Board meeting, the teacher announced that she’d like to go to school to study and get certified. Good for her. But tough on the Board members, as we’d have to hire another teacher sooner, rather than later. Within a few days, though, we heard that a certified teacher was interested in the position at our little school. Were we in luck or what. So, given that Montessori teachers are scarcer than Howdy Doody lunchboxes, we hired her, almost sight unseen.

Things went along fairly well for another several months, but then I began getting phone calls from some parents, making vague complaints that “something was wrong.” It was hard to pinpoint just what the problem was. One person thought the children were using the same materials over and over again. Another thought that the classroom seemed a little untidy. All came to a head, though, one Saturday afternoon when I got a telephone call from the teacher. She was quitting, effective immediately. When I asked what was wrong, she said something vague like she wasn’t going to be there anymore. When I asked where she was going, she gave a funny little laugh and said she didn’t really know where you went after you killed yourself.

Whooooo. I told her I would call her right back, and not to move. I called my friend who was the medical school chaplain and asked him what to do. He said to see if I could get her to the emergency room and he would meet her there and see that she got to proper resources. I called the teacher back, and asked if she would meet my friend at the ER, and she eventually said she would. Later I heard that she did go to the ER and must have gotten some help, but I never heard from her again. I think she went home to her parents’ house.

At any rate, we had no teacher for Monday. Between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning, I enlisted the aid of the part-time teacher’s aide and the office manager (the only two employees besides the teacher) to keep the school going for the short term. Both these women had some Montessori training, but were uncertified.

Now what. As it turns out, there was another Montessori school in town, so I called the teacher at that school for suggestions. She put me in touch with the President of their Parent Board, who let me know that they might be interested in merging the two schools, as their enrollment was not as high as they would like. Unfortunately (for me) the woman who was the President of their Board was the most God-awful women I’ve ever dealt with. When I think back on her, I always envision her in a dominatrix outfit, because that gal was the most dominating, controlling, bossy, opinionated society gal I have ever met. Not that I know that many society gals.

And, to make matters worse, it turned out that, years before, our school had broken away from the very school we were talking about merging with over a falling out between two sets of parents. Only one of the children in our school was a sibling of a child from that era, but old animosities and jealousies came flaring back up as that mother rekindled the flames.

But in the long run, we had no choice. There were no available Montessori teachers to be found at any price, and our salary wasn’t that high anyway, so despite the misgivings of some parents, we merged the two schools and inherited a teacher.

Jonathan and the other children liked the new teacher, nobody yanked their kid out of the school, and I became the Vice-President of the new School. Guess who the President was. The rest of that year passed uneventfully and at the next Board meeting, I resigned.

See what I mean? One poor decision—agreeing to serve on a Parent Board without knowing the first thing about what I was getting into, and the whole next year of my life is in an upheaval.

And that’s just one example.

But after years of the recurring nightmare, I finally began to see the pattern. And now I can only hope I’m wise enough to try to look down the road before taking that first step.

Things I Just Absolutely Love and Never Get Frustrated With

Things I Just Absolutely Love and Never Get Frustrated With

Bluebirds
Kittens
Fried turtle
The blue flowers of wild chicory
Queen Anne’s lace (wildflower)
Christmas ornaments
Pink clouds
Eartha Kitty
Jonathan’s blankie
Dried hydrangeas
Cool mornings

BEDTIME STORIES

BEDTIME STORIES

I had a big, big book of bedtime stories when I was small, one for each day of the year. I don’t remember any of the stories, but I remember each one had a moral or some lesson about good behavior.

My mother was big on good behavior. And so, as her first child, I got all her ideas about raising the well-behaved child tried out on me. The rules, the bedtime stories, the subtle shake of her head, her black eyes turning even darker—I knew all her signals.

Which is why I’ve always kept Bad Gwendie well hidden.

JONATHAN AND AUTHORITY

JONATHAN AND AUTHORITY

My son Jonathan was never one to be intimidated by authority. He was born that way. I remember how, just a few days after he was born, his Dad said to me, “We have to be careful not to squelch his little psyche.” Well, not to worry. This kid’s psyche was unsquelchable, or at least that’s what he’d have you think. His Grandma Camp and I often reminisce, in something like amazement, that while he was still young enough and small enough to sleep in a bassinet, he would awake from a nap and begin shaking his little fist in the air, just visible over the edge of the bassinet. If you hopped up immediately, and saw to it that his diapers were changed or he was nursed or cuddled, life was good. But woe to the Mom who delayed just a bit. She would get the full treatment—screaming, kicking, inconsolable baby.

So I was trained early to try to pacify Jonathan, anticipate his wants, and let him have them, within reason. It was the “within reason” that caused the subsequent problems. Jonathan was so verbal, so early, that it always seemed to me that I was dealing with someone of considerable maturity. So I would try to reason with Jonathan, always to no avail. Once Jonathan thought of something he wanted—Cheerios, applesauce, a scooter, roller skates, a videotape player, to stay over at a friend’s house, a car, spring break at Myrtle Beach---he never backed down. No amount of “no’s”, said in a million different ways ever deterred him from his quest. This would often lead to situations where, I’m embarrassed and ashamed to admit, I would wind up trying to squelch his little psyche. Once when Jonathan was in “the terrible two’s”, he and I were in the kitchen, having one of our typical “discussions.” His Dad walked in on us, assessed the situation and asked, “Who’s the two year old here?”

Things did not improve much as the years went by. When Jonathan was 6, he once said to me something which perfectly encapsulates what I am trying to describe here. After yet another one of our “discussions” where I was unsuccessfully trying to “reason” with the boy, he said, “Mom, I don’t know why you think you can boss me around the way you do.”

Just a few years later, Jonathan and his buddy Benjamin were spending a Saturday together at Benjamin’s house. In midafternoon they decided it would be great to also spend the night together. This would entail getting both Benjamin’s mom and me to agree to the arrangement. A bit later, Benjamin’s dad asked them “Well, boys, got your plans worked out yet?” “Not yet,” they said, “we’re not finished with the begging, promising, and pleading.” Hard to squelch that level of sophistication.

For years I blamed my husband for this trait of Jonathan’s. He was the one with the fierce independent streak. But perhaps I contributed as well. When Jonathan was almost a teenager, he developed that smart-alack style of talking which my Father called “sassing your Mother” and which he (my father) did not allow. Jonathan and I were visiting my parents, and as luck would have it, he came out with a “smart-aleck” remark right in front of my mother. Mortified that she had heard her grandson say something “ugly” like “YOU DON”T KNOW, MOM” with that hint of a sneer, I said in desperation to my mother, “Was I ever like that?” “Well,” she said, “you did always know everything.”

Echolalia

Echolalia

One of the best words that psychiatrists have invented is echolalia, which means speaking nonsense, but with a pattern of repeating, i.e. echoing, sounds. Like fall down brown town frown crown. Get up cup, pup, sup, bup. I’m mad, sad, glad, plaid.

I’ve never actually heard anyone do this, but all the medical students learn about it so it must happen from time to time. Regardless of what you call it, it’s a sure sign of mental illness—or of terminal poetry.