another time in Omaha

Once, in the Baker's Square parking lot, as I carried my baby in her car seat into the store, a reporter with a news camera stopped me. She was interviewing people, asking them what the thought about the raise the U.S. Congress had just given itself. I think they had just raised their salaries, in 1982, based on the fact that my baby was not yet sitting up by herself*, to $57,000. $57,000 was pretty high in 1982. My husband made more than that and he was about 30 years old. I didn't think $57,000 sounded like a lot for a Congressman, although admittedly I was not thinking of their many perks. Anyway, I said "It doesn't sound like too much to me". Apparently everyone else she interviewed, this being conservative Nebraska, voiced negative opinions so my positive opinion got a lot of play on the news.

My father-in-law told my mother-in-law, and my mother-in-law called everyone she knows. Imagine a phone chain of relatives and gossips. But at first my mother-in-law said "Are you sure it was TheresA?" (my mother-in-law always insisted on mispronouncing my name. I stopped correcting her after about a thousand tries.  My name is not TheresA. Or Terry.) "Robert," she demanded of my father-in-law, "Did you see Katie?"  "No, no," said my father-in-law, "Just Frank's wife, just TheresA".  "Then" my mother-in-law reasoned, "It couldn't be TheresA. What would she be doing out in the middle of the day without the baby?" But it was me. I was holding the baby in the car seat and the cameraman had only shot my face.

This very unimportant incident became family lore, proof to all my in-laws, and it seemed like there were hordes of them, but, in truth, I only had five sisters-in-law. But, of course, there were also lots of other relatives in the phone chain. Wouldn't you know it, they all said, that she would think that pay raise was okay. I hope nobody that knows us realizes she is Frank's wife.

It was about ten seconds of one daily newscast. True, I am probably the only living being who remembers it now




*If Katie had been sitting upright by herself, I would have left the car seat in the car. In the early months, before your baby can sit up, you can't put her in the seats for babies in shopping carts. So you hauled in the entire car seat, which filled up the shopping cart.  It is much more work to go grocery shopping with an infant. Trust me on this. Once in a blue moon, my ex would do me a big favor and 'let' me go grocery shopping without the baby. I was still breastfeeding her. So we planned. I would dash out to the store as soon as I had fed her. Then I would have the fun run. It still galls me, 30 years later, to recall how he thought 'letting' me go to the grocery store without the baby was a special treat. Although it might gall me even more than I considered it a treat.  It was so much easier doing a grocery shop without a baby, who could blow at any time. A baby 'blowing' could mean a lot of things, mostly it meant she might become fussy and cry and, in my mind, disturb others. Plus I wanted to sooth my dumpling.