Letter From Elba

ALpine 1- 8186.  That was our phone number when we moved from Chicago to the suburbs.  I was five years old and I clearly remember the day when our telephone was installed.

It was beige and mounted on the wall in our kitchen.  And back in those early Alexander Graham Bell days, our phone didn’t have a dial. When you wanted to place a call, you had to pick up the receiver and tell the operator what number you wanted.  Just like on Lassie.

That mandatory operator assistance didn’t last very long.  Soon the Roffe family was upgraded to beta- the dial phone.  And with that dial came another fabulous technological innovation- the extension. My parent’s upstairs bedroom nightstand now sported a beige phone, too.

And shortly thereafter, I began calling.

If I had to guess, I’d say the first exchange I ever dialed was LIncoln-9.  My grandparents were city-dwellers and something tells me I probably called my grandmother.

Then came ORchard-5.  My Aunt Anita and Uncle Herbie lived in Skokie and I’m sure that I needed to talk to Cousin Joanie about something vitally important every week. (Even though my mother’s family got together every Sunday without fail for dinner and cards.)

Throughout grammar school, ALpine was my go to exchange.  I only knew kids who went to my school and were in bike-riding distance, and so it was the only one I ever needed.

But when I entered New Trier, my exchange world grew.  Now I added VErnon-5 and HIllcrest-6 to the roster because I had new friends in far-off Glencoe and neighboring (but an affluent world away) Winnetka.

I never did learn the exchange for Kenilworth, Evanston, or heaven forbid, Highland Park.  Back in the day, no self-respecting Trevian bothered to speak with kids from other high schools.  Why would we?  We were the BEST!

(A brief timeout here while Bernie Kerman rises to the occasion and defends the honor of his beloved South Shore High.)

Okay.  Back to the post…

By this time, I had an extension in my bedroom, too.  With a real long cord.  That was the apex of cool until the next iteration- my very own private phone number.

From the minute I discovered boys (and vice versa) and had to discuss the various charms of Billy, Steve, Ribs, Ricky, Jimmy, Steve, Steve, John, Jesse, Phil et al with Peggy, Patty, Nancy, Betty, Patti, Barb, Linda, Kim, Kathy, Cathy and Kathi, Alpine 1-8186 rang off the hook.

Driving my parents to distraction.  And thus, somewhere in the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, they caved and bought me a powder blue Princess telephone of my very own.

I don’t remember the phone number. Why should I?  I never called myself.

And for that matter, I never called boys, either.  1960’s etiquette was strict on that matter.  Girls never called boys back then. Period.

(I don’t know where or when that rule got started, but even today I still stand by it. I never contact a guy first.  If he’s interested, let him get a hold of me.)

And that leads me to Bill- and his car phone.  In 1975 this was a very big deal.  Only hotshot businessmen had them and I was impressed.

(No one ever said I was deep, did they?)

We joined area codes in 1976 and we were a one car-phone family until 1988.  Then a fire in our house uprooted us, and suddenly it was necessary that I get one, too.  I remember Bill fretting that I would run up a big bill on the thing and cautioning me sternly about “over use.”

He needn’t have worried because I thought I had figured out a way to beat the system. The first month I had my car phone, I made all my friends call me.  I honestly thought that if I didn’t initiate the call, I wouldn’t be charged for the minutes.

That misconception stood until I got the first car phone bill.    Oops.

And then came cell phones.

I think I got my first one in 1996.  I don’t remember too much about it.  I hardly ever used it.  Big, clunky, awkward.  When it died, I donated it to some battered woman’s shelter or something.

I do remember my very next one, though.  A state-of-the-art Nokia with wallpaper and songs and alarm clock, and the date- and texting capabilities.

Ah, texting.  How awesome was this little innovation?  All you had to do was hit the letter/number keys painstakingly about a thousand times and you could write” HOw r u? i am in hAwaIi!” And it only took an hour.

This was rad.

Could anything be cooler than this?  I just couldn’t imagine how phones could ever get any better.

Enter the iPhone.

The phone to end all phones.

I moved into my new apartment this last September, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t even bother with a land line.  Why?  And I really don’t miss the ugly phones taking up precious bedside table space.  Now my nightstands are laden with flowers and books.

I don’t miss the old-fashioned telephone at all.  I’m much too busy texting and emailing, checking Twitter, answering your comments, taking pictures, looking up directions, scoping out new recipes, using the flashlight, checking my bank balance, using the calculator, reading on Kindle, checking restaurant reviews on Yelp, ordering food on GrubHub, looking at my kids’ vacay photos on Instagram, paging Uber, reading theater reviews and listening to Spotify.

I mean, nowadays, why would anyone ever call me on a phone?

Today is April twentieth.  So let me start by wishing you all a happy Easter and a happy Passover.  A lovely time of the year.  A time of rebirth, chocolate eggs and the Afikomen. (And great licorice drops- if you happen to be a licorice-lover like me.)

It’s also my son Nick’s due date.

Thirty-four years ago, when I was pregnant with him, there weren’t any fancy ultrasounds or even at-home pregnancy tests to tell you if, when, or what sex to expect. There was only a dreaded amnio test done with some kind of wicked-looking needle and ordered when the doctor felt that there might be a problem with the fetus.

Luckily, I had already had one pregnancy and one birth- Natasha- successfully under my belt, so to speak.  And so when this new rabbit died, my doctor didn’t feel the need to do any further testing.

After my obstetrician announced the new arrival’s expected due date- April twenty- I did two things.

First, I scheduled a speech I had to give in April on that very same date.  I figured it was the one day of the year on which my baby would never be born.

Natasha had done this.

She was expected on Labor Day nineteen months before, and although I got a great joke out of it for the rest of my pregnancy, her stubborn refusal to show herself ended in a baby-nurse-cancellation crisis of major proportions.

When she did make her appearance- ten days late on September sixteenth- I was help-less and helpless.

And frantic at the thought that I would actually be expected to take care of a newborn all by myself.

Luckily, the baby nurse who had cancelled had sent in a replacement.  Her improbable name was Flossie McGhee and she valiantly stepped into the breach left when the original nurse went to tend another baby in her old roster.

Mary, my wonderful housekeeper, who just as suddenly had to take a leave of absence to take care of her ill husband, also sent in a sub.

That didn’t work out quite as well.

Eva, a young and semi-attractive arrival from Poland, had an attitude problem. She had been a chemist or a nuclear physicist or something in Warsaw, and clearly thought that housework of any kind was beneath her dignity.  She also smoked, hated the dog with a passion and detested me with an even bigger one.

(And she got her jet black hair dye all over all my Shaxted towels.)

But I needed her to attend to the house while I was out making a delivery and so I put up with her.  And when Natasha and I were safely home, Mary came back to check on us both.  She took one look at the state of the house (and the towels) and disgustedly hustled Eva out of the house on the spot.

“The house looks terrible,” Mary said grimly.  “And that black stuff all over my nice towels.  But don’t worry, Pani Ellen,” she continued.  “My husband is better and I’ll be back to take care of you all next Monday.”

Music to my birth-sore ears.

What I didn’t know at the time (and a jolly good thing that I didn’t either) was…

Bill told me later that Eva had decided that she should be the next Mrs. Ross.  And one night, when I was still at the hospital, she made her move.

Bill said she had opened the front door to him- naked.  That is to say, she was naked.  He was in a suit.  Then she slowly- but not tantalizingly- sashayed her way back into her bedroom and waited for the master of the house to drop in.

My mouth fell open when he retailed this piece of late-breaking news.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.  “How could you not fire her on the spot?”

“I knew you’d be tied up with the baby and I didn’t want you to have to take care of the house, too,” he replied.

He was right.  That’s how much I hate housework.

Back to Nick.

The second thing I did when my ob/gyn told me April twentieth was my due date was to look up all the famous people born on that date.

Uh oh.

April twenty was a problem.  A BIG one.

It was Hitler’s birthday.

As a student of history and part-time mystic, there was NO way in hell that I was having a baby on that day.

Please forgive me if you- or your loved ones- have that birthday.  I’m sure plenty of perfectly nice people are born on it.

But not in my house.  I’m way too superstitious.

I had made up my mind to it, and so come the day, I happily stood in front of a group of women lecturing them about something amusing.  There was laughter and applause- but no sign of the baby whatsoever.  Crisis avoided.

Whew.

The next day- a Monday- my sister-in-law Mary Lu and her college friend and the college friend’s little girl came over to my house to have a play date with Natasha.

But I met them outside in my driveway.

“Um, I’m having the baby, like right now,” I told Mary Lu.  “Can you drive me to the hospital?  There’s no time for Bill to get here.”

Mary Lu swiftly took me to the hospital.  (And no, Kenny, I did not mess up your brand new car’s brand new leather interior.)

One hour later I was the proud mother of a baby boy.

On Queen Elizabeth’s birthday.

For years Nick knew the story of his infamous due date and was rather patronizing about my insistence that he hold up his entrance until the stars were more favorable.

But one awful day in 1999 I ran into his bedroom in my house in Colorado.  Nick was laying on his bed idly strumming his guitar.

“Quick, turn on the news,” I cried.  And together we watched in horror as the Columbine  tragedy unfolded before our shocked eyes.

As the news grew worse with every passing hour, pundits and analysts were desperate to fill the now-twenty-four news cycle’s ravening maw.  They speculated endlessly on the whos, whats, and whys of the heartbreaking occurrences of the day.

Finally Nick turned to me.

“I know why they did it today.  It’s Hitler’s birthday.  You were right, Dude.  I’m sure glad I wasn’t born on it.”

Me, too.

So happy birthday tomorrow, Nick.  Another Monday- just like it was thirty-four years ago, too.

And sweetie, btw.  Thanks for waiting.

(It’s kind of overdue.)