Perri Klass - Every Mother Is a Daughter: The Neverending Quest for Success, Inner Peace, and a Really Clean Kitchen (Recipes and Knitting Patterns Included)

Perri: I fantasize sometimes about making my mother enjoy things. Perhaps making is the wrong word. I long to introduce my mother to some of the small special pleasures and indulgences of life. I imagine opening up her life in lovely little ways and encouraging her to accept certain pleasures. It's probably slightly patronizing on my part, but sometimes I fantasize about her face lighting up in surprised delight: How good this tastes, how soft this feels! It's not that my mother doesn't have her pleasures, reliable and reliably enjoyed, but they don't tend to be built in any way around self-indulgence or, God forbid, luxury. So yes, I know I can take her to sit in cheap seats and watch a good play or give her a paperback copy of an interesting novel she hasn't heard about or treat her to one of the fabulous $2 grilled meat sandwiches at the Vietnamese banh mi shop near where I work, and I know she'll respond with delight and satisfaction: what a wonderful production, what a good book, what a great $2 lunch!

I fantasize, though, about getting her to loosen up and enjoy a little frivolous luxury. I don't live a life full of truffles, champagne, and limos myself, but I'm not above enjoying something because it's luxeespecially when someone else is paying.

I was traveling on business once, and someone was putting me up at a fancy Manhattan hotel. I arranged for a room with two beds and invited my mother to come spend the night. We'll order from room service, I thought. We'll raid the minibar! I'll tell her it's all covered, even if it isn't. Let her taste the slightly illicit joys of expense-account travel. In any event, we ate a huge dinner in a restaurant, with plenty of wine, and got back to the room in no need of room service dessert or minibar miniatures. But we spent a comfortable night on spiffy sheets that neither of us would have to wash, and I planned to overwhelm her with a luxury breakfast. In the morning, as we were getting up, I noticed that hanging on the bathroom door were two matching white terry-cloth hotel bathrobes, plush and soft and carefully labeled with the little tickets that say, This robe is here for your comfort during your stay. If you would like to purchase a robe, $100 will be added to your bill. Hey, Mom, I said, as she went into the bathroom to take a shower, put on a bathrobe, and let's lounge around. These bathrobes cost a hundred bucks a poplet's live it up. She looked dubiously at the bathrobe, and at the tag, as if this whole idea of putting robes in people's hotel rooms was rather frivolous and ill-advised and probably a silly experiment that would never be repeated. However, she took her shower, actually put on the plush robe, then she sat down in one of the hotel chairsbut only for a moment. I went into the bathroom to take my own shower, planning to come out in the matching robe. By the time I did, she was fully dressed for the day, including her shoes.

Later that day, I teased her about the bathrobeit was too expensive, she couldn't wear it, did she know some people routinely spent much more than a hundred dollars on a bathrobe? She shook her head; it wasn't that. I've never done that in my whole life, she said, put on a bathrobe and lounge around. When I get up, I have to get dressedI think it comes from my own mother, this feeling that once you were awake, you shouldn't waste time, you should immediately get to all the chores you hate most. My mother had all kinds of disparaging terms for women who wore slippersI grew up thinking that when you get up the first thing you do is wash and brush your teeth and then you get dressed.

I treasure my mother for all the things she most enjoysall of which, I think, have been reliably passed on to me. We agree, I think, on the important small pleasures: I would rather discover a wonderful new novelist than just about anything, I revel in the joys of cheap ethnic lunches, and of course I love bargains, from clothing bought on sale to used and remaindered books. We even agree on the important big pleasures around which life should be based: children, family, work, writing, food, travel, and books. But I am also a creature of my times (a rich yuppie, my mother would tell you; her slang tends to be a little out of date, but the mild contempt would come across). I am fully capable of enjoying high-end travel, expensive restaurants, premium cocktails, and wine that tastes better because you know how much it cost. (Though the truth is, of course, that I have never grown up enough to take any of this for granted. Real grown-ups accustomed to the everyday luxury of expense-account travel probably don't fantasize about room service and the minibar. They're too busy doing business with the in-room fax and high-speed Internet access or keeping up with their workouts in the fitness center.) The small rewards, I think, of working hard and doing your job well, are the occasional treats you give yourselfor the occasional extravagances that life throws your way, and that you let yourself enjoy.