Long Island Sound

By Barbara Klaus

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669839569

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Copyright © 2022 by Barbara Klaus. 840103

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022914102

ISBN: 978-1-6698-4042-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6698-4043-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6698-3956-9 (e)

Rev. date: 08/18/2022

Long Island Sound

Columns from the NY Times

From 1987-1990, my mom’s columns ran in the Long Island section of the Sunday New York Times. This collection, while extensive, is but a glimpse into my mom’s gift for and love of storytelling. My mom was always the family historian, preserving our memories in tales from her childhood, adolescence and adulthood – stories told the way family stories are meant to be shared, with love and humor. How grateful we are that she preserved so many of them.

My mom was a storyteller for as long as any of us can remember. At every family gathering and any other time that just felt right, my mom would glow as she shared her memories, treating us to new and not so new tales. Yes, we had heard many of the stories time and time again, but they never got old. Think of how you feel when you hit the play button to start your favorite movie, savoring every second of it even though you know how it ends. For us, it was always, Mom, tell us about the time…

As you read these columns, you may not know the people personally but I promise you will recognize the characters, maybe even yourself. For at the heart of these tales are universal truths that connect us to each other. They will draw you in. At Thanksgiving last year my wife read a few of these stories to three generations of her family. I will forever cherish the memory of Marcelle narrating as my mom sat with our new family and everyone taking in every single word.

With her columns, my mom leaves us a timeless gift. Stories meant to be passed from generation to generation.

I hope you enjoy the journey.

Barry Klaus

August 2022

Table of Contents

Mother vs. Daughter: Combatants in Shopping War

Skiing: Are We Having Fun Yet?

Return With Us Now To Colds of Yesteryear

Commuter Wives: They Serve, Sit and Wait –– and Wait

A (Spring) Break for Students, but Not for Parents

Next to Diamonds, Shoulder Pads Are a Girl’s Best Friend

The Truth About Holidays: Not What You Remember

How Does a Man Change Channels in the Middle of Life?

The Supermarket Blues: Once a Week, Shop Till You Drop

Here Comes the Bill, Here Comes. . .

Contacts: Seeing Isn’t Necessarily Believing

Father’s Day, Mother’s Lot

Status Is Standard Equipment

Don’t Tell! Camp Is Our Time

Guest Weekend: Relax, That’s an Order

Taking a Freshman to College: An Education in Itself

How Sweet It Was — and Is

Store Wars: The Bag Saga

Back-to-School Night: Making the Grade

Fall Sport: Decorate Till You Drop

Therapy at the Diner: Life in the Breakdown Lane

The Search for the Status Winter Tan

Pass the Chopped Liver, It’s Thanksgiving

Is There Life After Errands?

A Psychic’s Forecast: The Future Lies Ahead

Let’s Ring in Old Year

Don’t Call Me, I’ll Call You — on My Car Phone

When Flu Strikes, Can This Marriage Be Saved?

Valentine, My Heart Burns for You

Into the Microchip Era, Kicking and Screaming

And Now, the ‘Drop-Dead’ Dress

Nice Place to Visit, but You Wouldn’t Want to Be Sick There

Where Are the Tax Shelters of Yesteryear?

At a Reunion, Agonies Revisited

A Mother’s Day Lament: ‘They Meant Well’

May Madness Before the June Swoon

Pomp and Other Circumstances

Off to Camp, With All the 289 Necessities

At Last! Independence From Barbecuing!

Instructions: 1. Warranty Up? 2. Call Repairman!

Hamptons Party: The Gang’s All Here?

Life Sentences: Talking to Children

Throwing One’s Weight Around

The Incredible Shrinking Clothes

Can’t Stand the Heat? Get a New Kitchen

When Films Were Movies and Heroines Were Blond

Desserts Can’t Be Too Thin; or Too Rich

On Exercising One’s Prerogative

Checkup Is Fine but the Patient Is Worried

What It All Boils Down To

Getting There is Half the Aggravation

Resolution No. 1: No More Lists

Code Red: Alarm in Progress

Downhill on Skis and a Prayer

The Rules of Romance, 1950’s Style

Some Innovations We Can Live With

Split Ends and Other Terminal Illnesses

At the Tone, Hang Up

Do You Know Where Your Exemptions Are?

Store Wars: Showdown in the Discount Aisles

Motherhood Isn’t the Same Since They Changed the Rules

Driver, Thy Name Is Vanity

Down the Bridal Path (At $300 a Minute)

Let’s Celebrate Dadhood, for a Change

Beach Blanket Bingo, 50’s Style

Can This Weekend Be Saved?

There’s No Job Too Big or Too Small

In Today’s World, It’s Shape Up or Ship Out

Secrets of an Unsuccessful Dieter

Fall Fashion Follies

Gossip: Say That Again?

The War Against the Moths

How Do We Differ? Let Me Count the Ways

Roar of the Pigskin, Smell of the Crowd

Forecast: Bridal Showers Ahead

Smile, Darn You, Smile

Weak Links in the Food Chain

My New year’s and How It Grew

What Will Be Hot, and What Not

Westward Ho, at 35,000 Feet

Of Slings, Arrows and Cherubs

Something New Under the Sun! Babies!

Sliding Down the Up Scale

Did You Say Prenuptial Agreement?

Just Another Face in the Crowd

A Thumb Green Only From Envy

How to Be a Mother’s Mother

Taking the Proper Measure of a Man

Weight Till Next Year

Aren’t the Formative Years Wonderful?

Eastward, or Westward, Ho!

Over the Bounding Maine?

Paying Their Own Way, Almost

The Joys (?) of Summer, Revisited

Crayola Gold, Buster Brown Blues

Are You Out to Lunch On Your Birthday?

You’re Only an Only Child One Time

Men Over 50: Hot Flashes and Other Changes

That’s Entertainment: A Guide for the Guilty

The Joys of Moving to Manhattan

How to Spoil the Grandchildren

The Cholesterol That Binds

What’s Worse Than Middle Age?

Oh, Start Already, Brave New ’91, We Can’t Wait

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 1987

Mother vs. Daughter: Combatants in Shopping War

By BARBARA KLAUS

LONG ISLAND SOUND

WHOEVER invented the word angst was probably watching me shop for clothes with my daughter. It is a scene that is duplicated in dozens of department stores by hundreds of mother-daughter pairs in thousands of dressing room cubicles from Merrick to Montauk – a fact that gives me absolutely no comfort whatsoever.

I undertake this uniquely female ritual in a spirit of optimism. Fresh from a wardrobe of elastic waistbands, I am still oblivious to the additional three inches spread over my midsection. With the last shades of a once glowing midwinter tan my only make-up, my hair still lightened by the sun, I allow myself a not bad parting glance in the hall mirror, ignoring the faint trace of bemusement on my daughter’s lips.

This is a chance for us to renew our relationship and catch up on lives separated, over the years, by school, summer camp or work. It is also a chance for me to see exactly how much I can age in only one afternoon. The aging process begins with my offhand remark: "That’s what you’re wearing?" –– to a daughter dressed for shopping in what I once wore for gym.

She counters with a comment about older women dressing like teenagers. And, as they say, we’re off.

City mothers and daughters shop. But they don’t have the long drives between malls where, sitting together, encased in a car, you learn precisely how warped all of your values are –– and exactly how overprotective, smothering and reactionary you are. You also learn that your daughter has no intention of going back to college/taking a job/breaking off with her current boyfriend, the scourge of your existence.

Mood established, we enter the store and meet other pairs: erect, thin young women, and their overprotective, smothering reactionaries. We meander along the clothing racks, picking through outfits, the cost of any one of which could have outfitted their grandparents for three years.

The daughters wear the same facial expression: Industrial-Strength Sneer –– signifying what used to be called a bad mood. It is a mood that lasts from age 14 through graduate school, peaking in department stores. The mothers’ expressions can best be labeled Resolute Good Cheer. (The older the mother, the more resolute the cheer. My expression is downright hilarity.)

My role is that of pack horse (carrying outfits) and gofer (darting between dressing room and shelves, racks and other mothers). The latter are grim-looking women, feverishly sifting through the racks, mumbling things like, "I’ll show her who’s going to wear leather and nailheads."

Back inside the dressing rooms, 12 cubicles become the arenas for 12 private wars as the following dialogues permeate the air:

"Try it on — how do you know you won’t like it?"

"Now this is–– totally awesome" (followed by a maternal moan).

Over my dead body you’re wearing Led Zeppelin. ...

"Not while I’m paying for it, you’re not."

What we’re really talking here, folks, is power — as in who’s choosing whose outfits (i.e. identity) this year. In my cubicle, I lean toward wholesome, button-down all-American; my daughter favors black, backless sequins: Debbie Boone meets Cher.

Watching our daughters select clothing — and the personae that accompany the process — are the times that try mothers’ souls.

Fortunately, the stores seem to understand. It is probably no accident that many provide a chair in each cubicle. Twelve mothers plop into 12 chairs, sigh audibly and pile yet another bundle of clothing on their laps.

It is at this point that I glance in the mirror, which has turned into the picture of Dorian Gray. My tan has faded to a greenish hue, and my face resembles the road map of New Jersey. My elastic waistband has snapped under the stress of lunch (aggravation plus 1,000 calories). My hair, hanging limply now, seems to have darkened four shades. My blouse, pulled askew by reaching for high racks, now hangs out of my skirt. And my entire bearing seems to have crumbled. I resemble an ad for calcium tablets.

And there, beside me, is my daughter — living testimony to the saying Youth is wasted on the young — who could bounce a dime off any given inch of her skin, who is 20 years away from a laugh line, stretch mark or varicose vein.

Aphrodite speaks: "Yuchh — I look totally gross."

And issuing forth from all 12 cubicles simultaneously is the communal wail: But, Maa. You don’t understaand...

Oh yes, we do. We understand that, in about 20 or 30 years, our daughters will be shopping with their children. I can’t wait. Meanwhile, I’ve found that the following helps. After each shopping trip I repeat 10 times: It’s not me, it’s her. It’s not me, it’s her. It’s not me. ...

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1987

Skiing: Are We Having Fun Yet?

By BARBARA KLAUS

LONG ISLAND SOUND

COME February, the ski slopes around Aspen, Colo., resemble the Long Island Expressway as visitors from all over Long Island stream in. And it was in glorious Aspen, with its picturesque mountains, powdery-perfect snow and downhill racer’s dream conditions, that I gave up skiing forever.

Normally, skiing ranks second only to periodontal surgery on my list of interests. In Aspen, it’s a dead heat.

Invented, no doubt, by an enterprising orthopedist, skiing enables an individual to suffer a tremendous amount of physical discomfort and pain in below-freezing temperatures early in the morning. (Naturally, it appeals to fitness enthusiasts.) You wait on long lines to careen down a mountain again and again. And this, I’ve learned, is the fun part.

For me, it all began 14 years ago when, in the name of family togetherness, I –– a person whose idea of exercising is flossing –– agreed to ski, sampling everything from Hunter Mountain to Aspen. (I, who needed learner roller skates until age 10 and training wheels on a bike until 15. In fact, by the time I finally learned jump rope, nobody cared. They were all out on dates.)

The first time, a friend, noting my outfit, looked aghast and pulled me aside. The, uh, thing is, she said, they don’t carry a pocketbook on the ski slope.

Later I was properly attired: thermal underwear, lightweight turtleneck, heavy ski sweater, socks, mittens, hat, goggles, ski outfit — and boots that Frankenstein’s monster would have killed for.

Something’s wrong, I told the ski shop’s proprietor. I can’t feel my feet. This, he assured me, was precisely the way they were supposed to feel.

Stepping outside, as graceful a move as William (Refrigerator) Perry dancing Swan Lake, I attached my boots to skis. Since this was performed while bending over, it resulted in a sudden rush of blood to the head and perspiration pouring down the back.

Surprisingly, I easily navigated the first small hill, and called out to my son. This beginner’s slope is a cinch, I said.

Ma, he said, you’re in the parking lot. The beginner’s slope is over there.

But where? Ski slopes are rarely labeled beginner or advanced, but rather bottoms up, shin cracker or the droll point of no return. The wrong selection can prove fatal. However, there is one rule that assures the novice that he is in the right place: The number of people who fall while waiting on line for the chair lift.

The chair lift line is, for most skiers, a chance to relax, breath crisp, fresh air and admire the breathtaking panorama. For me it is one more shot at the coronary care unit.

Once on line, I move up rapidly to a point designated by the attendant, place my ski poles in one hand, turn around to watch the chair approaching, grab on to the arm rail and hop up on the chair. Simple? Right. Except that I have exactly five seconds to do it in and the chair is moving at about 75 miles an hour.

On the chair ride, skiers contemplate sunlit peaks, low-hanging clouds and ant-sized skiers far below. My only thought is where to ship the body as I firmly resolve never to gossip about my friend Sherie again, to prepare dinner from scratch five times a week and give up Häagen-Dazs forever — if I can only get down alive.

After 14 years of skiing, I have finally mastered the beginner’s slopes (mastery meaning grasping the poles so firmly that they leave imprints on my hands all winter, bending my knees, hunching over into a fetal position and — ignoring the sunlit peaks and the low-hanging clouds –– I execute a let’s-get-this-over-with, top-to-bottom, nonstop descent, chanting a top-to-bottom, nonstop mantra: snowplow snowplow snowplow snowplow).

It didn’t always work. Sometimes I grasped the poles, bent my knees, snowplowed — and stared up at the tree that had sprouted in my path. This brings us to the skier’s golden rule: It doesn’t pay to fall. The poles must be recovered, and the skis, which release in the fall, reattached — aiming them perpendicular to the mountain. (Aim them parallel to the mountain and you descend abruptly — in a sitting position.)

Inevitably, at times like these, my husband would zip by, calling out, Isn’t this fun? He wasn’t kidding. I responded with a vivid description of exactly what he could do with the skis, the boots and the poles.

This last time, I had fallen with a distinctive crack, which I regarded as a signal from the Blue Cross company. I recovered my poles, replaced my cap, removed my skis — and walked down the mountain.

The mountain was in Aspen — central casting’s version of Logan’s Run, where the median age is 24 and anyone over 40 must ski in New Jersey. (It’s a law.)

Aspen, where cushy condominiums, quaint shops and posh boutiques sit one mile above sea level — where I suffer the heart palpitations, migraine headaches, dizziness and nausea I generally associate with listening to my children’s music.

Aspen, where high-speed chair lifts zip skiers to the top faster (which some people regard as a positive thing). Where restaurant dress codes are jacket and tie for men and anorexia for women — and conversations run to:

Ted Kennedy was on the Nine Lift today.

"Oh, yeah — Jane Fonda was in the ladies’ room."

How’d she look?

"Rotten. After all, she’s been skiing."

That was it. If — despite the scenery, the ambiance, the dream conditions — Jane Fonda could look rotten after skiing, it was time to try something else.

Flossing, anyone?

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1987

Return With Us Now To Colds of Yesteryear

By BARBARA KLAUS

LONG ISLAND SOUND

THEY don’t make colds the way they used to. Oh, the germs are still the same. And it still takes a week to recover. But, years ago, before penicillin or strepto-this, mycin-that, or gagging-wheezing-coughing-sneezing medicine –– when all that stood between a cold and death was a spirin, sulfa and your mother with the home remedy of your ethnic origin — things were different.

Illness was, in a sense, the national pastime. You took a week off for a cold, a month for pneumonia. Decades before the fitness movement, fresh air — accused of carrying everything from the dreaded polio to, at least, croup — was practically on the F.B.I.’s 10 Most Wanted list. Bundling up was the 40’s version of jogging.

Winter clothing in my house consisted of: woolen underwear, cotton stockings, knee-high socks over the stockings, a skirt, leggings under the skirt, sweaters –– plural — a hat, earmuffs, gloves and a coat, weighing about 58 pounds. Despite this armor, despite never being allowed out of the house after a shower, never sitting in front of a window through which, at any moment, a draft might pass, I missed probably three out of eight years of elementary school because of illness.

(All this was a constant source of mystery to my mother: I don’t understand it, she’d say, other children go out half-naked, meaning only one coat, and they never get sick.)

Enter Dr. Klingon, who was, in effect, one of the family. (The doctor is coming, my mother would explain, dusting the furniture and vacuuming the rugs again –– lest he accuse her of harboring fugitive germs there.) Six feet 3 inches, 250 pounds, he literally filled the doorway of my bedroom, dressed, even at 3 A.M., in a suit, down to a tie pin — more than befitting the $4 he charged per visit.

I knew how Dr. Klingon cured me. Germs, I decided, were afraid of him. One look at his massive bulk and they made a kamikaze dive out of the window. His ministrations were actually very simple: taking your temperature, listening to your feverish chest with an icy-cold stethoscope and — with a Santa-like wave of his hand — departing, issuing an edict concerning your digestive system.

(Like many physicians of the era, Dr. Klingon believed that the root of all evil lay in the intestinal tract. You had the flu? You got a laxative. You broke your toe? You got a laxative.)

Enter my mother, guardian of my immune system. It was Anna Jaffe vs. a bacteria-virus-pneumococcus army. The germs never stood a chance.

Each generation has its own form of gastrointestinal torture. My parents had castor oil (as in are you lucky you don’t have to take castor oil). I had milk of magnesia, which came in one flavor: chalk. Thick, white and odorless, it had all the consistency and taste of white paint and inevitably produced a dramatic effect: I threw up every drop of it.

Give her one tablespoon, Dr. Klingon had said, but what did he know? If one tablespoon was good, reasoned my mother, three were better.

Better yet, for serious ailments (i.e., anything that threatened to develop into pneumonia in my lifetime), there was sulfa. The pre-penicillin miracle came in little waxed paper packets and tasted exactly like a ground-up B-29. But, since anything requiring a prescription came under the category of not to be vomited, my mother combined the sulfa with bicarbonate of soda for digestion, water for dilution and generous amounts of sugar for flavor. This combination I gulped down eagerly. Then I vomited.

Alas, you can’t spit up mustard plasters. Believe me, I would have tried. These pieces of fabric — usually old flannel undershirts –– were coated with a thick mixture, which, when applied to the chest, brought the blood to the surface and electrocuted the germs (the patient only felt as if he was being electrocuted).

My mother’s secret weapon was mentholated rubs. Most women rubbed it on their child’s chest and let it go at that. She rubbed it on chest, neck, back, up the nose, behind the ears and — in case the thermal effect was somewhat bearable — covered the medicated area with flannel for extra warmth.

The effect was like being roasted alive in a camphor crypt. But it worked. Any remaining germs immediately died of menthol inhalation. In fact, the germs of anyone who sat next to me for a week after I returned to school died of menthol inhalation.

Not all treatments were medicinal. Each household had its own miracle version (imported from Europe) of hot milk, honey, brandy and butter — each guaranteed to speed the victim back to school, if only to get away from the miracle cure. My house featured tea: quarts of it. Gallons. Oceans poured down my throat. Anna Jaffe would take no prisoners.

And neither would I. When my own children had the flu, I would give them their strawberry-flavored cold medicine, chewable aspirin and chocolate-flavored laxatives. And, exercising every parent’s prerogative to remind the children of exactly how fortunate they are, I would say, Are you lucky you don’t have to take sulfa.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 1987

Commuter Wives: They Serve, Sit and Wait –– and Wait

By BARBARA KLAUS

LONG ISLAND SOUND

"DA-DA," my 12-month-old daughter said. Clever, precious and downright brilliant, I thought –– except that she was saying it to the diaper man.

You couldn’t blame her. Her father was a commuter. My husband, Morty, has taken the Long Island Rail Road or the Long Island Expressway to New York for 25 years. The Marquis de Sade, had he lived, would have made people take the L.I.R.R. or the L.I.E., preferably both.

There are two types of Long Islanders: commuters and normal people. Normal people (i.e., those who work on Long Island) show up on time for P.T.A. and Scout meetings and coach Little League games. Fathers play ball with their children, drive car pools and mow the lawn. At 6 P.M. (What’s that? you know commuters who come home at 6 P.M.? Then you also know they’re asleep at 6:15 because they make the 5:06 train in the morning.)

Normal people eat dinner at human times, like 7 P.M., and have dinner table conversations like these:

And how was your day, dear?

Larry, pass the potatoes to your father, please.

Tell Daddy all about school, sweetheart.

In my house, dinner conversations went like this: Sit up straight, don’t talk with your mouth full and put the napkin on your lap. And that was when I ate alone with Morty after the children were in bed!

For years my husband saw his children only on weekends and their birthdays until one day he wondered why it was so quiet. They left for sleep-away camp, I said.

My children were equally confused by their father’s absence. Finally, I decided to make his role clearer. After dinner, I dressed them in pajamas and took them to Rockville Centre train station to wait. Soon Morty appeared.

Now do you see where Daddy goes? I said. And they did. In fact, for years they thought that Daddy’s job was to ride back and forth on the L.I.R.R. all day.

Wives of commuters inspired the expression, They also serve who sit and wait for dinner. You sit alone after the children are in bed until at 9 P.M. the phone rings and your husband whispers those three little words you’ve been waiting to hear. Bumper to bumper.

I diet all day, but at 9 P.M. something strange happens to your brain. One minute you’re eating celery; the next you discover you have half a chocolate cake in one hand and brown crumbs all over your blouse — and you can’t remember why. (Hint: two lanes of traffic are closed on the L.I.E. — from the Queens Midtown Tunnel to the Sagtikos Parkway.)

Then there’s the matter of discipline. When I was raising my children, it was important to have a consistent schedule. (I knew that because, right on page 29 of Dr. Spock’s book, it said, Have a consistent schedule.)

Thus, by 7:30, the children were bathed, fed, read to, given water and tucked in for the night. At 7:38 the key turned in the front door. (My children — who couldn’t hear me screaming "bedtime" in a voice reaching to Montauk — heard that key.)

By 7:40, they had stormed down the stairs — angelic expressions reading, We who are about to stay up late salute you. By 7:43 they were playing let’s bounce each other off Dad. (Quality time in my house meant, It’s 7:45: do you know where your Valiums are?)

My husband — or horsey, depending on your point of view — loved it. And why not? He had by 7:45 spent exactly seven minutes with them. The children loved it too. With the intuitive knowledge that you can spot a sucker when you see one, they said, "Daad, can you play just one game of knock-hockey with us? Pleease?"

And Daad, ignoring my oh-no-you-don’t expression and my head jerking spastically toward their bedroom, ignoring the smell of yet another dinner burning in the oven, said, Sure, kids. Why not? — Adding, to me, Aren’t they cute?

One day I’d had enough. If you were paid by the hour, we’d live in Sands Point by now, I said. And there’s no one left to do business with in the city after 7 o’clock anyway. Why can’t you get home earlier?

Because, Morty said, I wait to leave New York until rush hour is over. It takes me the same amount of time to get home as it would if I sat in rush hour traffic.

Oh, I said.

After all, it seemed logical. And then I realized something. Who is in rush hour, anyway? Men rushing home to their families, that’s who — a fact that Morty considered completely beside the point.

Later, he discovered that, if you wait until 9 P.M., there really is no traffic on the L.I.E. and the trains are practically deserted. I ate with the children (a practice that made Gelusil what it is today).

Older now, the children have showered, eaten and were making Cain and Abel look like Damon and Pythias upstairs when the key turned in the lock. But now, I was there first — greeting my husband in a way that would have sent Jane Wyatt (mother in Father Knows Best) into cardiac arrest. I grab his lapels and, through clenched teeth, issue the following edict:

"I want you ... to go upstairs ... and kill anything that moves."

And Morty: tired, hungry — in a strong, no-nonsense, take-charge voice positively reeking with authority — would say, "Kids...how about a game of two-on-one before I eat?"

Today that’s all changed. Morty still comes home late. But I have memorized the commuter’s wife’s credo: Don’t broil until you see the whites of their eyes.

But what are a few inconveniences compared to the satisfaction of knowing you did it all for your children? The wholesome, suburban atmosphere, the green grass, the clean air, the schools: all for them.

And their reaction? My son, who was considering his own career several years ago, said, Me commute when I have kids? Are you kidding? I’d have to be crazy.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 1987

A (Spring) Break for Students, but Not for Parents

By BARBARA KLAUS

LONG ISLAND SOUND

JUST when you thought your marriage had rejuvenated, along comes college spring break. You have, as they say, come to grips with eating dinner alone (without hearing, "Yuch — meat loaf again?). Or listening to dentist music" without someone rolling his eyeballs skyward and groaning. Or going to a restaurant without preparing a meal for those at home who, the moment you leave, order in a pizza anyway.

You’ve gotten the hang of dressing without picking through a mountain of towels on the bathroom floor, or hearing I suppose you think you look good in that, or At your age? You’re kidding, right? and — empty nest or no empty nest — you have adjusted to life without the nerve-shattering word "Maa or the even more spine-chilling phrase, Ma, don’t worry."

But, as you wait for your child’s return, warmth and love flood your senses. The airport scene is straight out of Thanksgiving turkey commercials: child rushing into the arms of mother — who, in her euphoria, overlooks the fact that he forgot to book the cheap air fare. Again. Or father, who, in the spirit of the occasion, pretends not to notice the lavender punk hairdo — on his son.

The paternal warmth lasts for a day and a half. I know. I’ve timed it: 36 hours...tops. (Between siblings? Seven,