Writings

printed in Reader's Digest - May, 1959

“DaddydaddydaddyDADDY!” That’s how it came out--one long, excited word. He started yelling it at the top of the stairs, and by the time he bounded into the living room he really had it going good. I’d been talking to his mother about a money problem, and it stopped me mid-sentence.

“Robbie, please!” I said. Then I appealed to my wife. “Can’t we have just five minutes around here without kids screaming?”
Robbie had been holding something behind his back. Now he swung it around for me to see. “Daddy, look!” It was a picture, drawn in the messy crayon of a seven-year old. It showed a weird-looking creature with one ear three times as big as the other, one green eyes and one red; the head was pear-shaped, and the face needed a shave.

I turned to my son. “Is that what you interrupted me for? Couldn’t you wait? I’m talking to your mother about something important!”

His face clouded up. His eyes filled with bewilderment, rage, then tears. “Awright!” he screamed, and threw the picture to the floor. “But it’s your birthday Saturday!” Then he ran upstairs. I looked at the picture on the floor. At the bottom, in Robbie’s careful printing, were some words I hadn’t noticed: MY DAD by Robert Sherman. Just then Robbie slammed the door of his room. But I heard a different door, a door I once slammed--25 years ago--in my grandmother’s house in Chicago.

It was the day I heard my grandmother say she need a football. I heard her tell my mother there was going to be a party tonight for the whole family, and she had to have a football, for after supper. I couldn’t imagine why Grandmother need a football. I was sure she wasn’t giong to play the game with my aunts and uncles. She had been in America only a few years, and still spoke with a deep Yiddish accent. But Grandma wanted a football, and a football was something in my department. If I could get one, I’d be important, a contributor to the party. I slipped out the door.

There were only three footballs in the neighborhood, and they belonged to older kids. Homer Spice wasn’t home. Eddie Polonsky wouldn’t sell or rent, at any price. The last possibility was a tough kid we called Gudgie. It was just as I’d feared. Gudgie punched me in the nose. Then he said he would trade me his old football for my new sled, plus all the marbles I owned.

I filled Gudgie’s football with air at the gas station. Then I sneaked it into the house and shined it with shoe polish. When I finished, it was a football worthy of Grandma’s party. All the aunts and uncles would be proud. When nobody was looking I put it on the dining-room table. Then I waited in my room for Grandma to notice it.

But it was mother who noticed it. “Allan!” she shouted. I ran into the dining room. “You know your grandmother’s giving a party tonight. Why can’t you put your things where they belong?”

“It’s not mine,” I protested.

“Then give it back to whoever it belongs to. Get it out of here!”

“But it’s for Grandma! She said she needed a football for the party.” I was holding back tears.

Mother burst into laughter. “A football for the party! Don’t you understand your Grandmother?” Then, between peals of laughter, Mother explained: “Not football, FRUIT BOWL! Grandma needs a FRUITBOWL for the party.”

I started to cry, so I ran to my room and slammed the door. The worst party of crying was trying to stop. I can still fell it--the shuddering, my breath coming in little, staccato jerks. And each sputtery breath brought back the pain, the frustration, the unwanted feeling that had made me cry in the first place. I was still trying to stop crying when the aunts and uncles arrived. I heard their voiced (sounding very far away), and the clink-clink of Grandma’s good china, and now and then an explosion of laughter.

After dinner Mother came in. “Allan,” she said, “come with me. I want you to see something.” I followed her into the living room.

Grandma was walking around the rom like a queen, holding out to each of the aunts and uncles the biggest, most magnificent cut-glass bowl I’d ever seen. There were grapes and bananas in it, red apples, figs and tangerines. And in the center of the bowl, all shiny and brown, was Gudgie’s football.

Just then my Uncle Sol offered Grandma a compliment. “Esther,” he said, “that’s a beautiful football. Real cott gless.” Grandma looked at Uncle Sol with great superiority. “Sol,” she said, “listen close, you’ll learn something. This cott gless is called a fruit boll, not a football. This in the middle,this is a football.”

Uncle Sol was impressed. “Very smot,” he said. “Very nice. But, Ester, now tell me something. How come you got a football in your frutt boll?” He pronounced them both very carefully

“Because,” Grandma said, “today mine Allan brought me a nice present, this football. It’s beautiful, no?”

Before Uncle Sol could answer, Grandma continued. “It’s beautiful, yes--because from a child is beautiful, anything.”

...From a child is beautiful, anything

I picked up Robbie’s picture from the floor. It wasn’t bad, at that. One of my ears is bigger than the other. And usually, when Robbie sees me at the end of the day, I do need a shave. I went up to his room. “Hi, Rob,” I said.

His breath was shuddering, and his nose was running. He was packing a cardboard box, as he always does when he Leaves Home. I held up the picture. “Say, I’ve been looking this over. It’s very good.”

“I don’t care,” he said. He threw a comic book into the box and some Erector-set pieces. “Tear it up if you want to. I can’t drew, anyhow.”

He put on his cap and jacket, picked up the box and walked right past me. I followed him with the picture in my hand. When he got to the front door, he just stood there, his hand on the knob, the way he always does. I suppose he thinks of the same things I used to, whenever I Left Home. You stand there by the door, and pray they won’t let you go, because you have no place to go, and if they don’t want you, who does?

I got my coat and joined him. “Come on,” I said. “I’m going with you.” And I took him by the hand.

He looked up at me, very scared. “Where we going?”

“The shopping center is open tonight,” I said. “We’re going to buy a frame for this picture. It’s a beautiful picture. We’ll hang it in the living room. After we get the frame we’re going to have ice-cream soda, and I’ll tell you about something.”

“About what?”

“Well, you remember that old football your great-grandma keeps in the cut-glass bowl on her dining room table?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m going to tell you how she got it.”