Breathes there the mom, with

soul so dead, who never to herself hath said, "This matriarch stuff

is not all it's cracked up to be"?

If you're a reader of op-ed

pages and letters to the editor, you've surely been following the controversy

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen ignited when he wrote that rearing

a child is not the world's most difficult job, as parents who leave

the work force often claim.

When I read Cohen's original

piece, I thought, Boy, are you going to hear from stay-at-home parents

­ male and female ­ who take umbrage at the suggestion that

what they do is a piece of cake. I was right. Most of the letter-writers

focused on the fact that turning drooling infants into upstanding, taxpaying

members of society is tough work.

Of course it is. But

there's a difference between "difficult" and "important."

Raising children well is enormously important.

But difficult? Ditch digging

is difficult. Roofing can be difficult. Saving lives in high-stress venues

like blazing buildings, train wrecks and over-crowded emergency departments

­ that's difficult.

However After last week, I'm

ready to cut stay-at-home parents a little slack. Dave's 70th birthday

and our nation's 225th coincided, as did our German contingent's vacation

time, so it seemed imperative to get the clan together. Here.

We cleaned and polished, bought

an inflatable queen-sized mattress for the kids, laid out towels and all

the pillows we could round up. We borrowed a golf cart to augment our

single-seater, and accepted a friend's invitation to house the overflow.

Fortunately, Mary and Rainer

didn't mind being the overflow, and cheerfully commuted by golf cart.

Jean's crowd filled every inch of our small upstairs: the bedroom for

her and Brian, the loft for Abigail and Esther on the mattress, with little

Isaac sprawled nearby on a quilt. The five of them shared the upstairs

bathroom, although I noticed Jean slipping downstairs occasionally to

use our shower.

I went into the week with visions

of bathing in the glow of my first full-fledged matriarchal event, my

daughters catching up on whatever daughters talk about on this, their

first get-together since Jean's wedding in 1999, while the men bonded

over beers, children threading sweetly through it all. Except for a long-overdue

book review and a column due on Friday ­ both assignments I could

do after everyone was in bed ­ my slate was blank.

So was my mind, in short order.

Friends, seeing me during that week of picnics and celebrations and dashes

to the store, beamed "Enjoying being a grandmother?" and clearly

expected me to mirror their delight.

Quite honestly, the answer

was no. Don't misunderstand: These kids are as close to perfect as any

16-, 13-, and 8-year-olds I've ever met. I know you grandmother-friends

say the same thing about your progeny, whether biological or by marriage,

the way we got ours, but I've seen yours screaming from one end of the

house to the other, and I know how exceptional mine are. They're polite

and self-disciplined, and instantly responsive to suggestions that they

run the carpet-sweeper or load the dishwasher.

Entertaining them was a snap.

We picked (and ate) blackberries, peaches and blueberries, and visited

Steve Stinchcomb's little patch of heaven, Turnipseed Farms. At home,

Abigail's nose was usually in a book, and Esther was ecstatic finally

to be old enough to drive a golf cart. Isaac got Dave to show him how

to bait a hook and dangle a line in the pond below the house. ("Catch

anything, Isaac?" "No. The fish all went away.")

The most exhausting aspect

of the week was meals. As you grandmothers know, nine in the house means

endless discussions of what to fix, who can eat what, who will

eat what, when to eat, how much to buy, and whether to eat indoors or

on the screened porch. The issue was infinitely complicated ­ less

Abigail is allergic to milk

products. Her dad is on one of those impossible high-protein, low-carb

schemes. Dave and I are quasi-vegetarians, careful about fat and cholesterol;

so is Rainer, since he too had angioplasty for a blocked artery. On top

of it all, with Brian laid off, Jean has been practicing extreme frugality.

Even though, as our house guest, she did not need to worry about shopping,

she continued to model thrift to the kids.

(OK, yes, that was us you saw

at Melear's Barbecue, but, honest, it was our one lapse of the week. The

only diner who stayed the course was Brian, who forked into a half pound

of pork, without bread and sweet tea. I guess I should have been grateful

I'm not his mother, whose huge family gatherings include all of

the above plus a Jewish contingent which hews to dietary laws.)

The dynamics of the assembly

suffered most from the fact that, at 39 and 43, our daughters have never

resolved what contemporary pop-psychology calls "issues." The

only overt incidents were a huffy-puffy display of indignation when one

had the nerve to suggest that she and her parents slip out for Mexican

food without taking along the entire crowd, and a tantrum accusing me

of misrepresenting the coffee by blending decaf into it, at which her

sister arched eyebrows to say, "Just what I expected."

Fear of such flare-ups kept

us on eggshells all week.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln,

we enjoyed the play. But good grief, it was get out food, cook, set tables,

serve, clean up, then repeat. And repeat again. Up at 7, fall into bed

at midnight, without pausing for breath. Column? Book review? Ha.

So now I have an "issue"

of my own: guilt for not being in transports of matriarchal ecstasy like

my friends. I love the kids, I love their parents and aunt and uncle,

but I sure was glad to see the last one heading up the driveway at week's

end.

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