Laugh Lines: Volume 3

By Barbara Klaus

The information about the book is not available as of this time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669867869

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Copyright © 2023 by Barbara Klaus. 850098

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

ISBN: 978-1-6698-6787-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6698-6788-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6698-6786-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903032

Rev. date: 02/21/2023

Contents

Foreword

No Family News Is Good News

Impassable Obstacles on the Road to Size 2

Wrapped Up in a Blizzard of Memories

A Reunion for the Sorority Girls

They Don’t Have Babies Like They Used To

Could This Have Helped Us Get Slim? Fat Chance!

For Whom the Phone Rings: a Date to Keep

Getting Cozy With Life’s Detritus

February’s Extra Day Is Just Too Big a Leap

Stressing up for an Arterial Test

Male Menopause, the 3-Act Show

Home Again With My Memories

A Week-Long Celebration Leaves You Weak

Requiem for a House That Won’t Be Forgotten

A Moving Day for the Family

When the Glass Slipper Fits (or Not), You Wear It

Erma, the Aggravated Voice in the Kitchen

Oh, the Generations of Differences in Mothers

Swilling Chazzerei for a Cause Bidding Up

A Survivor’s Trick to Living in the City: Escape

The Callous Husband’s Debt to the Caveman

Pomp, Circumstance and Greedy Inkeepers

This Turns a Father Into a Dad

When the Summer House Calls

In the Middle of a Swimsuit Dilemma

Coolly Decadent Coney Island

Just Another Fashion Racket

When Families Were Up Close and Personal

Straight From the Horse’s Mouth: How to Ride

Sophie’s Choice: The Good Old Days

I Don’t Remember the Music, but Loved It!

Heaven Was Flatbush in August

I’m All Alone, Sitting by the Fax Machine

For Some Cooks, This Day Is Rush Hashanah

An Idyll Is Sealed With a French Kiss-Off

Marriage Advice: Throw Out the Magazines

It’s Murder, Indeed, on the Orient Express

So Here’s What Female Friends Are For

It’s Autumn and Shmatte Season in New York

A Trophy Wife’s Tough Life on the Treadmill

WEDDING DETAILS

My Body, My Achy-Breaky Self

Someone Needs a New Battery Himself

When You’re a Hothouse Plant the Fall’s Fatal

Now, This Is What I Call Tradition!

M.D. Must Stand for Maximum Delays

Would You Want to Give Someone a Taxi Wallet?

He’s a Flight-Control Freak? Over and Out

Ho-Ho-Ho And Henpecked, Too

The Future Is Just A Phone Call Away

Predictions ’97: Out With the New, in With the Old

A New Year: Old Money vs. Old-Time Values

Voila! le Food at La Whatever, in Miniature

When It Comes to Dentists, I Know the Drill

Conscience Be Your Guide? Pass the Mallomars

Just Who Wrote These Books of Love?

After a Lifetime of Styling, Hair I Go Again

When Therapy Was Just Kvetch-as-Kvetch-Can

Now, How About a Clone With a Waistline?

Abandoned Wife Goes Gamboling in a Casino

Balancing Act With a Checkbook

As Different As Friends Can Be

The Road to 100 Is Getting Trickier

Surprise! She’ll Always Have Paris for the Weekend? Oui!

Was This Night Different? Don’t Ask

On the Concorde, a French Flight of Fancy

Food for Thought: Charity Begins At Home

Old Age Smooths the Wrinkles of Motherhood

They’ve Got a Bad Case of Bucolic Plague

Vacation Wasn’t What the Doctor Ordered

Meaty Matters of the Holy Days

Grandma-to-Be Celebrates With Milk of Amnesia

The Countryside’s Just Crawling With Nature

What Can You Expect from a Modern Pregnancy?

Minsk vs. Long Island? No Contest Good Old Minsk

A Country House for the Guests –– ???

Spurred On by Childhood Dream Horseback Riding for a Fall

The Taste Buds Recall the Giblets of Yesteryear

Shower Clothes Are –– Surprise! Not Big

In December, Charity Begins at the $5,000 Dress

Oh, Baby! Just Call Me Gramma

These Holiday Toys ‘R’ Ridiculous

How’s by Poopsie? Extra! Extra!

To Look Good? The Eyes Have It

Raising Kids the New-Fangled Way

Didja Ever Try to Improve Your Marriage?

Pride After the Fall From a Horse

Oh, Baby! Grandma Hits the Bottle

Return of the Man Who Got Away

Program This: I Want My Quill Back

Ga-Ga at the First Grandmas Club

Lost (and Exhausted) in Seoul

The Doctor Won’t See You Now

Bridge Over Troubled Bath Water

When Catalogs Spring Eternal

An Unbelievably Perfect Day

A Holiday Mom Didn’t Pass Over

It’s Not the Money, but Turn the Light Out!

This Home Is Where the Porte Cochere Is

Litany in Oy Minor for a Broken Leg

Three Cheers for Mothers-in-Law

Charity Ends at the Theater

Rockabye Stranger, for Crying Out Loud

Ah, Spring, the Culinary Season

Beauty Is Out in Bathing Suits

Rack and Ruin at the Salle de Sade

Dads Ain’t What They Used To Be

Pulling Old Tricks for the Sake of Old Junk

Oink? Maa? Moo? Just What Could This Be?

There It Goes –– Your Money at an Auction

Surviving a Trip to Tanglewood

What’s the Trouble With Susan? No Trouble

A Kid Again at Camp Choco-Chip

Flying the Not-So-Friendly Skies

Awful August Days, Then and Now

Caught Once Again in the Haze of School Days

On Vacation: Holed Up and Held Up in Wyoming

This Doormat Will Tread Lightly No Longer

Rockville Centre: My Old Town in a Past Life

High Holy Days Can Get Heavy

Grandson: A Gift of Many Returns

Food for Thought During a Really Slow Fast

A Weekend Without Him? Hmmm

Let’s Welcome Fall? Oh, Please!

Call This Moving Picture ‘Auntz’

Gallop Poll: Did You Like the Ride? Not Furlong

FOREWORD

The story goes something like this: My mom was building a following as a regular humor columnist at the New York Times when Roseanne (yes, that Roseanne) read her work and asked her to join the writing staff of her hit ABC sitcom in Los Angeles. After Roseanne, Newsday offered my mom a weekly column to be featured every Wednesday on page two of the popular Part 2 section.

For the next seven years, Newsday readers were invited in to my mom’s world of family and friends and the lives they lived. Her growing popularity led to several sell-out public speaking engagements which enthralled her readers and gave my mom the joy of hearing, in real time, how her work resonated with them. Everyone went home happy.

These columns of my mom’s Newsday years are the pinnacle of an award-winning career that started decades earlier in the basement of our Rockville Centre home. And, she paid her dues. My mom lined the walls of her home office with more than a hundred rejection letters she saved from article proposals over the years. But my mom laughed it off and kept on typing; the clattering of her Smith Corona typewriter was an ever-present soundtrack of her fierce determination.

When most of her peers started to slow down, my mom hit her stride. The freelance assignments came more frequently: The NY Times, Newsday’s magazine, and New York Magazine, to name a few. But none matched the impact of her award-winning years at Newsday, which included, towards the end of her run, the introduction of my son, Jacob, and my mom reveling in the opportunity to share her earliest stories of being a grandma.

When my mom settled in to a well-deserved retirement and embraced a childhood dream of riding horses, she continued to live life on her own terms, seeing the humor in everyday experiences and reveling in the laughter she heard when she shared her stories. While none of what she told over the last quarter-century appears in print, if you ever had a chance to meet my mom, either in person or on the pages of this collection, you have a pretty good idea how she responded to life and the people she met.

No one was more influential to my mom than my dad, who carries the torch for her to this day. His unwavering devotion to her memory and her legacy is what makes this collection possible. It’s an enduring love story and it’s his gift to her and to all of us.

For me, I miss my mom dearly. While I’m proud of her talent and achievements, it’s our deeply personal connection that I hold closest. She taught me to laugh and inspired my creativity.

And, my mom always had my back.

Barry Klaus

January 2023

1/3/96

No Family News Is Good News

WHAT: IT’S JAN. 3, and you haven’t gotten a 1995 family newsletter from friends? Something my grandmother would call nachas (rhymes with Caracas).

What is nachas? Simple: When your son graduates from law school, that’s nice. When he graduates from law school, earns a six-figure income, gives one-quarter of it to the needy . . . and marries a neurosurgeon, that’s nachas. People who send newsletters have big-time, industrial-strength nachas. Like what?

Samples: "Hi, folks. It’s time for all the news of the Devonshire family (pictured here next to our brand new Hummer, which comes in real handy on the rocky terrain of East Hampton). You may notice several additions to our clan. Grandma Shirley’s fiance –– the investment banker, equestrian, bridge life master and scuba diving champion –– standing next to our new son-in-law, Howard Kinsey Eldridge IV (affectionately known in the family as Howard Kinsey Eldridge IV).

"Howard, the director/attending chief of staff and protocol at Cedars of Mount Lebanon-Sinai Hospital, recently won a prestigious award for his distinguished work in neuro-micro-cardio-transplant liposuction.

"As you can see, benefitting from his research are Henrietta and Gertrude, Cousin Penelope’s prize poodles, first in show at Westminster last year.

"John (center), our favorite patriarch, welcomed the addition of several other Fortune 500 companies to the law firm’s clientele. But you know John: senior partner –– and also manager in a major investment bank –– he’s bored. So, in 1996, he’ll be pursuing his doctoral degree in nuclear physics at Columbia. Sadly, this leaves little time for golf, which will, no doubt, raise his handicap, to two. Luckily, he’s taking up Rollerblading, which is, hopefully, a lot less stressful than his beloved skydiving.

"Son-in-law Sidney, our investment banker, Rhodes/Fulbright scholar (you remember his MBA from Wharton and Harvard, Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford) now plays a dynamite game of polo, with our own Sharon (in the full body cast).

"Sharon is continuing her decorating career (as consultant to the White House) since the completion of the Trump project. She’s taking a well-deserved rest –– in Kenya –– to study the Bonsai tribe, which will, no doubt, enrich her latest novel, set in the bush country, due out in ’97.

"Our new granddaughter Francesca (3 months) amazes us all. Scoring 1,800 on the neo-natal PSATs, she has already received bids from the Miss Porter/Brierly/Chadwicke Schools for the Annoyingly Precocious. (Precocious big brother Wesley graduated magna cum laude from his nursery school in June.)

Meanwhile, Morgan and Stanley III push along in their respective roles –– Stanley as CEO, COO, CFO, LLB, PhD, DDS, VIP in the CD-ROM company, which is listed on NASDAQ . . . and the New York Stock Exchange.

"Morgan, after leaving AT&T, is devoting herself to F.I.T., the DAR, the twins, 4, (now in their second year at the Greenwich Fine Arts Academy), and the villa at Cap d’Antibes.

"Of course, we’re all proud of their leadership in the Help for the Hostile Program, building entire villages in Boca Raton for the terminally chic.

"Our ultra-chic triathlete, Buffy, who, as some of you know, has just been nominated for a Tony/Oscar/Golden Globe/People’s Choice award, completed filming in Antarctica and is off to Hawaii.

Good luck in the Iron Man, Buff.

Aaaagh! What I want to know is: Where do they get these families? Do they rent them or what?

Nah: They spin them.

Samples: Sharon is taking a well-deserved rest . . . (Translation: She got fired.) John is bored . . . (He got fired.)

Sidney plays a dynamite game of polo . . . (He’s out of jail on the embezzling charge.)

Grandpa loves them all and helps out occasionally. (He’s paying four mortgages and eight tuitions –– until the next millennium).

All right, all right: I’m jealous. But, hey, I could do a newsletter, too:

"Dear folks: 1995 was a busy year indeed for the Klaus clan. Barbara’s gums receded yet another half-inch, leaving her with an even more radiant smile. The fat on her body seems to have finally settled around her abdomen, so she is now able to buy fabulous new clothing in the maternity department.

Morty, who continues as the debonair, bon vivant we’ve come to know and love, has taken to flossing hourly, which fits in nicely with his jogging schedule. He spends 45 minutes a day on the treadmill –– sitting on it, right up close to the television set, since he has yet to pick up his new trifocals.

Larry and his wife are continuing with the refurbishing of their new house, and we’re sure we’ll be invited there, eventually. They have called, though –– twice already, in this decade.

Nephew Danny continues in his eighth year at Bougainville U., where getting a bachelor of arts is always a work in progress. Cousin Rob has done . . . he’s into . . . Well, we’re sure he’s doing all sorts of wonderful things. And, with time off for good behavior . . . But 1996 promises to be a banner year for the entire clan. In fact, if the trend continues, we promise never to send out another family newsletter again.

1/10/96

Impassable Obstacles on the Road to Size 2

WHEN MY CHILDREN were young they thought that the first word you uttered in the new year was some kind of omen. On Jan. 1, 1996, my first word was AAAAGH! –– after coming home from a New Year’s Eve party, completely undressing and looking in the full-length mirror.

At that moment, I made my annual New Year’s resolution: By Jan. 1, 1997, I would stand there with bones protruding from my shoulders and my neck, with a waist the width of my spinal column.

I would never, I resolved, eat another bite as long as I lived. Cake? Forget it. Fudge? A memory. Haagen-Dazs? History. I’m not alone. Right now people all over the country are lining up at diet clubs, actually paying to get on a scale once a week. We’re all doomed to failure.

The year ahead is a veritable minefield of temptations: holidays, special occasions, starting in January. But, you’re asking, what is there about Martin Luther King Day that calls for an ice cream sundae?

Oh, really. Now how about one of your average five-days-in-the-house snowstorms?

Every blast of wind calls for cocoa; every closet you clean means a Mallomar minute. Every phone call to your children calls for . . . well, you get the picture. By the time the storm lifts, I’m in another dress size category altogether, like a size 16 . . . tent.

January’s storms pass, and you can actually feel signs of life again –– in your elastic waistband. Your skirt’s zipper begins to lift past its launching pad. You can look at yourself in profile, without the waves of nausea.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Every year I get a gigunta box of chocolate from my husband that lasts, oh . . . hours. Why not tell him to stop? And not celebrate Valentine’s Day? What are you, some kind of an anarchist?

Actually, there are people who prefer sensible gifts like nightgowns or pocketbooks instead of sweets. Fortunately, I don’t know any of them.

Besides, not to worry. You can lose the weight in March. You can; I go away. And –– promise you won’t repeat this –– because I just might become an integral part of the Atlantic Ocean, I eat all the airline food.

I eat every native food, drink every margarita, Bahama Mama. Why not? I am, after all, on vacation. Besides, back home, since the only patriotic holiday is April Fool’s Day, I begin dieting.

Dieting? Hell-oooo, Passover: matzo flour pancakes, tsimmes, chicken soup, honey cake –– goodbye diet. Now I panic. We are positively zipping toward July Fourth and, instead of losing, uh, anything; I’ve gained . . . you don’t want to know.

Serious Starvation begins. I, a rational, adult human being, begin regarding food as nourishment, not a spiritual experience. Until Mother’s Day.

The family brings me candy and a cake. Then, because I don’t like something my daughter-in-law says, or my daughter gives me one of her Looks or my cousin says there’s a high-pressure front approaching from Rangoon, I eat it all.

Not sitting at the table like a humanoid, but standing over the sink at 3 a.m., because, as anyone knows, those calories don’t count.

Then I realize: Only two weeks till Memorial Day, when the chic have accumulated their entire size 2 wardrobes and are munching on bean sprouts until July Fourth.

Meanwhile, I have yet to lose the weight I gained from the January snowstorm –– weight that, by now, has done some heavy bonding with the flab from Valentine’s Day and the cellulite that’s set up an outpost on my thighs since the March vacation.

Enough, I decide –– and, on Father’s Day, I eat broiled fish, veggies and yogurt. It’s at June weddings that I destroy myself.

On July Fourth, I wrap myself in a muumuu and hide my upper arms, which, having taken on a life of their own, sway in the summer breeze. Dieting? I no longer think about it. I’m off to my second vacation home: the Haagen-Dazs shop in Oceanside.

Luckily, August has no holidays. No feasts. No national celebrations. Just . . . my birthday. And, on Aug. 27, I consume enough ice cream to deplete the sugar-cane crop of Honduras. And suddenly, it’s Labor Day: that one last, day-long ribs / corn / blueberry pie feast.

Now people think I’m buying elastic-waisted sweats because I’m athletic. And just when I can get into them, the Jewish New Year arrives, with brisket / kasha varnishkes / cakes, all of which I diet off –– in time for Halloween.

JUST to make sure I’ve got enough Three Musketeers, Almond Joys and Snickers for the trick-or-treaters, I always buy, oh . . . seven bags for the three children who ring the doorbell. What happens to the rest? Oh, please.

I finish them –– and it’s Thanksgiving, then the holiday season. And, suddenly, it’s the New Year –– and your first word is AAAAGH!

But does it all have to be so . . . grim? Not on your life –– if you resolve never to look at yourself in front of a full-length mirror on New Year’s Day as long as you live.

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01/17/96

Wrapped Up in a Blizzard of Memories

NO DOUBT the Blizzard of ’96 will be the Big One that people tell their children about in, say, 2036. And their children will say, Yeah, yeah, Dad. Could you pass the tree-bark burger? as their eyes glaze over.

Every generation has its Big One. During ours, in 1947, with school closed –– something that happened once every new galaxy formation or so –– I got to watch my mother in action.

She took one look outdoors and our apartment shook in fear. Dust trembled, cobwebs cowered in closets, and dirt (Dirt? Yes: The dirt in plants.) quaked as she got out the mops, broom, Lysol and lemon oil. Let the cleaning begin.

She emptied the drawers and dusted them. Did I say dust? She scrubbed the wood until it screamed for an attorney. Then she got out the shelving paper, which came in an assortment of colors –– from white to white.

This paper wasn’t washable; it didn’t cling to the drawer. Only my mother turned lining things with shelving paper into the origami of the housekeeping world.

She rolled the paper out to the full width of the drawer and folded it back. Then, using her thumbnail as a surgical scalpel, she traced a line on the paper, took a paring knife and sliced the amount she needed.

The skin on my face and body should fit as snugly as my mother’s shelving paper. She scrubbed the kitchen shelves, changed their paper and attached some kind of trim with metal thumb tacks. She would have scrubbed the radiator pipes, the back of the refrigerator –– and the bottom of the blue and white charity box standing on top of it –– except that my father was home from work.

The sight of him during the day was eerie, out of place: kind of like seeing the teachers in PS 152 smile. What do we do with him home, I wondered. Do we play Parchesi, go fish or Monopoly?

Do we listen to Stella Dallas, Portia Faces Life or Lamont Cranston, the (heh, heh) Shadow, on the radio? And find out what evil lurks in the hearts of Man. Or The Green Hornet, the FBI in Peace and War, The Lone Ranger or Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy?

Would we send away for Captain Midnight’s secret code ring? Cut out the frontier town on the Cheerios box? Drink hot cocoa with whole milk and real marshmallows?

During later storms, would we watch Howdy Doody, or a cooking demonstration of a slicer that peeled 117 items, on the new television set? Or Captain Video? Lucky Pup, with magician Foudini saying Otis elevatus! as people levitated? A test pattern?

What did we do? I’ll tell you what. In the Storm? What storm? school of parental values, we did the homework, that’s what.

I had no homework during 1960’s huge storm on Dec. 20; I had bigger problems: cars buried under banks of snow, trains stopped, buses not running, which are the kind of things you remember when you are due to give birth that night –– and the hospital is in Manhattan!

What if I went into labor? The doctor had said Dec. 20, so, of course, I would give birth on Dec. 20. He was, after all, The Doctor. But what if we couldn’t make the hospital?

I could see myself –– propped up on pillows, with no makeup, smiling limply, fresh from 87 hours of labor –– on the front cover of every newspaper: POLICE DELIVER BABY IN BROOKLYN BATTERY TUNNEL. Subhead: Selfish Mother Didn’t Listen to Her Family; Chose Doctor in Manhattan.

When we found our convertible parked under an avalanche, it had the only indoor snowbank in America. My husband, Morty, dug it out. Then, in case he had to start the engine quickly, he covered the motor with a blanket.

And I did give birth –– 23 days later.

Two years later, during the Dec. 26, 1962, storm, as new homeowners of a house built in the ‘20s, we found out exactly how good our oil burner was –– as we slept on the floor of the living room with a fire burning for warmth.

My husband, who grew up in a house, knew all the right moves. He dressed in his Army fatigues, field jacket and combat boots from his grueling stint as the post librarian at Fort Tilden in Riis Park.

He shoveled, sanded the walks and got out the sled for our son. Our son, my eye: Dad logged two hours on the sled; Junior, about seven minutes.

Meanwhile, I, an apartment-house kid who had looked down at snow from the vantage point of four stories above Ocean Avenue, suddenly was looking at marshmallow lawns, licking icicles that dribbled from trees frosted with white –– and dressing a totally shapeless snowman in my husband’s best scarf, hat and pipe.

Last week, I looked down at the Blizzard of ’96 from an apartment house in Manhattan. Do I miss Long Island? What –– with no sidewalks to plow, no snowblowers to schlepps with stores and restaurants that deliver everything? You’ve got to be kidding.

Yeah, I miss it.

1/24/96

A Reunion for the Sorority Girls

MY REUNION with five college friends had been scheduled for October. Then, just when I’d dieted enough to look like a humanoid, it was canceled.

We’ll make it in a couple of weeks, everybody said. Yeah, yeah, I thought –– and gained more weight than I’d lost. My roots grew out, my nails peeled.

The reunion was rescheduled.

I struggled with my look. Ralph/tweedy? Uptown Chanel-style? Bohemian turtleneck? I chose a special-occasion sweater and slacks and carefully, painstakingly, applied makeup.

I got to the Village 30 minutes early. Then, as I walked around the block –– well, you didn’t think I’d be the first one there, did you? –– I met Meryl, the bright, quiet one in the group, who I still see regularly; she was also parading around the block.

As we walked back to the restaurant, she looked me up and down: my painstaking makeup, my special-occasion outfit and said, Quick, let’s sit. They won’t see how fat we got.

We sat, at the reserved, empty table: facing the door, where each subsequent woman entered separately –– looking exactly like a guest on This Is Your Life.

CAROLE! we screamed to the perky one who was pinned in college. LOIS! to the one with the crinolines, cashmeres and dry wit. JEANETTE! to the group’s cheerleader. ELLEN! to the intellectual, meaning she had majored in poli-sci. (I, the late bloomer, was positively insulted that anyone recognized me.)

We each looked the same –– and different. In the sense that we looked like the original of us was . . . in there, someplace. But –– and I know you won’t believe this: All our hair was exactly the same color as it was back in Brooklyn College.

We all wore varying shades of black –– and, while not everyone had had her hair done (too Fifties, some thought) –– we all had freshly polished nails.

OK, let’s get it over with early, someone said, laughing. Who has grandchildren? Three did. But all three agreed: These babies were not –– and I repeat: not –– the center of their lives. After all, the women worked, they had lives: They jogged, for God’s sake.

That said, like a shot! –– the three grandmothers whipped out photos from their pocketbooks; everyone else dug for glasses. Did we want to see a menu, the waitress said –– after agreeing that all four grandchildren looked exactly like their respective grandmothers.

What to eat? Back in school, we would get together before sorority meetings and resolve what was then the major problem in our lives: Chinese food or Italian? Deli or American? And, every week, we ate Italian food, anyway.

We ate everything: sugars and fats, salt and what my mother called garbage. Back then, you were fat or you weren’t. Obesity was looked on merely as a punishment from God.

We sipped wine as we looked at the menus –– and every one of us said the same thing: I can’t eat much. I’m having dinner out tonight.

For now, we talked. Look, someone said, I know we’re all still married to the same men, but could you tell me something? Why? And everyone stared at her blankly!

Among us, we had 12 children: five married, seven single, all of whom were fine: Sons were happy, daughters successful. One daughter was a doctor, two sons worked in TV. They were writers, business people: all happy.

Meryl showed us photos of her son’s wedding, with the bridal party assembled near a pond with rolling, manicured lawns nearby. What is that? Lois asked, The Harrison Convention Center? No, Meryl said, That’s, ah, my house.

We exchanged names of good restaurants. Some liked the East Side, others, the Village. The one constant? No one cooks. We do go to gyms.

Not that I like it, said Carole, who gets up at 5 a.m., but I feel better afterward. That’s just the way I feel, I explained, when I stop banging my head against the wall. No one laughed.

Look at my muscles, said Carole. I can beat you up.

Then we laughed –– partly because, by then, the wine had kicked in, and we got to the daughters-in-law from hell, the children who can’t find themselves, the ones living with losers, the husbands acting . . . well, never mind.

It was all very Nineties. Until we got the bill.

Who can do this? somebody said.

We put thirty-six dollars in, Jeanette said of herself and Lois.

Is that without the tax? said Ellen.

Did you figure the tip? said Carole.

Singles, fives, twenties were scattered all over the middle of the table. Then we realized the math was all wrong –– and decided Lois should figure it out, since she had once considered majoring in accounting.

The waitress took it all away –– and then somebody said, Does everyone here have a credit card? We all did. Then why didn’t we throw six cards into the middle like the men would do –– and let the waitress figure it out.

Nobody knew. Just for that moment, we were back on Flatbush Avenue before a sorority meeting, divvying up the bill at the Italian restaurant.

So who said you can’t go home again.

1/31/96

They Don’t Have Babies Like They Used To

IN A LONG-AGO JANUARY, in what seems like another incarnation, I had a baby. (Which is the kind of thing you dwell on when you have no grandchildren.)1 Having a baby in 1996 is very different than it was in those days.

Years ago, you waited about three months for the doctor to confirm the pregnancy. Only then were you really sure. What about a pregnancy test? Test: Are you throwing up every morning? You are? That’s your pregnancy test. Some people had another test. They watched your face for a mask of pregnancy.

You went to the doctor once a month for one reason: to give you something to do. Oh, all right: Doctors took your blood pressure and weighed you, which kept your weight down to, say, your average zeppelin.

There were no blood work-ups, no genetics tests, no finding out if your great-great-grandmother had acne. And no exercises, except for eating and getting up out of chairs.

Back then, we ate everything. There were no special diets, few restrictions. I, however, ate no anchovies. Because of the salt? The taste? No: because when my mother had been pregnant with me, they made her sick. Our main medical problem? Heartburn, which, as everyone knew, occurred if the baby had a full head of hair. Ridiculous? How about the maxim that if your abdomen came to a point, the baby was a boy.

Meanwhile, I shopped for maternity clothes, which everyone in my family told me I must not wear too early, so as not to tempt the fates. The same people said not to visit a cemetery or stretch my arms above my head. Why? Nobody knew. I was to listen to classical music and not lose my temper –– especially with people who told me not to stretch my arms above my head.

The three maternity outfits available back then had huge holes cut out of the skirts or slacks, covered by overblouses. There were no maternity bathing suits, no Baby on Board designs across the mother’s abdomen. Didn’t I wear dresses? What, and have anyone notice that I was having a baby? A condition you announced about six months before you gave birth, not six hours after your home pregnancy test.

Finally, after an excruciatingly painful labor, you were wheeled into a delivery room, given massive doses of anesthesia and forgot the whole thing.

What about natural childbirth? Well, if you wanted to be like one of those people who also did one of those earthy things like breast-feed, that was your business.

(Today, after an excruciatingly painful labor –– in the company of your entire extended family in the birthing room –– you’re wheeled into the delivery room –– for an excruciatingly painful delivery.)

Since no one knew what sex the baby was, you ordered the layette –– buntings, kimonos, sweaters –– in a neutral shade. After you gave birth, you called the store, which delivered the sexually correct color –– blue or pink –– even to the rattles and ribbon on the baby’s carriage pillow.

Ridiculous, you say? Would the world have ended if a girl wore blue; if a boy wore pink? Yes.

You had plenty of time for such nonsense. After all, you stayed in the hospital for, well . . . days. Instead of long enough to shower and blow-dry your hair. Today, only women having cesareans stay long enough to also put on makeup.

Years ago, there was time to positively bask in the reaction of your dignified, intelligent, pillars-of-the-community parents at the hospital viewing window, saying things like Oo-goo-gee-gee, ga-ga to a baby in a plastic bassinet –– its little bead name tag on its wrist, dressed in a kimono –– with nothing on its head.

Today, hospitals are much more cautious. The baby wears a tiny cap to ward off . . . things. Then it’s brought into the mother’s room –– while 14 relatives with colds stand around the bed.

Today, babies are not released