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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Little girls on the big prairie
Through these classics of childhood, a kid could suffer the privations of starvation in the flashlight-lit privacy of her own imagination -- and live to cherish the memory.
By Melanie Rehak
[04/13/00]

I luv Ruby
My love smoldered in the margins of great books.
By Stephen J. Lyons
[04/13/00]

Ethan is on the front porch, reading
I turn away, so my dyslexic son won't see my tears.
By Virginia Tubeck-Drozd
[04/12/00]

From household saint to social pariah
In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Martha Stewart let it slip that the real reason she's leaving Westport, Conn., is because she's lonely.
By Kate Moses
[04/11/00]

Gift rage
Damn the silverware, smash the crystal. I can't take the accouterments of middle-class marriage.
By Mary Valle
[04/11/00]

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My father finally arrived at the hospital where he found my mother waiting to go into labor and delivery. He looked at her and said, "So, what did we have?' Her eyes narrowed as she indicated her still very pregnant belly, "What does it look like we had?" Although she had no complications with the birth, she stayed in the hospital for 10 days. She said, "I was happy just to push the juice cart around the maternity ward."

In our fourth year at Iowa State, the team won enough games to go to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas. Then my father got offered the job as assistant head coach at Kansas State. The head coach was Vince Gibson, whose philosophy was "We gonna weeen!" Coach Gibson had a coaching show on TV where fans sent in crocheted purple pigs, purple wine holders, purple baby blankets, purple tablecloths. After the show each week, Gibson would hold up the items and say, "Now looky here at what purple things we got this week to support the Wildcats! Bless your hearts!"

We lived in Manhattan, Kan., for a year and did not win a lick, so in 1973 my dad reunited with Majors to coach the Pitt Panthers in Pittsburgh.

The moving was hardest of all for me. For years, Casey and Keely, the youngest kids, didn't notice the difference between one football pit stop and the next. As for Duffy, moving was a breeze. He simply became the new quarterback at the Catholic school wherever we landed, and the girls glommed onto him. He was able to hang out in the locker rooms of the Panthers or Volunteers, be a ball boy, steal roles of Ace bandages and tape.

He also cared deeply about how he looked, and he used to comb his hair constantly until Sister Celine, a cranky Pittsburgh nun, grabbed his comb one day and tossed it in the trash can.

Each moving day, I shot daggers at the movers, loathing them from the core of my soul as they carelessly packed up my beloved room. Finally, my father would shout, "Do you want to stay in the same goddamn town your whole life? What kind of life is that? That's a bullshit life! Now get your ass in the car!" I grew up with that phrase ringing in my ears, "Get your ass in the car!" I hated leaving my friends in Iowa. Then I hated leaving my friends in Kansas. After each move, when I still had a healthy appetite, my mother said, "You must not be too upset if you can pack it away like that!"

Football intensified more than ever in our lives. I was attending my brothers' games, my father's games, and baby-sitting every Saturday night while the coaches and their wives went out to celebrate or commiserate at the bars around Pittsburgh. I never minded baby-sitting, because I loved staying up to watch "The Carol Burnett Show" with my brothers and sister. Then I'd make them go to bed, and I'd stay up for hours after that reading.

At first, I didn't fit in at any of my new schools. I was taller than anyone in my class, and was often mistaken for a boy because a girl, unless she was a cheerleader or a coacheswife, earned no respect in the world of football, and I really wanted my father's respect. Hence, I dressed in letter jackets, jeans, high tops, Mexican vests from the Sun Bowl trip. I kept my hair short, and I wore ridiculous octagonal glasses.

Kids would say, "Why don't you ever wear dresses?" "Are you a guy or a girl?" "Hey Moose! How's the weather up there?" "You must think you're so great because your dad is a coach. His team is shit. Pitt is shit!" My pathetic comeback was, "Shut up, jag-off!" a popular turn of phrase in Pittsburgh at the time.

Although Pittsburgh was difficult, by ninth grade, I loved it because I started high school at an all girls' school called Vincentian. It was not completely girls. They had started letting boys in the year before, but the boys who attended were so insignificant, we didn't even notice them except to avoid them. I played field hockey, made intense friendships, and then Pitt went to the Sugar Bowl and won the national championship. I even got to meet the Six Million Dollar Man in the hospitality room at the Sugar Bowl.

Since we were winning big time, I felt assured of our place in Pittsburgh. Winning coaches didn't get fired. Which was true. But they did move on to teams that needed rebuilding, which is what Johnny Majors decided to do by returning to his alma mater, Tennessee.

I was devastated to leave Pittsburgh and go south. Although I looked more like a girl by this time, I certainly didn't know how I would fit in with the Southern girls. When my parents took me to my first day of school, the priest at Knoxville Catholic High School regaled us with jokes while I sat there stone-faced. When he got up to take a call, my father turned to me and said, "Give the poor bastard a break. He's told every joke he knows."

There was no field hockey, and girls played half-court basketball in Knoxville. The students had all been together since the first grade, and they said "Howdy!" A lot. When Duffy started attending the high school with me and playing quarterback again, girls would sidle up and drawl, "Dang, your brother has a cute butt."

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