The Watkins Man

Every Tuesday afternoon in 1990, the Watkins man pulled in to my parents’ driveway in his brown car.

And every Tuesday afternoon, we had to decide if we would hide.

Mom loved his ground black pepper, but she bristled at the inconvenience of actually having to order it. He was a friendly man but he persisted in long and involved sales visits, even if we were standing there in our swimsuits. Especially if.

When he pulled in, whoever saw him first, would shout, Do we have time to hide!? The answer was almost always no, thanks to the huge front window in Mom’s living room that featured us on the couch.

Next, it would be an argument over who would answer the door. When I volunteered, I would try to be brisk with him, asking for the black pepper in a no-nonsense matter. But the Watkins man didn’t care, he felt only that O was having a bad day and, with some work, he could cheer me up.

Other times, I tried being extra jolly and ordering a slew of spices from him. But this didn’t send him on his way, happy to go before I changed my mind. No, he saw this as an invite to offer preparation advice.

But it was the worst when my mother set out to “keep it short.” She was part Watkins man herself, and the two of them would end up in a play-by-play of life’s latest.

Over time, we’d been known to army crawl through the front room to hide from him if, and only if, the pepper shaker was full.

But one afternoon, we were floating out back in the pool my parents put up the summer of their 25th wedding anniversary. It was a small oasis in the backyard, and we floated on flimsy $2 air mattresses bought at the Ben Franklin in Interlochen.

I was nearly asleep, while Mom was doing the unthinkable: using the shallow plastic cupholder. When she wasn’t dumping Diet Coke into the pool, her book was soaking up water, getting thicker by the minute.

That was when we heard the rumble of the old beater.

“Oh no, it’s Tuesday!” I said, floating in the singular slice of sunshine between the shade trees Dad insisted surround the pool. I cried to think of leaving the warmth, the Michigan summer impossibly short.

“Should we get out and run?” Mom said. But between the Diet Coke and the book, she was ensnared.

“We’ll stay put,” I said and put my head back against the plastic pillow and shut my eyes. I was thin enough (then) and the plastic cheap enough, that I literally floated in the 8 inches of space between the surface of the water and the rim of the pool. I was nearly out of sight.

Mom wasn’t so lucky. She instead paddled one-handed to the side of the pool and huddled behind a tree, clutching the railing with her supersized book.

I looked at her over my sunglasses. And the giggles started.

“Shhh! Here he comes!” my mother said. She was - in a real turnabout - no longer a fan of the black pepper.

“HELLO! Ladies?” The Watkins man had actually opened the house door and was inside now, calling for us. His voice rang out through the house and the back screen door, a few yards from where we floated, hysterical.

“Hold steady,” I whispered.

But it was not to be. He heard what must be a party out back and came to see what all the ruckus was about. There he stood, on the edge of the deck, like he lived there, smiling with joy - ruining our afternoon and making his.

“We thought we heard you,” my mom said, ever the hostess. “We were just getting out.” We both ignored the floating Coke can in the middle of the pool. Out we climbed, dripping wet, trying to stop the giggles, to place an order with the Watkins man. In our swimsuits.

And that is what I remember most about life with my mother: the laughter. ❤️