Please Don't Eat The Daisies

On Jack Parr sometime in the 1950s I remember he had Jean Kerr, a humorist and playwright on his show. I don’t know why I was allowed to stay up, but I was. Those were the days when late night television guests did witty conversations instead of just plugging whatever book or movie or CD they had just released.

Kerr had said how embarrassed she was when she made a dress for a party only to discover her hostess had made curtains using the same fabric, but it was okay, she just stood near a wall pretending to be a curtain. Last night in the attic while searching for something to read, I found her book Please Don’t Eat the Daisies published 49 years ago. The title comes from her awareness after having four sons that everything forbidden had to be specified no matter how remote.

This morning in my week of doing nothing but showing a friend Geneva, I woke early. The cool breezes from Lake Léman filtered through my window along with birdsong.

One of the glories about my life is the freedom to arrange my time as I see fit, but in summer I tend to wake with the sun, but read until a desire for pee, tea and breakfast override the pleasure of reading and napping.

I giggled my way through the entire book only rising when I had finished it.

Here’s some excerpts: “I don’t know that the twins had any concrete picture of their dream house. On thing they didn’t want was a playroom, since they really prefer to cut up the new magazines in the middle of the kitchen floor while I’m trying to serve dinner. I have tried to explain to them about playrooms, but I can see that the mere notion a room in which there was nothing to break fills them with panic and frustration.”

“I was reading another volume of collected letters last night, and it sent me right back to worrying about that old problem. On what basis do you decide that your friends are going to be famous, and that you ought to be saving their letters?”

“When they (her four sons on a day she has decided to be a good mum and not lose her temper) are finally seated at breakfast, I watch the twins spell out their names in butter on the plastic place maters – but I refused to get riled. When they all decided to make sandwiches of boiled egg and puffed wheat I remind myself that after all they’re just little boys and we can cope with this sometime in the future. Then I notice Christopher, stirring his orange juice with my pocket comb. At this point everything in me snaps and my wild, sweet soprano can be heard in Mamaroneck.”

I checked the internet to see if by any chance she was still alive. She died three years ago. However, if she were alive, I am sure she would love to think someone was enjoying her writing 49 years after publication.