LETTERS FROM HOME: THE PLEASURES OF BEING JUNE CLEAVER

Dec. 14, 2000

Dear Julie,

We've had a good snowfall, enough to close schools. DC had a day off in the middle of the week for the first time I can remember.

The first thing she said is, "I can't blow it." Blow what? I wondered.

"This is my only chance to clean the house," she said with a determined look.

To most people a snow day is for lazing about, reading a book, given the time of year maybe sending out Christmas cards. To DC it's an opportunity to live out her secret fantasy of being a housewife.

She will be appalled to learn I've told you this, but if DC could she would chuck her practice and her teaching jobs for the pleasures of being June Cleaver.

That womanly image is still keeping house somewhere in your brain if you were a kid in the 1950s. Wearing lipstick and a perfect house dress, she is putting the vacuum cleaner away in the hall closet. Ah, everything in the world is now in its place.

Our vacuum cleaner stands at attention in the room of the house that needs to be cleaned next. Almost nothing is in its place, particularly DC's eyeglasses. She's always misplacing them.

DC would be a very modern housewife. Mornings she would take Hank and Lucy for a walk so long they would return and collapse while she returned e-mail. Midday she would plant and prune and try to call the phone company to complain about a 35-cent overcharge because "it's the principle." In the afternoon, she would throw a few pots -- the ceramic kind -- before blow torching the creme brles for dinner.

In the best housewife tradition, she would be on the lookout to prevent disaster from touching her household. This week she brought home insulating materials, a kerosene heater and a five-gallon tank of fuel in case the snow storm cut the Midwest power grid. She prepares for both the whims of Mother Nature and technological deficiencies.

A few nights ago, DC called me at work, about a package the postman left on the front porch. The return address, "Guns by Mail," concerned her. I laughed. Can guns be mailed? And if they can, who would send us a gun? We've had some gun trouble in our neighborhood but are sure more guns aren't the solution.

DC raised the ominous possibility that the mysterious package was sent by someone who wasn't necessarily friendly. She lived in San Francisco when the Unabomber was mailing death. Eventually I realized DC really was worried about the package. It was time for me to be Ward.

Quickly I drove the few blocks home. Slowly I approached the package, bending forward in the dim light to look at the return address. "Gump's by Mail" it said.

Nice department store. We must find those glasses.

Love, Sam