My Mom’s Good Taste by Carol Blatter

Mom was very fussy about how I looked when I went to school. She had very good taste and she could go through a rack of dresses at almost the speed of a marathon runner and pick out the best, most fashionable ones. She knew how to buy wisely. She watched for sales and end-of-season markdowns. New York had great outlet stores before outlet stores became popular in malls many years later.

I just looked at a school picture when I was age six in first grade. What I saw was a white short sleeve blouse and in the middle was an insert of a different material that appeared more delicate than the rest of the simple blouse. I could see straps that went over my blouse which was attached to my skirt.  I couldn’t see the rest. Mom had a lot of pride. She wanted me to look as pretty as other children who came from wealthy families. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about mom’s rule. I wasn’t allowed to wear the same outfit for school two days in a row except when we moved and it was too hard to find where anything was.

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I’m thinking about a fire drill in my dormitory at Ohio University in 1960. When the dormitory closed by 10 PM and we were all getting ready to go to sleep, many of us with rollers in our hair, wearing our non-sexy granny pajamas, a huge gong went off. What was it? I had never heard such noise before. It was a fire drill. Grabbing my robe I marched out with all the girls in my dorm. We were embarrassed for boys to see us looking so awful. And the coup de grace, the final blow, was that the boys didn’t have hours in their dorms and could do anything they wanted day and night. We saw them peering at us across the street. I wished I could become invisible. Those were very provincial times.

My mom died in 1986. I think she would smile knowing that I have a career in writing. And how I dress is irrelevant— I work from home.

Doesn’t Everyone? by Carol Blatter

My uncle is the Secretary of State of the United States, I told my teacher. My great uncle, Abraham S. Wechsler, was the commissioner of licenses and assistant secretary of New York state. . .  I told my teacher, I have three grandmothers. I have no idea what my teacher thought about my misstatements. I suspect she was a good listener. About the three grandmothers, my father’s mother, Grandma Rose, my mother’s mother, Grandma Levy, and the third, my half-sister’s grandma, Grandma Gelfand, so of course, I had three grandmothers. Doesn’t everyone?