Mother's Influence
Thu., March 19, 02:13 PM
I think I could make a whole category out of this, how I’m not quite my mother’s daughter. One of the funniest greeting cards I ever found said, “I’m turning into my mother, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.” I sent it to my sister; who could possibly get it without having been there?
My mother brought us up to be independent, but she wasn’t always happy with the result. I learned from her, but I am not like her. “You’re more like Daddy,” says my sister. That’s right; that’s some of my best stuff. Like a very good memory for odds and ends, which Mother didn’t have. She used to rely on Daddy for that, and after he died, she would ask me — even as she didn’t know why or how I knew.
Like the whole thing with diaper pins, which I originally learned from her and did my own way. You don’t call them diaper pins? Well, they’re safety pins, of course, but there was a time when every mother had them. Diapers were made of cloth and held in place with safety pins. As a matter of fact, when disposable diapers first became available, we were still using pins. The adhesive tabs didn’t appear for a few more years. Most mothers of babies had a string of extras pinned to their bosoms.
(There is a fifty-year-old news photo of a tearful Debby Reynolds, with a baby in her arms and diaper pins hanging from her shirt. I was a fan back then, but now I wonder whether that picture was posed…)
My mother didn’t have a changing table. She changed diapers on her big bed, sticking the pins into the mattress. It seems to me that wasn’t the best kind of exercise for a woman who had just given birth, and it probably led to some of the “female” problems she experienced later in life. I also remember that the pins she used were somewhat smaller than what the other ladies used. I wonder whether she though the small ones would be more comfortable for the baby or if they were just cheaper.
Anyhow, the incident I am remembering was when my brother was an infant, so I was younger than four when it occurred. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the baby, but this was a major fuss. The baby, too young to do much more than cry, was doing it a lot, almost constantly, and he had not eaten or taken a bottle for two days. My parents, obviously concerned, left me with Gramma and took the baby to the doctor. (Thinking back, I wonder what doctor they took him to; all our regulars had been drafted into the army by 1943.) I would not have known what transpired, except that Daddy explained it all to Gramma when they got home. Did you know that an additional advantage to having a gramma at home was that I could listen in on conversations?
The doctor looked into the baby’s mouth and throat and said, “This baby has an open safety pin in his throat!” The doctor was able to use his forceps to push the pin down farther, where he was able to close it and then pull it out. When they brought the little guy home, he drank two bottles and part of a third. I guess I should point out that he recovered completely and is now old enough to collect social security.
They also brought home the pin. They figured that he was the age where he might be groping around for things, and my mother was distracted by something (maybe me?) and didn’t see him put it in his mouth. After a couple of days inside the baby, the pin was yellow. As I now understand, pins are usually made of brass and plated with a silvery coating, which had dissolved away. But don’t think that’s the only thing I learned from the incident.
When I was preparing for my firstborn, I bought big pins with brightly colored heads, which never could be mistaken for anything other than diaper pins. Someone had bought me a changing table shortly after she was born. I made sure that, whenever I removed a pin from a diaper, I put it into the tray, out of the baby’s reach. I always knew where every pin was, whether it was in a diaper or in the sponge. (That’s a compulsive trait, like counting the spoons…) I never lost a pin, even temporarily, until I was in the hospital and my mother was taking care of the older babies. Yeah, I found it later. But I am definitely not like my mother!
