Kids have us over a barrel

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

In the middle of exams she called from school to tell me that I am the only mother she knows who didn't send a survival package to her overworked, over-stressed, over-programmed daughter, that I am the only mother who never sends packages.

Why don't I bake brownies and rush with them to the post office, she demanded to know. Why don't I stock up on candy and granola bars and Advil and Nyquil and wrap them in tissue and pack them in a box and send them air mail, special delivery to the away-from-home daughter I say I love.

All the other mothers do, she said. I am the only mother on the planet who seems to think her daughter can exist entirely on school food.

"The school sent you a letter, Mom. For three years they've sent you a letter every single semester. When the good mothers get these letters they read them. Then they check the box next to `Yes, please send my son/daughter a survival kit.' Then they write a check, put the check in an envelope and mail the envelope.

"And you know what happens next? Right in the middle of exams, when you're feeling miserable and you're tired of studying and you can't wait to get home, along comes a package full of chocolate and cocoa mix and coffee and Lifesavers and you don't feel quite as miserable anymore. That's what everyone tells me. But of course I wouldn't know, because I've never gotten one of these packages."

She has never gotten a survival package. I never checked the square. I never wrote a check. I am, without question, a bad mother.

My friend, John McLean, is a father. At Christmas his 22-year-old soon-to-be-married all grown-up daughter flew home from California. She spent a few days with her fiance's grandparents and a few days with his mother and a few days with her friends, and the fewest days with her family. But on Christmas Eve when she stopped by in the company of her family, father included, and I said, "Michele, you should have on a warmer coat," she smiled coyly at the man who had only a few weeks before taken her to Disney World AND who was in the process of paying for her wedding. and said, "I don't have a warm coat because HE won't buy me one.”

Ah, yes. They grow up. Yet in the presence of their parents they remain children who still ache to be pampered, no matter what their age.

"Kim (my daughter's roommate) is so lucky," my daughter continued. "Her mother sends her packages all the time. I'll be sitting watching "Golden Girls" and the doorbell will ring and it's always the UPS man with something for Kim. You know what she got last week?"

I didn't want to know.

"A box full of homemade cookies," she said, before I could hang up.

Homemade cookies. Another thing I don't do - bake. I don't cook. I don't send packages. Clearly I should be sent to my room.

"You know you don't like anything I bake," I reasoned.

"I like Peggy Laughton cookies, Mom. You could unwrap them and pretend you made them." What she was saying, of course, was if you loved me you'd learn to bake. You'd stock up on tins. You'd be on a first-name basis with everyone at the post office. You'd do all the things that real mothers do.

"Mary's father bought her a VCR so she could exercise and get in shape for her wedding," Michele informed her father.

"How does a VCR get you in shape?" he stupidly asked.

"Oh, when you have a VCR you can buy exercise tapes and work out to them."

"What about walking, running, biking, swimming, snorkeling? You live in sunny California. You have the great outdoors? You really don't expect me to buy you a VCR do you?"

She put her arms around his neck. "It would really help, Dad. I work all day, you know, and by the time I get home at night it's dark. You wouldn't want me out exercising in the dark now, would you?"

They have us over a barrel, no matter what their age. They play on our guilt from the day they are born until the day we die.