Table Money

Clap hands, clap hands
Til Daddy comes home.
Daddy has money
And Mommy has none.

Our mother used to sing this little ditty to her babies.

It was related to the well-known couplet about fathers working, but not all day and night, like mothers.

I wasn't sure these things were strictly true, or even remotely so, but it showed you should get your message out there.

You didn't hear fathers singing or rhyming about their situations, which I could see was a blunder.

As far as I could tell, our father didn't have more money than our mother. He had less.

He had change. When he came home from work, he emptied his pockets onto his dresser. There was a torrent of change, but no bills.

He had nothing in his wallet, because he did not have a wallet.

On the other hand, "Go get my purse," our mother would say when the beer man delivered, or the milkman collected, and it was filled with large coarse notes.

On weekends, going shopping to King Kullen or Sears, my mother had the money. If our father was going out alone, to the auto supply or hardware store, our mother gave him money.

Where would he get any money? Our mother went to the bank. It was closed at nights and weekends, when he was home.

He had a piece of paper called a paycheck. On Friday nights he handed it to our mother.

Our mother turned that into a lot of papers. She had a big, brown accordion file filled with envelopes, and typewritten letters, and sheets of papers filled with numbers.

Our father never touched this file. Every once in a while, when our mother was working with these papers on the table, she would call, "Eddie, come in here," and he would get up, sit with her, and talk.

He got out of a lot of work at that table, no doubt, so I'm sure he would not have beefed about the judgment about who works more hours, mother or father.

He might have felt differently about who had more money, if asked. But really, what would he care? His answer probably would have been, "We have our money."