SOL Tuesday: Digitally Documenting Kid Stuff

             I save too much stuff. Mostly, I save papers and/or objects because I have a project in mind. Sometimes, though, it’s pure sentimentality. Here’s one from the latter category.

            In the mid-1970s, a company offered to families a cute way to save small children’s artwork; paper on the refrigerator door doesn’t last that long. This company sent some sort of specially treated paper the child would draw on; parents then sent the paper back to the company, which fused the drawing onto a Texas Ware melamine plate, which then became the child’s own dinner plate.

            I no longer remember whether I found out about this or it was something my mother or aunt sent us. So I had my then maybe four-year-old daughter do three of these plates, and this is the last one I have. I offered it to my now 50-year-old daughter whether she wanted it, and she said no. (She has little sentimentality.) Since she has no kids herself, there’s no one in the direct family who’d have any interest in it. 

            So I am now free/required/forced to throw it away. Here's the plate. If anyone reads this and might have some sort of use for it, speak now and I’ll mail it to you. 

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Job #9: Three psychoanalysts, winter-spring 1963

            Drs. Chodoff, Legault, and Kneipp shared an office on the second floor of what might have once been a private home, with a couple of white columns in front. However, I rarely used the front door, since it took way less time to walk out the back door of our apartment, go up to the alley, then up the fire-escape stairs to the psychoanalysts’ office.

            I was what was called a girl Friday, meaning I did everything: answer the phone, make appointments, send out bills, order office supplies (which included making sure there was plenty of coffee, cream, and sugar), maintain the office accounts (writing checks, including my own paycheck), and keep up the magazine subscriptions. There was little typing, since the doctors only made handwritten notes that went into patients’ files. But some of Dr. Chodoff’s patients were men or women who had been victims of Nazi persecution in the 1930s or were survivors of concentration camps; the West German government paid reparations after receiving reports on what the person had suffered. Dr. Chodoff would see these people for two or three visits, then prepare a report that I would type up. These were harrowing for me to read. And coincidentally, Dr. Chodoff was coauthoring a paper with Dr. Friedman at NIH, the same doctor I’d worked for the previous spring who was studying stress in the parents of children with leukemia, and I typed a long final draft of it.

            Around the same time, I discovered the New Yorker, one of the magazines the doctors subscribed to for the waiting room, and this winter, Hannah Arendt’s reports on the trial of Adolf Eichmann appeared in that magazine. I was riveted by her account.

            Dr. Chodoff was also treasurer for the Washington Psychiatric Society, so I was writing checks for that account. And Dr. Legault put me in charge of all of his bookkeeping. Every month, he gave me a pile of personal bills and his checkbook, and I was to pay everything and note on a ledger what expenses were tax deductible, which meant I had to learn about tax deductibility.

            Writing my own paycheck presented another task: did I want to be paid weekly, twice weekly, twice a month, or monthly? There was a booklet from the IRS that provided guidance for how much federal tax should be deducted based on the time period, and I calculated that I preferred to be paid twice a month. Then I had to be sure that the amount withheld from my pay was paid to the U.S. government.

            Soon after I started with the psychoanalysts, Susan coming home from work passed men carrying out piles of books and boxes from a building on our street. It turned out to be a raid on Scientology offices, written up here in the Washington Post; I sent the clipping to my parents. Susan had wondered who the Scientologists were and called to ask for information; she was told they’d send a brochure, which they never did. She picked up one of the booklets littering the street, but never got involved.

            At first, I missed the sociability of the UWF office. There wasn’t much interaction with the doctors, in fact, I had nothing to do with Dr. Kneipp, since he sent out his own bills and made his own appointments, but he did drink the coffee. As weeks went on, though, I got more friendly with Dr. Chodoff and Dr. Legault, as well as relishing the occasional free time I had to read the New Yorker and other magazines. I was intrigued to learn that Dr. Legault did needlepoint while he listened to his patients — did they mind, I wondered? He did some very lovely patterns and took the finished canvases to a shop that turned them into pillows.

            I did enjoy going home for lunch, which was often a boiled hotdog, mustard as the vegetable. Maybe I also had the corn relish I made from a New York Times recipe, because I had already started collecting recipes and cooking. Susan and I both enjoyed cooking. This did save money: no having to buy lunch or pay bus fare to get to work.

            This was the period of Polish jokes and little moron jokes, and Susan often called me at work with the latest one she’d heard. I don’t know why, but these just didn’t seem funny to me.

            I was settling into this job, when on Memorial Day, I received a telegram at home. United World Federalists wanted to know if I’d consider coming back. I had never been sought after before, and this was yet another offer I couldn’t refuse. So I went back to UWF in mid-December.