Getting Her Irish Up

"I'm putting Christy on the davenport in the bomb shelter," she said. "Just watch out for the mangle that used to be in the rumpus room."

Although I'm pretty savvy to regional lingo, the 'bomb shelter' reference baffled me. "It's the 1970's," I told Bruce. "Who's going to attack Cleveland?"

"It's what Mom calls the basement," he translated. The fact it was cordoned off and well stocked with floor-to-ceiling canned goods was just a coincidence.

As young unmarrieds--albeit living together in California--Bruce was packed off to his old bedroom, a place left virtually shrine-like ever since he'd left for college eighteen years before. Clearly it was Eleanor's way of compensating for not putting any pictures of him in the family albums. "I haven't had time," she said.

His observation that she'd filled half a dozen volumes of his older brother before the latter was even out of diapers was countered by her reply that "the first one is always special". Bruce, of course, held the view that a first child--like a first waffle--should be considered practice and, accordingly, thrown out.

"Now don't you go getting my Irish up," she warned. (No one knew what that meant but it sounded dire.)

We arrived on a Saturday in May. My future father in law had planned it as a surprise for Eleanor's 65th birthday, a scheme he successfully kept secret up until the weekend before our departure when he cheerily signed off the phone with, "Well, see you kids at the airport." Given that Eleanor was on the extension, it sort of deflated the surprise element.

It was humid and raining as we deplaned, a far cry from the blisffully springtime conditions he'd promised. Not that Sid was to blame. Cleveland, you see, has only two weeks of nice weather per year, which occur either (1) just before you arrive or (2) right after you leave. My spirits, of course, were already dampened by the airlines losing my luggage (until Monday). Eleanor offered to outfit me from her own closet, which either meant (1) we were bonding or (2) she thought they deserved one last round before donation to the homeless.

There's much to be said for the Cleveland suburbs. For one thing, there's an understated symmetry to the landscape that we don't appreciate further west. Every green house, for instance, had windowboxes in the kitchen and a second-floor dormer. Every corner house had a tree. Every house neither green nor on a corner had, as seemingly standard feature, a striped glider from which to squeak away summer nights watching fireflies and eating ice-cream.

Bomb shelters also seemed to be a requisite theme, along with cupboard shelves so deep that only an orangutang could comfortably reach anything at the back. This, of course, enabled Ohio housewives to align canned goods in orderly rows of thirty, as well as divide by color groups. I'm sure the Dewey Decimal System was invented by someone whose mother was from Parma.

Another curious thing about the Cleveland suburbs is that they're not divided by fences like in California: from my in-laws' backyard, I could easily see a mile in either direction. The same, meticulous attention to uniformity reigns here as well, manifesting itself in matching lawn furniture, swingsets, and--in the summertime--inflatable pools. I found myself imagining the fun that a cartoonist from The New Yorker could have in capturing this slice of Americana. If Xerox had a corporate town, Parma would be it.

This particular weekend also signified the time-honored neighborhood tradition of breaking out the barbeque, an event akin to the Lighting of the Olympic Torch except with much higher flames.

Sid had just bought a new grill and couldn't wait to ignite it. Given that he'd so clumsily spilled the beans about our arrival, the barbeque made for a nice save and provided everyone with something to get jazzed about as they stood around drinking Manhattans and scarfing Corn Chex party mix.

The neighbors were jazzed, too. In the absence of any pesky fences to inhibit their pilgrimage, the menfolk made their way to the backyard with all the singleminded zeal of lemmings. Once there, they proceeded to admire Sid's purchase with the same enthusiasm usually reserved for new cars. (I even saw two of them kick the rubber wheels and nod in approval.) This was, after all the 70's when barbeques--like computers--came in only one size: large and awe-inspiring.

Eleanor, meanwhile, had scurried downstairs to get the requisite amount of vegetables for a side dish--can upon of can of creamed corn, sauerkraut and yellow waxed beans. (A diversified palette of colors on the plate obviously wasn't a priority.) The important thing, she emphasized, was that we got the recommended number of servings which, by her count, was somewhere around 11. Less than that and we were doomed to contract polio.

As the dizzying aroma of lighter fluid and burned chicken wafted on the breeze of a waning day, I was struck by a disturbing thought: if the U.S. ever got attacked by nuclear missiles, Bruce's relatives would be the only survivors. Unless, of course, they ate anything canned that had pushed the limits of its expiration date.

As if witnessing this in broad daylight wasn't bad enough, I also had the onus of enduring nights by myself downstairs. Even after forty-odd years, the house's foundation hadn't finished settling, providing me with a cacophony of groans and creaks that were almost as annoying as the bedframe that didn't quite lay straight, or the family poodle that kept standing on the top step and yapping itself hoarse.

By our third day, Bruce asked me why I didn't sneak upstairs to his room. "Mom'll never know," he said.

I wasn't convinced. Somehow the scariness of sharing a dark basement with a mangle wasn't as intimidating as getting caught by his mother. "Besides," I said, "I wouldn't want to get her Irish up..."