Stories From Candyland Read Free Page B

Tori and Randy were born. I wanted to be as knowledgeable as the mothers before me.
    I don’t think Dr. Spock helped my mother or me very much.
    In between advice and thoughts on everything from diaper use to proper diet, from crying to reading, from thelimits of love to raising children in a troubled society, from colic to body development, Dr. Spock wrote:
In many ways, we have lost our faith in the meaning of life and our confidence to understand our world and our society. My point here is that you are raising your children in the context of very confusing and rapidly changing times. Your goals and aspirations for your child are going to be greatly influenced by these times and the prevailing ideals and beliefs.
    That’s not a very positive message. Then I discovered more of his uplifting words:
Parenting is an ideal guilt-generating business, and labor often delivers the first volley.. . . The “perfect” parent has yet to see the light of day.
    All right. That explains some of my mother’s attitudes, I guess.
    By the time my kids were born, I had two Spocks to consult. Dr. Spock kept updating his book, and Mr. Spock of
Star Trek
was among pop culture’s most quoted figures. If Dr. Spock was right about the times influencing our beliefs as they related to child-rearing, I thought I might as well use the other Spock to check in on what people were thinking and believing. Most people I knew in the 1970s didn’t knowthat Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock weren’t the same person anyway. Both pontificated.
    Mr. Spock’s deep thoughts included:
If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else’s.
It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.
I am endeavoring, ma’am, to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and bearskins.
Nowhere am I so desperately needed as among a shipload of illogical humans.
    I really couldn’t relate to either of the Spocks. So I decided to investigate what other resources my mother had when my brother and I were growing up.
    I remember my first book of
Nursery Rhymes
(which I still have) and my mother reading:
                     
Little Polly Flinders sat among the cinders,
Warming her pretty little toes!
    Mother would pause here to tell me I had pretty little toes, too.
Her mother came and caught her,
And whipped her little daughter,
For spoiling her nice new clothes
.
    Lesson learned. I never sat in cinders and spoiled nice new clothes.
    The
Reader’s Digest
from my birth month featured “So You Think You’ve Got Rationing Troubles,” and warned of “butter-berserk housewives,” “soprano voices demanding beef,” and “improvident housewives.”
    My mother was none of the above, but she collected multiples of everything, and encouraged me to do the same. I don’t remember my parents ever running out of anything. I bought my kids two of everything “just in case.” I think I still have some of those obsolete toys and long-out-of-fashion clothes in my attic.
    Another
Reader’s Digest
story challenged parents to adopt the new post-World War II role of the United States in the “community of nations” with “service and leadership.” My family was the first on our block to have a fully stocked bomb shelter in the 1950s. I guess that made us leaders.
    One of my mother’s favorite magazines was
Country Gentleman
, even though she was a native of Los Angeles and a lady. The advice the month I was born was, “Don’t raise hogs for pets.” We only had one dog—briefly—and never did get a hog.
    Her issue of
The Woman
magazine had a sad story: “MySons Had Polio.” Whenever I complained about anything, from eating peas to too much homework, my mother would say, “At least you don’t have polio.” She was right. I was very lucky.
    The
Life
magazine that was on the stands when I was born (with a victorious General Douglas MacArthur on the cover) provided much