It Was My Mother, of Course

 

It was not lost on me that I chose to start to write in earnest after my relatives, who were writers, were either in mental decline or dead.

I obviously didn’t want any comparisons to turn up.

There was one person about whom the following story revolved. About whom my entire world revolved at the time.

It was my mother, of course.

This particular story began on the morning of The Interview, an ordinary enough occasion for young girls in the 1950s who wished to enter Polite Society. As defined by people who considered themselves to be socially superior, thus allowing them to set standards of behavior for everyone else.

I was 14 at the time, just slightly pretty, and exhibiting a beginning glimpse of attractiveness to come.

We were late as usual.

(I’m certain that when she was dying, my mother told God, “WAIT, I’m not ready yet!”)

I never actually called her Mother, but rather, “Mommie” until like a slap across the face, she told me that I was too old to be calling her that, (even though that was usual in our circle of mothers and daughters, and I was 16 at the time.)

We were never in Society for that long.  We just kind of lingered around the edges, waiting to be invited in, which we were until one day and another divorce later, we dropped out of Society entirely on our own.  At least I did.

Then, to be in Polite Society, even briefly, you had to go to the right schools, which I did.  You and your mother had to be accepted by the “girls” and their mothers, which we were.  And you had to have money, which we did until the divorce came through.

Mother was (as I continue to say), beautiful and had something very sweet about her that other mothers saw. But speaking for myself, I don’t know how sweet she really was; it’s still remains to this day as an unanswered question from my childhood. 

Anyway, on that day we were late; we rushed into a cab, on the Upper East Side of New York City. Also in the taxi was Mother’s best friend-and-archrival, and the archrival’s ugly stepdaughter, which she really was: both ugly and her stepdaughter.

(I was leery of being anywhere near the best friend/rival as one spring day, in a competitive act, she had flicked her cigarette ash on the seat of a cab just as I was about to sit down on it in Bermuda shorts.)

But I digress. We had forgotten the white gloves.  As was pointed out all too quickly by mother’s best friend/rival in the game of “who can push whose daughter fastest into Society for the 1958-59 season”?

To have forgotten the white gloves was not good.

It was far more meaningful than most people today can imagine.  And there could have been important and meaningful consequences ahead for this grave faux pas. Because white gloves equaled being a lady.

So, we faced the Interview Committee already down a point, if we were keeping score, which we were.

Anyway, we arrived only slightly late, and full of anxiety and anticipation, not having a clue as to what to expect.

Our answers to the questions asked of us by the Committee, and our dual amounts of naturalness and charm must have won the day because WE got accepted; WE got in.  Whereas, despite her best efforts (and white gloves all around), the best friend/rival’s stepdaughter did not!

So, I got the opportunity to go to, what were for a 14-year-old, (or anyone else if you ask me) the most anxiety-ridden, boring, waste-of-valuable-time social events in country clubs and ballrooms all around the New York/Long Island area.

However, now we were actually an official part of New York Polite Society. And this pleased my mother to the very depths of her being. We had been approved by a committee and all that that meant in a social season of those years.

I am certain, well, pretty certain, that nothing like this exists anymore. (At least I hope not.) Today’s world appears to frown on standards and, more often than not, even civilized behavior. 

(That’s my opinion, just saying.) 

The days of committees passing verdicts of, “Yes, you’re acceptable or No, you’re are not” have transformed after these 65 years into the new and improved committee of “Yes, you’re outrageous, without any redemptive qualities whatsoever.” Or, “No, you’re not quite bad-mannered, and vile enough.”

In other words, such committees of taste and behavior are much closer now to the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth.