Generation Gaps : Coming to Grips With the Fact That Mother Did Know Best

This is the week my mother arrives from Michigan for a visit. I am a college graduate, I am a schoolteacher, I have been a parent for nearly 20 years. However, the moment my mother arrives, I find myself assessing my parenting and organizational skills.

A friend once commented that her parents’ visits make her react as if there were a giant magnifying glass on her home, and that family members are hooked up to microphones.

The slightest negative reply like “I’ll get it in a minute” from a child, normally met with indifference, is, when in earshot of the grandparent, as resonant as an announcement at a football game.

My children and their cousins offer comical routines on this subject:

“Boy, you better not stuff your food into your mouth like that when Gramma comes.”

“O.K. guys, when Gramma is visiting, what is the only possible answer to the question, ‘Will you carry out the garbage?”’

“Oh, yes, Mother. I would be honored to do that for you.”

“Watch TV? Heavens, no. Let’s have a wholesome game of checkers or perhaps we could do a little yard work for Mother and Father.”

There is little question that we are raising families in a more complicated environment than the one in which our parents did. My siblings and I, not unlike the norm of society, have pursued careers that take us outside our homes and require that we share our child-care responsibilities with others. Our children are not confined to their own neighborhood or small town. At a much earlier age, they travel substantial distances for school, lessons and sports activities.

Over the years, I have found it advantageous to adopt some of my mother’s organizational ways and means. This pleases her, and I have found a number of those ideas from a simpler time to be beneficial in operating in a more complex one.

Write it down.

As children, my siblings and I were obliged to “write down” all activities on a massive calendar that hung in our dining room. With seven children, this seemed to organize dates for school programs, school projects, work schedules, baby-sitting jobs and sports programs.

In keeping with this, I do have a large calendar in the kitchen with entries posted for work schedules, school schedules and programs, and, this year, it has also served as a reminder to the junior/senior of SAT dates, and deadlines for college applications. The calendar notes concerts, sports schedules, games. Have you ever been the parent who failed to bring the snack for the game?

I was recently reminded, quite powerfully, of the importance of “writing it down.” Two weeks ago, after our 11-year-old had not returned from school after two hours, I became panicked. She always comes home directly from her bus stop. At the back of my mind was her reading to me the account from the newspaper that morning of the abduction and subsequent murder of a young girl. I called the bus company to see if there had been any delays. No. Why hadn’t she called if she had changed her plans? (This is my most conscientious child.) Only a machine answered my call at the home of her two closest friends.

I drove the entire route of her bus from school to home. Finally, in desperation, I called the Police Department.

An hour later, this dear child arrived home to a frantic mother. Had I not remembered that she had told me during the Saturday soccer game that on Tuesday she was invited to go to a social event after school? I had given her my permission to attend.

The Police Department met my apologies with understanding and gratefulness that this had merely been a communications error. If only I had followed my rules to “write it down.”

The Green Book.

Augmenting the calendar is “the green book,” which is kept in a drawer near the calendar.

Neatly divided into sections with each family member’s name, the “green book” holds important information from the school, musical groups, sports teams and lists of friends and numbers. The importance of the “green book” cannot be overstated. Sometimes, I find the “green book” in places other than its designated drawer and I am tempted to chain it to its spot.

Don’t-Leave-Home-Without-It list.

The “don’t leave home without it list” contains all pertinent home numbers, Social Security numbers, medical information (including immunizations, health insurance numbers and addresses for verification), the work numbers of family members and numbers of people with whom it may be necessary to contact in case of an emergency.

I fashioned such a list for my daughter when she went off to college last year. When her Berkeley residence was evacuated three weeks ago with the threat of the nearby fire, along with her books and some small pictures in her backpack, she had the “don’t leave home without it list” in her wallet.

However, as I sat in an emergency room last week with our 17-year-old injured football player, and tried to give information to the receptionist, it was I who was without the needed data.

Bin Concept of Laundry.

One of my sisters hung her master’s degree in the laundry room, for even though she was successfully employed and managing four children, tackling the laundry always appeared to be her greatest challenge. However, we siblings have all adopted Mother’s “Bin Concept of Laundry,” which is a great time-saver.

Every family member has a bin, with his or her name on it, in the laundry room. Dirty clothes deposited in the laundry room (and not left on bedroom floors) are ultimately cleaned and find their way into the individual’s bin. In theory, family members take their bin into their bedroom and neatly put their clothes in their drawers. In truth, most family members under age 20 operate solely from their “bins” in the laundry room.

Dinner Together.

There’s one area in which I cannot duplicate my mother: the daily family meal. Even though our family, and society at large, would benefit from it, our schedules do not allow for every family member to sit down at dinner at 6 o’clock each evening. However, at least once--sometimes twice--a week we do gather in the dining room and have a real family meal.

It is a miracle of organization that on the same night that everyone is home, we have just been to the grocery store and planned ahead.

Adding perfect table manners and highly appropriate dinner conversation to the two aforementioned variables may be too much to ask of any one family in 1991.

But, while the magnifying glass and microphones are in operation in our house this month, I will be able to acknowledge to my mother areas where she knew best.